This occupation, this interest in physical speculation, one might think to be harmless enough. But to think this is to fail to see the danger. Physical speculation, as we have seen, arose out of an interest in the meaning and nature of justice. In the fifth century this association continued. For physical speculation, in this period, brought with it ethical and social skepticism; threatening to undo the very foundations on which the conservative position was founded. Instead of seeing in the traditional Athenian state a reflection of the divine idea, an affirmation of its own moral autonomy, .a claim to the unquestioning obedience of possessing and dispossessed alike, the radical thinkers boldly proclaimed an ethical relativism; that man is the measure of all things, that (in the words of Thrasymachus) justice -- the whole nexus of constitutional law and popular custom, of juridical arrangement and parliamentary decree, is the interest of the class in power (the stronger): that an oligarchy when in power legislates in its interest, a tyrant in his interest, a democracy in its interest. Here, too, is the genesis of the nomos-physis argument. Whereas the conservatives wanted to make of justice and statute-law something inherent in the very nature of things and worthy, therefore, of unquestioning acceptance and obedience, the sophists wished to make justice a matter of convention, of arbitrary external pressure; so that when custom comes into conflict with "natural laws" and "human nature" then custom must give way. Such doctrines were clearly skeptical, subversive and revolutionary. And it is no wonder that they stirred up the hatred, suspicion, fury and contempt of the conservative and oligarchical class.
So far we can characterize the sophistic movement as a whole. / 20 / But it is important to make further distinctions and to indicate a diversity within sophistic tendencies. We may illustrate our point by contrasting two important sophists. Protagoras is a pure relativist. "Man is the measure of all things." No human institution, therefore, can claim absolute validity or correspondence to anything ultimately real. For him a concept applies solely to the subjective side. In other words, reality is an interpretation rather than a "thing in itself." Thrasymachus, too, is a relativist, but there is one highly important difference; his relativism is objective rather than subjective. In other words, for him justice is relative to the interest of the dominant class: it is, however, a positive and objective thing, although considered in the totality of the process -- that is, genetically and historically -- relative and transient. The position of Protagoras is ambiguous and bivalent: although in its incidence liberal and critical of a status quo, by its denial of all objective validity to the concept, by its insistence on a universal flexibility of judgment, it can equally well be used as a weapon of conservatism. To put it more concretely, by Protagorean standards the claim of the oligarchical state to the unquestioning obedience of its subjects can have no objective justification. But equally, the right of the democrats to overthrow the oligarchical state can find no substantiation in any real and objective order. The insistence of Thrasymachus that justice is the tangible domination in wealth and political power of one group over another makes of justice a thing which can be observed and studied in its relative changing forms. It is no accident, therefore, that the conservative Plato, in his greatest work, makes Thrasymachus the supreme enemy. Plato was very well aware of the difference between Thrasymachus and Protagoras. It is no accident that, while he speaks of Protagoras with a certain amount of respect, when he comes to the final "refutation" of Thrasymachus in The Republic he stresses the view that the real sophist is the mob.
"Do you really think, as people so often say, that our youth are corrupted by Sophists, or that private teachers of the art corrupt them in any degree worth speaking of? Are not the public who say these things the greatest of all Sophists? And do they not / 21 educate to perfection young and old, men and women alike, and on them after their own hearts?
"When is this accomplished? he said.
"When they meet together, and the world sits down at an assembly, or in a court of law, or a theater, or a camp, or in any other popular resort, and there is a great uproar, and they praise some things which are being said or done, and blame other things, equally exaggerating both, shouting and clapping their hands, and echo of the rocks and the place in which they are assembled redoubles the sound of the praise or blame -- at such a time will a young man's heart, as they say, leap within him? Will any private training enable him to stand firm against the overwhelming flood of popular opinion? or will he be carried away by the stream? Will he not have the notions of good and evil which the public in general have -- he will do as they do, and as they are, will he be?
"Yes, Socrates; necessity will compel him.
"And yet, I said, there is a still greater necessity, which has been mentioned.
"What is that?
