The modern day sophists

Politicians convince the people they are the best candidates for their respective constituencies but, once elected, some rely on opinion polls or party interests to make decisions.

SOPHISTS (Greek: sophistai) refers to experts, wise persons or learned men. Categorised into schools, their origin is traceable to the Greek civilisation of the 5th and 4th centuries.

They travelled from place to place giving lectures and private instruction for a fee, teaching logic, rhetoric and language sciences or linguistic skills.

They concerned themselves primarily with mastering the practical arts of arguing and public speaking for the sake of success in life.

The sophists were educated people who reasoned with clever but fallacious arguments; who argued with devious abuses of logic and rhetoric; and were associated with moral or religious scepticism and misleading reasoning.

The sophists believed in the perfectibility of humans, making man the measure of all things. They propagated an ethical and epistemological relativism, that what is good or beneficial to one may be evil or harmful to others.

They taught that nothing exists. To them religion is a deceptive invention by the strong to subdue the weak. They cast doubt on knowledge and the possibility of knowledge, and initiated a thorough-going philosophic scepticism.

Instead of finding out the truth, they were more interested in winning arguments or points at all costs against any disputant. They argued for sheer triumph and, worse, charged fees for that service at the expense of truth and moral improvement.

It was the sophists who started the sceptical movement in 5th century Greek civilisation, bringing disrepute to knowledge in general and philosophy in particular.

For all the above, though they started an intellectual movement, the word sophists is often times employed in a depreciatory manner. The name was actually the attribution given by their opponents.

As a term of reproach, sophists had been rightly equated with quibblers, whose job was to make truth appear as falsehood and vice versa.

These sophists were proud of their abilities to turn the weaker argument into the stronger. Relying on their misleading but persuasive method of logic, rhetoric, language science etc. to impress and win arguments, they would argue in support of whichever side they believed would serve their interests best, or whichever side they were being engaged and paid to argue for.

Sophism or sophistry is an art of specious reasoning, appearing to be good, sound or just, but in reality false or flawed. It’s not a truth-finding discipline.

In Islamic intellectual tradition, the Arabic equivalent for sophists is sufasta, and their various groups the sufasta’iyyah. For centuries, a number of successive prominent Muslim scholars like al-Baghdadi, al-Nasafi, al-Taftazani, al-Tahanawi, al-Iji, al-Jurjani and al-Raniri prescribe these sophists and their beliefs.

Restating those traditional exposition, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, a modern thinker, classified the sophists into three main groups: (i) the al-la adriyyah (the agnostics); (ii) the al-indiyyah (the subjectivists); (iii) the al-‘inadiyyah (the obstinate).

The first refers to people who claim that they do not know or doubt whether something really exist or not. They are in doubt about the real existence of things and are in doubt even of their own doubt! They deny that knowledge of anything is possible.

The second group does not deny the possibility of knowledge and truth. They nevertheless deny their objective nature, i.e. they hold that there is no objective truth in knowledge. To them all knowledge is subjective, and the truth about anything is only one’s opinion of it.

The third are people who deny the reality of things, and regard that what we call things are mere fancies and figments of imagination.

All the three schools have one quality in common: the denial of objective knowledge. To put it differently, all sophists are sceptical about the possibility, universality and objectivity of truth.

Muslims must be aware that the beliefs of these groups are in direct opposition to Islam as Islam affirms knowledge, truth and realities. Such beliefs, if embraced by Muslims, entail fundamental deviations from the religion.

It’s interesting to note that sophism continues to influence people of our time today, both Muslims and non-Muslims. Al-Attas observes that among the many modern educated secular Muslims are neo-Murji’ah.

These people incline to reduce religion to faith without action. They believe that faith is in the heart, therefore religion is a personal matter. No authority can judge the validity of the faith of another person.

Now, we may compare our modern day politicians and lawyers to the Greek sophists of old. A considerable number of these people are concerned only with convincing others to believe them, not with the truth.

On the one hand, politicians, for example, must convince the people to believe that they are the best candidates for their respective constituencies with all sorts of information, facts and figures, promises, and so forth.

Once elected to the office, some politicians tend to forget the promises made to the people. Some even rely on opinion polls or political interests of the party they represent to make decisions instead of taking a stand and holding to the truth or their personal convictions.

On the other hand, lawyers, literally speaking, are arguers for hire. A defence lawyer, once engaged, is legally obligated to argue as persuasively as possible to his or her utmost ability in the client’s best interests.

The same applies to the prosecution lawyers. They are duty bound to present their cases in order to convince the court of the guilt of the accused.

Many are of the opinion that people with enough money can always hire good lawyers to win legal disputes. With enough money, any sophistic lawyer can argue for either side of the case, putting the truth in the backyard.

If I may advise this type of politicians and legal practitioners: please do not misuse the ability to speak persuasively using logic, rhetoric and other language skills to manipulate both political assemblies and legal proceedings.

We do not want our politicians to tell lies or our legal fraternity to practice what might be termed as defending the indefensible, and in the process corrupt the true meaning of justice. Both sets of professionals must always adhere to the principle of honesty and truth, and not argue for sheer victory and for money.

They have to realise that at a certain level, such misapplication of expertise would make ignorance or cunningness confused with wisdom, falsehood with truthfulness, and hence would mislead the public at large.