Taylor, C. C. W., and Mi-Kyoung Lee. "The Sophists." (STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY).

The Greek word sophistēs, formed from the noun sophia, ‘wisdom’ or ‘learning’,has the general sense ‘one who exercises wisdom or learning’. As sophia could designate specific types of expertise as well as general sagacity in the conduct of life and the higher kinds of insight associated with seers and poets, the word originally meant ‘sage’ or ‘expert’. In the course of the fifth century BCE the term, while retaining its original unspecific sense, came in addition to be applied specifically to a new type of intellectuals, professional educators who toured the Greek world offering instruction in a wide range of subjects, with particular emphasis on skill in public speaking and the successful conduct of life. The emergence of this new profession, which was an extension to new areas of the tradition of the itinerant rhapsode (reciter of poems, especially of Homer), was a response to various social, economic, political and cultural developments of the period. The increasing wealth and intellectual sophistication of Greek cities, especially Athens, created a demand for higher education beyond the traditional basic grounding in literacy, arithmetic, music and physical training. To some extent this involved the popularization of Ionian speculation about the physical world (see Presocratic Philosophy), which was extended into areas such as history, geography and the origins of civilization. The increase in participatory democracy, especially in Athens, led to a demand for success in political and forensic oratory, and hence to the development of specialized techniques of persuasion and argument. Finally, the period saw the flourishing of a challenging, rationalistic climate of thought on questions including those of morality, religion and political conduct, to which the sophists both responded and contributed. It is important to emphasize the individualistic character of the sophistic profession; its practitioners belonged to no organization, shared no common body of beliefs and founded no schools, either in the sense of academic institutions or in that of bodies of individuals committed to the promulgation of specific doctrines. In what follows we shall illustrate the diversity of sophistic activities, while considering the extent to which we can nevertheless identify common themes and attitudes. . . .

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sophists/

Pub: Tindale, Christopher W. REASON'S DARK CHAMPIONS.

Tindale, Christopher W. Reason's Dark Champions: Constructive Strategies of Sophistic Argument. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2010.

Recent decades have witnessed a major restoration of the Sophists' reputation, revising the Platonic and Aristotelian "orthodoxies" that have dominated the tradition. Still lacking is a full appraisal of the Sophists' strategies of argumentation. Christopher W. Tindale corrects that omission in Reason's Dark Champions. Viewing the Sophists as a group linked by shared strategies rather than by common epistemological beliefs, Tindale illustrates that the Sophists engaged in a range of argumentative practices in manners wholly different from the principal ways in which Plato and Aristotle employed reason. By examining extant fifth-century texts and the ways in which Sophistic reasoning is mirrored by historians, playwrights, and philosophers of the classical world, Tindale builds a robust understanding of Sophistic argument with relevance to contemporary studies of rhetoric and communication. Beginning with the reception of the Sophists in their own culture, Tindale explores depictions of the Sophists in Plato's dialogues and the argumentative strategies attributed to them as a means of understanding the threat Sophism posed to Platonic philosophical ambitions of truth seeking. He also considers the nature of the "sophistical refutation" and its place in the tradition of fallacy. In the second half of the book, Tindale turns to specific argumentative practices, mapping how Sophists employed the argument from likelihood, reversal arguments, arguments on each side of a position, and commonplace reasoning. In each instance Tindale grounds the discussion in specific textual examples. What emerges is a complex and complete picture of the theory, practice, and reception of Sophistic strategies that reorients criticism of this mode of argumentation, expands understanding of Sophistic contributions to classical rhetoric, and opens avenues for further scholarship.

Further information may be found here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570038783/ref=pe_5050_14556830_snp_dp.

Ceccarelli, Leah. "Defenders of Science Shouldn't Let the Sophists Carry the Day." SEATTLE TIMES June 17, 2008.

