Nietzsche's Reading of the Sophists1

Nietzsche’s Reading of the Sophists

Until recently, scholars have tended to credit two nineteenth-century thinkers, G. F. Hegel and George Grote, for initiating the modern “rehabilitation” of the Sophists.[1] But in the past several years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to draw inspiration from the writings of another nineteenth century figure, Friedrich Nietzsche. Among those taking this “Nietzschean turn,” Mario Untersteiner utilizes Nietzsche’s conception of the “tragic” in his account of Gorgias’s epistemology (101-205), a reading Eric White supplements with Nietzsche’s notion of the “dionysian” (38). Victor Vitanza, characterizing Nietzsche as a “dionysian Sophist,” draws from Nietzsche’s tropological model of language to illuminate the Sophists’ own rhetoric (“Sub/Versions” 112; “Notes” 131); and David Roochnik contends that Nietzsche’s critique of reason illuminates the Sophists’ own “misology” (“Tragedy” 50, 155, 162). In the sphere of ethics, E. R. Dodds maintains that Nietzsche’s “immoralism” is similar to the egoism of Gorgias’s student Callicles (387-391), and Daniel Shaw contends that Nietzsche’s critique of morality iterates the Sophists’ notion that “moral valuations remain matters of opinion” (339). Concerning methodology, John Poulakos argues that Nietzsche’s “genealogical” approach is most suited for interpreting the Sophists (“Interpreting,” 219-221); and Susan Jarratt credits Nietzsche’s method as authorizing her own “re-reading” of the Sophists (xix). But whereas they have drawn on a variety of Nietzsche’s ideas and interpretive strategies to advance what Jacqueline de Romilly characterizes as a “Nietzschean interpretation” of the Sophists (“Sophists” xi), none of these scholars has systematically examined Nietzsche’s own quite specific and extensive writings about the Sophists. The untoward result is that we possess a variety of “Nietzschean readings” of the Sophists that tend to silence Nietzsche’s own distinctive voice.

This tendency to overlook Nietzsche’s own specific remarks about the Sophists is quite understandable, for Nietzsche never wrote a systematic treatise on the Sophists, and instead discussed them in a rather fragmentary manner, in variety of texts, over a period of almost two decades. Further, with the exception of three quite brief passages, in Human All Too Human 221, Dawn 168, and the Twilight of the Idols, “Ancients” 2, Nietzsche did not publish any of his remarks about the Sophists, confining his discussions to his 1872-1873 lecture notes in the history of Greek rhetoric (“Description of Ancient Rhetoric” and “The History of Greek Eloquence”), a 1872 essay “Homer’s Contest,” and several passages collected posthumously in The Will To Power.^[2] Because many of these unpublished remarks are even more fragmentary and enigmatic than his published writings, and because some scholars have questioned the use of the Nachlass as a reliable source of his views, it is understandable that scholars have tended to marginalize Nietzsche’s own comments about the Sophists.[3] But whereas this scholarly neglect is not surprising, it is nevertheless unfortunate, for Nietzsche advances a complex and provocative reading of the Sophists, one that suggests avenues of inquiry that scholars have not yet pursued. In this essay I examine Nietzsche’s diverse writings on the Sophists, and attempt to reconstruct his own account of them. To this end, I first discuss Nietzsche’s “genealogical” method of reading, one with which he situates the Sophists as pivotal figures in the agonistic and creative culture of fifth-century Greece. I next examine what Nietzsche delineates as three features of the Sophists’ teachings: their rhetorical model of language, their critique of epistemology, and their “immoralism.” I conclude with a discussion of how a “neo-Nietzschean” reading of the Sophists may provide a direction for the “Nietzschean turn” in Sophistic criticism and generate new perspectives on the Sophists.

Nietzsche’s genealogical method

Perhaps the first striking feature of Nietzsche’s discussion of the Sophists is his method. Nietzsche himself stresses the importance of method, nothing that “[T]he most valuable insights are arrived at last; but the most valuable insights are methods” (WP 469). Nietzsche uses a method that he labels “genealogical,” one that may be seen as an application of his more general “perspectivist” epistemology, in that it undertakes to situate an object of study from a particular perspective.[4] Nietzsche’s genealogical method is explicitly “partial” in two significant ways. First, his genealogy is interested or partisan, in that it is anchored in his own interests as a thinker and writer. In his examination of the Sophists in particular, Nietzsche situates his reading within a project of cultural renewal designed to affirm “Life” and provide an alternative to what he saw as the “motley” and “merely decorative” culture of his own time (UH 10).[5] Nietzsche portrays the tragic culture of Greece as a model for such a cultural renewal, and he depicts Socrates and Plato, whom he identifies as among the principal enemies of that culture, to be a source of the modern cultural malaise. It is in this context of articulating the genealogy of the Western cultural malaise that Nietzsche discusses the Sophists, whom he champions as the principal adversaries of the “Socratic schools.” As Werner Dannhauser observes, Nietzsche’s “quarrel with Socrates is part of a vast historical drama which he recounts and which features Socrates as the first villain and Nietzsche himself as the final hero” (272); and in his quarrel, Nietzsche suggests that the Sophists may be seen as his own “co-workers and precursors” (WP 464). Indeed, Nietzsche lauds the Sophists as seminal thinkers who have influenced every subsequent adversary of the Socratic schools, asserting that “every advance in epistemological and moral knowledge has reinstated the Sophists” (WP 428). Nietzsche thus advances an overtly partisan defense of the Sophists, and he never pretends that his account is in any sense a “disinterested” inquiry.

