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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (10599)	11/16/2001 5:50:17 PM
From: FaultLine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

That got me to thinking... Who Was Plato? Who Was Phaedrus? Who was Lysias? Who were the Sophists? What were the Eleusinian Mysteries? <g> --fl@thinkingaboutthinkingaboutthinking.edu

To: maceng2 who wrote (10599)	11/16/2001 10:57:49 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Of course Socrates knew the sophists in person. That may have had something to do with it. But as I understand it, the sophists were simply teaching lingustic tools that could be used in the pursuit of whatever end or goal you chose to use them. Whether the use of sophistry was for good or for evil was up to the user. (Socrates himself used many of the principles of sophistry, but without attributing his borrowing of their principles to the sophists!) It's like anything -- mathematics, science, guns, whatever -- they can be put to good use or bad use. I don't condemn a tool just because it is used improperly by some. I suppose that one could try to make an argument that some tools are inherently only usable for evil purposes (many countries, for example, feel this way about posion gas and land mines), but even if one were inclined to make this argument, I don't think it could appropriately be used for the tool of sophistry. Which is perhaps getting a bit off the topic of Foreign Affairs, so if we want to continue this discussion maybe we should find a more appropriate thread for it.