"The gentle force of attainder or confiscation or death, which, you are aware, these new Sophists and educators, who are the public, apply when their words are powerless.
"Indeed they do; and in right good earnest.
"Now what opinion of any other Sophist, or of any private person, can be expected to overcome in such an unequal contest?
"None, he replied.
"No, indeed, I said, even to make the attempt is a great piece folly; there neither is, nor has been, nor is ever likely to be, different type of character which has had no other training in virtue but that which is supplied by public opinion -- I speak, friend, of human virtue only; what is more than human, as the proverb says, is not included: for I would not have you ignorant that, in the present evil state of governments, whatever is saved comes to good is saved by the power of God, as we may truly say.
/22/
"I quite assent, he replied.
:'Then let me crave your assent to a further observation.
'What are you going to say?
"Why, that all those mercenary individuals, whom the many call Sophists and whom they deem to be their adversaries, do, in fact, teach nothing but the opinion of the many, that is to say, the opinions of their assemblies; and this is their wisdom. I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him-he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honorable and that dishonorable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes; and he can give no other account of them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never himself seen, and having no power of explaining to others the nature of either, or the difference between them, which is immense. By heaven, would not such an one be a rare educator?
"Indeed he would.
"And in what way does he who thinks that wisdom is the discernment of the tempers and tastes of the motley multitude, whether in painting or music, or, finally, in politics, differ from him whom I have been describing? For when a man consorts with the many, and exhibits to them his poem or other work of art or the service which he has done the State, making them his judges when he is not obliged, the so-called necessity of Diomede will oblige him to produce whatever they praise. And yet the reasons are utterly ludicrous which they give in confirmation of / 23 / their own notions about the honorable and good. Did you ever hear any of them which were not?"
Two things are very apparent in this passage-Plato's furious dislike for democracy and democratic procedure, and the identification in his mind of sophistic thinking and the democracy.
To complete the picture, we should see how the relativism of Protagoras can be developed into a defense of strong-arm methods, and a rationalization of social inequalities. Its very denial of objective values can be interpreted in such a way that there is no reason for rejecting and opposing injustice. So from the neutral or centrist position of Protagoras in regard to the problem of justice, evolved historically both the radical objective skepticism of Thrasymachus, and the doctrines of a group of anti-democratic sophists like Polus, Callicles, 19 Crito and Hippodamus who carried on the same doctrine to its final implications on the subjective side.
The implication of Callicles' doctrine, his defense of the strong man is clearly anti-democratic, although Plato who distrusts all shades of relativism, for the purpose of opposing him, represents him as still a democrat.
This last position can best be summed up in the luminous phrases of Callicles in the Gorgias:
'This is that which is by nature fair and just; the man who is to live aright ought to permit his desires to become as great as possible and not to check them; and when the desires have grown to their fullest extent he should be able to gratify them because of his courage and intelligence."
Now it is quite clear from all that we know of the early Socrates that the young artisan, the stone cutter, son of a stone cutter and a midwife, a typical representative of the rising artisan class, was deeply influenced by the democratic currents which were stirring the intellectual life of the fifth century. Plato's description of Socrates' early interests is particularly significant. "He began," says Plato," "with a great curiosity for research into nature and /24 / an eagerness to unearth the causes of the coming of things into being and their passing away." The impulse to critical philosophy was social and political; the coming into being of the democracy and the passing away of the oligarchy. Change and process had become the most important concepts, and philosophy was turning to the physical world where the laws of change and development were embodied. Socrates was one of the young intellectuals who lived through the experience of at least part of this revolutionary period. The impact of tremendous social change gave a scientific direction to his thought.
The philosopher Anaxagoras brought into focus and gave utterance to the dominant progressive tendencies of middle-class Athenian thought in the second half of the fifth century. To understand this point it is necessary to go back a little and show the development of social relations in fifth-century Athens.