Nietzsche’s genealogical method is partial in a second sense, in that he attends to a limited selection of material. Stated another way, Nietzsche presents a “genealogy” in which he delineates one pattern of placement and inter-connection, and in which he deliberately ignores or suppresses other possible modes of placement. He contends that we are “not to assume several kinds of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its utmost limit (to the point of nonsense, if I may say so)-- that is a moral of method “(BGE 36). In respect to his treatment of the Sophists, Nietzsche uses this principle of selectiveness, one Arthur Danto labels “methodological monism” (216), by focusing his attention almost exclusively on Protagoras and Gorgias. He mentions Agathon and Thrasymachus only in passing, without addressing their epistemological or ethical views; he never mentions Hippias or Prodicus, and he explicitly excludes Critias from his list of Sophists (DAR 169). Moreover, Nietzsche is highly selective in his accounts of Protagoras and Gorgias themselves. Concerning Protagoras, Nietzsche discusses only one extant fragment, namely the claim to “make the weaker argument the stronger” (HGE 215); and in so doing he ignores Protagoras’ famous assertions that human being is the measure of all things (DK80.B1), that two opposed accounts are present about everything (DK80.B6a), and that he is unable to know whether the gods exist (DK80.B4).[6] Equally striking is the fact that Nietzsche does not mention any of Gorgias’ extant texts, completely ignoring the arguments of On Nature or Not Being, The Encomium of Helen, the Epitaphios and The Defense of Palamedes, and instead confining his attention to Gorgias’s poetic style, his use of rhetorical figures, and his putative “extemporaneity” (DAR 25, 43, 81, 91, 171; HA 221).

Many scholars have challenged Nietzsche’s genealogical method, especially in regard to classical philology, precisely because of its “unscholarly” partisanship and partiality.[7] But whereas his account of the Sophists may be aggressively partisan and egregiously selective, Nietzsche never claims otherwise, and he suggests that in his effort “to replace the improbable with the more probable, possibly one error with another” (GM Pr 4), he is simply more “honest” than those scholars who mistakenly think that they are able to be disinterested and complete in their readings. He insists that “the ‘disinterested’ action is an exceedingly interesting and interested action” (BG 220); and he contends that individuals who construct “systems” betray a lack integrity, in that they tend to be oblivious of their own interests. Consequently, he praises those “philosophers of the future” who, like himself, have no intention to articulate a “truth” that is for everyone. He notes that

It must offend their pride, also their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyman-- which has so far been the secret wish and hidden meaning of all dogmatic aspirations. ‘my judgment is my judgment’: no one else is easily entitled to it-- that is what such a philosopher of the future may perhaps say of himself” (BG 43).

Unlike the positivist who claims knowledge of the “facts” in themselves, Nietzsche insists that “facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations” (WP 481); and he repudiates the dogmatist’s assumption that “there should be a ‘truth’ which one could somehow approach” (WP 451).

The genealogy of the Sophists

Using his genealogical method, Nietzsche situates the Sophists as central figures in fifth-century Greek culture, depicting them as its “advanced teachers” and perhaps most eloquent advocates. In order to understand Nietzsche’s account of the Sophists, then, it is useful first to sketch his view of the culture in which he situates them. Nietzsche presents his view of Greek culture in an explicitly polemical manner, repudiating what he saw as the misguided “Enlightenment” account of Johann Winckelmann. According to Winckelmann, Greek culture was exemplary because of its “noble simplicity” and “quiet grandeur,” qualities manifested not only in its art but in its “writing from the best periods; the writings from the Socratic school” (27, 45). Nietzsche rejects this reading, considering it a “comedy” to be “exposed” (WP 830), and ridiculing the notion of “‘beautiful souls,’ ‘golden means,’ and other perfection in the Greeks,” their “calm in greatness, their ideal cast of mind, their noble simplicity. . . . “(TI, “Ancients” 3). In place of this reading, Nietzsche insists that Greek culture emerged from a ferocious and often violent energy, a surplus or plenitude of force. He observes that

I saw their strongest instinct, the will to power; I saw them tremble before the indomitable force of this drive-- I saw how all their institutions grew out of preventive measures taken to protect each other against their inner explosives (TI, “Ancients” 3).

