Sophistai
Definer likes the trend of groups "taking back" negatively charged words. The most famous of these reclamation projects is the term Queer. It's about time another word was taken back - ok, it's about 2,500 years late, but the term Sophistai should no longer carry the negatively charged weight heaped upon it by a utopian philosopher named Plato.
As I will explain to my students this fall, I do not want to be called professor. A professor is one who professes; or a person who declares his or her beliefs. The term emerged in the late fourteenth-century in England in reference to those scholars at Oxford and Cambridge who professed faith (theologians) or knowledge (philosophers). Sophistai make no professions. 2,500 years ago, sophistai were teachers of rhetoric and wisdom. They did not profess knowledge, they practiced wisdom.
Philosophers after Plato searched for the truth and condemned sophistai for teaching that persuasion was only related to the truth. One could be persuasive without telling the truth, as rhetoricians understood. But utopian philosophers condemned sophistai for teaching this rather obvious bit of wisdom. Sophistai were dangerous because we taught students the elements of democracy: persuasion, compromise, the search for common ground, and reaching the "best" decision. Contrarily, philosophers were only interested in the "right" decision and disdained democracy and the very thought that individuals imperfectly trained in philosophy might somehow be persuasive.
All of that philosophical hubris has landed Americans in a lot of trouble. We know we are lied to by our elected officials, many of us have abandoned the truth, and those that haven't have stayed steadfastly with a President who professes faith while rejecting knowledge. Thanks to professors (or in other words, doctors of philosophy), we have become incapable of democracy. With the resurgence of rhetoric as an academic discipline, perhaps democracy can be saved.
This is my one profession: I am not a professor. I am a sophistai.
As I will explain to my students this fall, I do not want to be called professor. A professor is one who professes; or a person who declares his or her beliefs. The term emerged in the late fourteenth-century in England in reference to those scholars at Oxford and Cambridge who professed faith (theologians) or knowledge (philosophers). Sophistai make no professions. 2,500 years ago, sophistai were teachers of rhetoric and wisdom. They did not profess knowledge, they practiced wisdom.
Philosophers after Plato searched for the truth and condemned sophistai for teaching that persuasion was only related to the truth. One could be persuasive without telling the truth, as rhetoricians understood. But utopian philosophers condemned sophistai for teaching this rather obvious bit of wisdom. Sophistai were dangerous because we taught students the elements of democracy: persuasion, compromise, the search for common ground, and reaching the "best" decision. Contrarily, philosophers were only interested in the "right" decision and disdained democracy and the very thought that individuals imperfectly trained in philosophy might somehow be persuasive.
All of that philosophical hubris has landed Americans in a lot of trouble. We know we are lied to by our elected officials, many of us have abandoned the truth, and those that haven't have stayed steadfastly with a President who professes faith while rejecting knowledge. Thanks to professors (or in other words, doctors of philosophy), we have become incapable of democracy. With the resurgence of rhetoric as an academic discipline, perhaps democracy can be saved.
This is my one profession: I am not a professor. I am a sophistai.
posted by Definer at 3:24 PM
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