From the Beginning to Plato

242 THE SOPHISTS
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus were brothers and came originally from Chios.
In Plato’s Euthydemus they are addressed as sophists (271 CI) and are said to
have had many pupils. Euthydemus’ most distinctive doctrine is perhaps that
referred to in Plato’s Cratylus (386d), namely that all things belong equally to all
things at the same time and always. The most likely explanation of this statement
is that which takes it as meaning that all things possess all attributes together and
all the time. If this is what he is saying, then it would seem to provide an
underlying basis for Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine. All perceived qualities
are in fact always present in perceived objects, and this is shown by the fact that
the verbal attribution of any quality to any thing is always possible. Words only
have meaning because they refer to what is actually the case. This would explain
the doctrine attributed to Dionysodorus (Euthydemus 284c5) according to which
no one says things that are false: all statements that anyone can make are true
because all attributes are necessarily actually present in the things to which
reference is being made. Consequently it is not possible to make genuinely
contradictory statements, since contradiction would be asserting that one
statement is true and the other which conflicts with it is false.
Three names in addition to the above may be mentioned in passing. Critias,
who was a first cousin of Plato’s mother, was one of the Thirty Tyrants who held
power at Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war. He was classed as a
sophist by Philostratus, and has regularly been listed among the sophists ever
since, down to the present day. He wrote tragedies, in at least one of which he
included a rationalizing account of belief in the gods. But he is not known to
have been a teacher, and he should accordingly in all probability be excluded
from the list of sophists. The opposite is the case with the thinker Antisthenes of
Athens who came to be regarded as the founder of the Cynic sect. As a result he
has usually been discussed by modern writers under the general heading of the
Cynic movement. But his claims to have been the founder of this movement are
subject to serious doubt, and there is fairly convincing evidence that he should
rather be classed as a sophist. 12 He lived a long life, from the middle of the fifth
century long into the fourth century BC. We know from Aristotle (Metaphysics
1024b26) that he held the two distinctive sophistic doctrines that we have already
mentioned several times, namely that it is not possible to contradict and that it is
not possible to say what is false.
The final name to be mentioned here is that of Socrates. Although presented
by Plato as the arch-enemy of the sophists and all they stood for, it is none the
less true that Socrates can only be understood if he is seen as a member of the
world in which he lived. Socrates had a great influence on the young men who
became his disciples, even though he did not accept any payment from them for
his teaching. Two things at least emerge clearly from what Plato has to tell us:
Socrates had begun early in his life with a critical interest in the problems of
physical science (Phaedo 96a–99d), and he also deployed a distinctive method of
argument which involved the refutation of unacceptable propositions and the
promotion of acceptable answers to the question ‘What is the correct account to