Nietzsche does not deny that the Greeks produced great art and writing, but unlike Winckelmann, he insists that this art emerged from the Greeks’ ability to channel their “rich and even overflowing Hellenic instinct, that wonderful phenomenon which bears the name of Dionysus; it is explicable only in terms of an excess of force” (TI 560); and he maintains that “one does not know the Greeks as long as this hidden subterranean entrance lies blocked” (WP 1051).

In his mature works, Nietzsche characterizes as “dionysian” the ability of an individual to establish unity from diversity, to direct and harmonize diverse forces within himself in a productive and creative manner.[8] But whereas he admires Greek culture for its distinctive individuals, Nietzsche insists that individual Greeks did not master their explosive energy in isolation. Instead, he argues that the Greeks were able to master their violent instincts through competition, in the institution of the agon or contest.[9] In his essay “Homer’s Contest,” Nietzsche observes that prior to the classical age, the Greeks lived in a world of violence and destruction; and that it was only through the agon that they were able to channel their drive toward annihilation and violence in creative ways. He notes that early Greek mythology portrays a world of “cruelty, a tigerish lust to annihilate” (HC 32); that the pre-Homeric world is one in which

Only night and terror and an imagination accustomed to the horrible. What kind of earthly existence do these revolting, terrible, theognic myths reflect? A life ruled only by the children of Night: strife, lust, deceit, old age, and death” (HC 34).

Despite its horrors, according to Nietzsche, the Greeks joyfully embraced the “terrible presence of this [violent] urge and considered it justified” (HC 35), because it spurred them into creative agons. Thus Nietzsche argues that all “Greek artists, the tragedians, for example, wrote in order to triumph; their whole art cannot be imagined without competition” (HA 170); that “[E]very great Hellene hands on the torch of the contest; every great virtue kindles a new greatness” (HC 36); that the very “soul” of the ancient Greeks was the “personal contest” (D 175); and that “with festivals and the arts they also aimed at nothing other than to feel on top, to show themselves on top (TI, “Ancients” 3). In effect, Nietzsche depicts competition and creativity as correlative factors in Greek culture, wherein individuals competed and attained glory by means of their ingenuity and creativity; and whose artistic works were in turn framed within and conditioned by the protocols of the contests.

One consequence of this correlation of creativity and competition, according to Nietzsche, was that the Greeks fostered a plurality of competitors and geniuses, and refused to countenance the authority of any one voice. Rather than seeking the “unconditional” or the absolute, they encouraged a multiplicity of competing voices, each of which was recognized as emerging from and rendered discernible by the specific constraints of the agon itself. Nietzsche observes that

That is the core of the Hellenic notion of the contest: it abominates the rule of one and fears its dangers; it desires, as a protection against the genius, another genius” (HC 37).

Rather than seeking a single authority, then, the Greeks sanctioned a diversity of competing perspectives, and sought through the institution of the agon to proliferate further perspectives. A further consequence Nietzsche sees in the institution of agon is the Greek emphasis on play, their tendency and ability to encompass all of life within the horizon of playful competition. He observes that “What is unique to Hellenistic life is thus characterized: to perceive all matters of the intellect, of life’s seriousness, of necessities, even of danger, as play” (DAR 3). In this respect, Nietzsche depicts the Greeks as using the agon to “refine” violence, transforming the potential destructiveness of physical combat into a creatively “playful” activity that encouraged contestants to overcome not only their adversaries but their own prior achievements and limits.

It is in the context of this integral relationship between creativity and competition that Nietzsche situates the fifth-century Sophists, the “advanced teachers” of Greek culture. He points out that under the tutelage of the Sophists

Every talent must unfold itself in fighting: that is the command of Hellenic popular pedagogy. . . . And just as the youths were engaged through contests, their educators were also engaged in contests with each other. . . . in the spirit of the contest, the sophist, the advanced teacher of antiquity, meets another sophist. . . . the Greek knows the artist only as engaged in a personal fight” (HC 37).

In effect, Nietzsche’s Sophist is himself a competitive artist, and his “teaching” is one that encourages creativity through competition. In the words of one Sophist’s nephew, “No one of mortals before discovered a finer art than Gorgias to arm the soul for contests of excellence” (DK80.A8). Because he sees the Sophists as the principal teachers of Greek culture, Nietzsche asserts that fifth-century Greek culture,

which had in Sophocles its poet, in Pericles its statesman, in Hippocrates its physician, in Democritus its natural philosopher. . . deserves to be baptized with the name of its teachers, the Sophists. . . (D 168).