Public questions in America about science have become the playthings of the manufactured controversy, or "manufactroversy," in which political activists invent a scientific disagreement that isn't real. An example is global-warming skepticism. PR man Frank Luntz admitted as much in an infamous memo in which he confessed that disagreement about global warming was fading away, but he nonetheless urged Republicans "to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." This tactic was taken from the tobacco industry, which likes to say there are two sides to every question. South African President Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS dissent eight years ago is a similar case. Mbeki ingeniously turned the scientific community's values against it by drawing on the importance of open debate, a skeptical attitude and the need for research. Mbeki alleged that scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS had been branded as "dangerous and discredited." Claiming the moral authority of a leader who suffered political intimidation in apartheid South Africa, Mbeki condemned the scientific community for its "campaign of intellectual intimidation." The intelligent-design movement now has a "teach the controversy" campaign against evolutionary biology. Ben Stein's recent movie, Expelled, portrays scientists casting out anyone who questions biological orthodoxy. This movie is the most extreme application yet of the intelligent-design movement's "wedge" strategy to break the scientific community's influence over how science is taught. Of course, any claim by biologists that there is no scientific controversy to teach merely feeds the notion of an orthodoxy. In light of this, some have suggested that the best response to manufactured controversy is no response at all. I understand the impulse to remain silent in the face of nonsense, but I think it's shortsighted to cede the public stage in the naive hope that no one will pay attention. There have long been those who misuse the power of persuasion. In ancient Greece, the Sophists taught the art of persuasion to those who could pay their fee. These included Gorgias, who apparently boasted that he could persuade the multitude to ignore an expert and listen to him instead, and Protagoras, who claimed there are always two sides to a question and that it was the Sophist's job to make the weaker case appear the stronger. It was to oppose such deception that Aristotle wrote Rhetoric. Aristotle wanted to teach experts how to confute those who mislead. . . . Read the rest here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008001029_rhetoricop17.html.

"The Third Sophistic: New Approaches to Rhetoric in Late Antiquity," Society for Late Antiquity, Philadelphia, January 9-11, 2009.

It is a well-known paradox of Greco-Roman culture that well after the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the state under Constantine the art of rhetoric successfully maintained its privileged place in the articulation of political, pedagogical, religious, philosophical, and literary power. Late antiquity witnessed a remarkable surge in rhetorical output in both Greek (Libanius,Himerius, Themistius, Julian, Procopius of Gaza, Choricius) and Latin (the Panegyrici Latini, Symmachus, Ausonius, Marius Victorinus). Moreover, under the new establishment the rapprochement between traditional "pagan" rhetoric and Judaeo-Christian modes of expression already evident in Christian apologetic writings of the second and third centuries gained momentum, culminating in the fourth and fifth-century "Golden Age" of Christian rhetoric as represented by the works of Eusebius of Caesarea, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Chrysostom (in Greek), and Lactantius, Ambrose, and Augustine (in Latin). Before the end of the sixth century the corpus of Hermogenes would achieve canonical status, and in 426 CE Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana fused once and for all Cicero's rhetorical theory with the Christian project of evangelism and exegesis. In light of the wealth of available source material and its parallels to the much more extensively studied Second Sophistic, Europeans cholarship over the past two decades has increasingly come to identify this period as the "Third Sophistic." While this formulation stresses synchronic linkages at the expense of diachronic perspectives, it is nonetheless worthwhile to examine this phase in the cultural history of the late empire as a unity. The Society forLate Antiquity thus invites proposals featuring innovative approaches to the study of rhetoric in late antiquity for a panel to be at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association to be held in Philadelphia, 8-11 January 2009. These might address such issues as the relationship of rhetoric to poetry, philosophy, and historiography; performance and self-presentation; reception and audience; rhetoric, law, and political authority; rhetoric and homiletics; ekphrasis and the rhetorical construction of space. These are only suggestions and proposals which investigate other lines of research are welcome. Abstracts of papers (ca. 500 words) requiring a maximum of 20 minutes to deliver should be sent via email attachment no later than February1, 2008 to Paul Kimball (pkimball@bilkent.edu.tr), or by surface mail (Dr. Paul Kimball, Program in Cultures, Civilizations & Ideas, BilkentUniversity, 06800 Bilkent, Ankara, TURKEY). Please follow the instructions for the format of individual abstracts in the APA Program Guide (see link below). APA membership is required of all presenters and must be verified before proposals are accepted. All submissions will be judged anonymously by two referees. Note that no subventions for travel or accommodation are available from either the Society for Late Antiquity or the APA. Further information may be found here: http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/Posts/00007245.html.

Garver, Eugene. "Review of Marina McCoy's PLATO ON THE RHETORIC OF PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS." NDPR (September 2008).

McCoy, Marina. Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. Marina McCoy's book has a simple thesis: "Plato distinguishes Socrates from the sophists by differences in character and moral intention" (p. 1). She immediately notes two complications. First, there is no simple way of separating Socrates from the sophists, and the drama of several of the dialogues consists in exploring that complexity, as characters, not excluding Socrates, find the difference between Socrates and the sophists difficult to make out. So saying that Plato distinguishes Socrates from the sophists by their respective characters doesn't solve the problem; it instead tells us how to look at it. Second, McCoy's thesis has a polemical edge; it denies the claims of many commentators who think there is a difference between Socratic and sophistic method. Instead of distinguishing philosophy from sophistic, Plato, she thinks, is at pains to distinguish the philosopher from the sophist. The payoff from her thesis is in insightful readings of several of the dialogues. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=14126.