The late tribal order represented in the Homeric poems broke up in the eighth and seventh centuries, BC This breakup was a direct result of a change in the economic organization of the Greek world. It grew out of advancing agricultural techniques, out of production for a market and the rise of a monetary economy, with the consequent development of usury and the mortgage; out of usury and speculation developed social and economic inequality, a class of landed proprietors on the one hand, and of needy and even dispossessed peasants on the other. The tribal order was succeeded by the aristocratic state, a dictatorship of a small group of great families, the Eupatrids, or landed proprietors. The dominance of this class found political expression in the court of the Areopagus. The same movement which led to the breakup of the tribal order led to the development of another powerful interest in the state-the mercantile or democratic group, whose interests were served by imperialism and trade.
To avoid any possible confusion, our use of the term 'imperialism' ought to be clarified. We do not intend to suggest that ancient imperialism shares the same characteristics and dynamics as nine- /25 / teenth-century capitalism or modern imperialism. Ancient 'imperialism' was based on the need to control sources of food supply, and to a lesser degree to control the market for the products of intensive agriculture and primitive crafts. In addition it was based on the need for constant expansion in order to keep up the supply of slaves on which the entire productive system was founded, although this last characteristic is probably more evident in the Roman Empire than the Greek city state.
The social struggles of the sixth and early fifth century turned on the opposition, in the slave-owning Athenian polity, between the landed proprietors, or oligarchs and the traders, merchants, speculators and artisans. The oligarchs, who were, after all, a small minority numerically, tended to look for support to Sparta, the most conservative and oligarchical of Greek fifth-century cities. But the democrats tended in the early stages, until their own developing imperialism brought them sharply into conflict with Persia, to look to the Great King for a counterbalance to Spartan influence. As late as Marathon, while the democrats were still intriguing with Persia, the oligarchs could come forward as the patriotic party. Under Miltiades they did so. In the sixth century and through the greater part of the fifth, the democratic movement was led by liberal patricians like Solon and the great Alcmaeonid family. There seems no good ground for rejecting the suspicion that the Alcmaeonids were the party in Athens who, in conjunction with Hippias, were prepared to open the gates of Athens to the Persian invader22 and signaled their willingness by raising the shield from Mt. Pentelicus.
But by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War the balance of forces had shifted very considerably. The policy of Pericles, representing as it did the interests of the large slave-owning business group, was relatively moderate. But now a "left wing" group was pressing hard upon the more moderate democrats. The growth of slave production, of trade, of money capital as well as the growth of a "lumpen proletariat," who parasitically lived off the bounty of imperialism, led to strong pressure for a more aggressive foreign / 26 / policy, for a more intoxicating imperial idea. The bankers, speculators, petty artisans, wheat traders and "lumpen proletariat" all united to form a strong pressure group that called for more aggressiveness in foreign affairs and a more generous distribution of loot in the form of increased payment for state services. This union led to the short-lived ascendancy of Cleon and became even more boisterous, vehement, and articulate under his successor, Hyperbolus. The position of Pericles became more and more uneasy. "Now Pericles became another, says Plutarch. "He was no longer an obedient tool in the hands of the people, not so readily did he yield in accordance with the demands of the throng."23 In the earlier part of his ascendancy it was Thucydides [n. The son of Melesias: not the historian, Thucydides] and his oligarchs who led the attack on Pericles. At the time of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, he seems so much under attack from both sides that Diogenes Laertius 24 is uncertain whether the attack on Anaxagoras, the outstanding philosopher of Periclean democracy, was led by Thucydides or Cleon. He mentions both traditions. 25
The resolution of this particular difficulty depends, of course, on the view one takes of the date of the trial of Anaxagoras. If we follow Taylor and place the trial around 450, then Thucydides, who was, as Plutarch tells us, a leader of the party of the good and true [i.e., the Oligarchs] must have preferred the accusation; for this is too early for Cleon. However, if we choose the accepted date, around 432, Cleon is the more probable nominee. A further example of this confusion is provided by Diopeithes. On the basis of a line in the Birds [988] Burnet [p. 296] assumes that he was a democrat, and adds an extraordinary footnote: 'Aristophanes had no respect for orthodoxy when combined with democratic opinions.' It is by no means certain that he was a democrat.