Rather than portraying them as marginal figures in a culture whose highest achievement is the “quiet grandeur” and “noble simplicity,” Nietzsche’s depicts the contentious Sophists as the very embodiment of Greek culture.

Insofar as he depicts the Sophists as central to Greek culture, Nietzsche characterizes their adversaries, Plato and the “Socratic schools,” as the enemies of the Sophists’ positive, life-affirming virtues. Nietzsche thus denigrates the Socratic schools as articulating what he characterizes as a “non-Hellenic” response, one adumbrated in the escapism of the Orphic mystics who expressed a “disgust with existence. . . a conception of existence as a punishment and guilt” (HC 34). Commenting on The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche remarks that

The two decisive innovations of the book are, first, its understanding of the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks. . . . Secondly, there is the understanding of Socratism: Socrates is recognized for the first time as an instrument of Greek disintegration, as a typical decadent. “Rationality” against instinct. “Rationality” at any price as a dangerous force that undermines life” (EH, “BT” 1).

That is, the Sophists channel and encourage the healthiest instincts of Greek culture, while Plato, in the tradition of Orpheus, attempts to repress or escape those very instincts. Nietzsche thus vehemently repudiates the notion that Plato represents one of the great achievements of the culture, insisting that the Socratic philosophers exemplify a “non-Hellenic” withdrawal from the Greek affirmation of “Life.” He claims that

I was the first to see the real opposition: the degenerating instinct that turns against life. . . (the philosophy of Plato, and all idealism as typical forms) versus a formula for the highest affirmation, born of fullness, of overfullness, a Yes-saying without reservation, even to suffering, even to guilt, even to everything that is questionable and strange in existence (EH, “BT” 2).

Iterating this pivotal antithesis, Nietzsche notes that

The Greek culture of the Sophists had developed out of all the Greek instincts; it belongs to the culture of the Periclean age as necessarily as Plato does not: it has its predecessors in Heraclitus, Democritus, in the scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in, e.g., the high culture of Thucydides (WP 428).

Thus, while he praises the Sophists for fostering and embodying the best Hellenic instincts, Nietzsche condemns the Socratic schools which, through their advocacy of unconditional truths and dogmatic moral rules, circumscribed and diminished life.

The “rhetorical” model of language

In his genealogy of the Sophists, Nietzsche delineates three interrelated contributions the Sophists made to their agonistic and creative culture. The first of these concerns their emphasis on rhetoric, and what may be termed their “rhetorical” model of language. In his lecture notes on rhetoric, titled “Description of Ancient Rhetoric” and “History of Greek Eloquence,” Nietzsche delineates the pivotal role of the Sophists in the teaching and practice of rhetoric, and their view that excellence in rhetoric constitutes the highest cultural achievement. He notes that it is difficult for us to appreciate the enormous importance the Greeks attributed to rhetoric, for “we have grown unaccustomed to the tonal effects of rhetoric, no longer having sucked in this kind of cultural mother’s milk from the first moment of life” (HA 218). But in the culture of the Sophists, “the education of the ancient man customarily culminates in rhetoric: it is the highest spiritual activity of the well-educated political man-- an odd notion for us” (DAR 3). Nietzsche adds that

“To no task did the Greeks devote such incessant labor as to eloquence. . . . Devotion to oratory is the most tenacious element of Greek culture and survives through all the curtailments of their condition. . . . Hellenic culture and power gradually concentrate on oratorical skill. . . “ (HGE 213).

Even in their appreciation of tragedy, according to Nietzsche, the Greeks considered rhetoric to be of paramount importance, attending “the theater in order to hear beautiful speeches” (GS 135). By privileging rhetoric in their curriculum, the Sophists deepened this appreciation for rhetoric, providing the apparatus and training needed for eloquent competition.

The Sophists’ privileging of rhetoric had a second profound effect, according to Nietzsche, in that they tended to consider every use of language as inherently rhetorical. Nietzsche notes that for the Sophists

The power to discover and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing, a power which Aristotle calls rhetoric, is, at the same time, the essence of language. . . . the rhetorical is a further development, guided by the clear light of the understanding, of the artistic means which are already found in language. There is obviously no unrhetorical ‘naturalness’ of language to which one could appeal; language itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts (DAR 23, my italics).

Insofar as he depicts them as construing all language as inherently rhetorical, Nietzsche suggests that the Sophists consider every use of language as agonistic, occurring only within contests between adversaries. Unlike the Socratic philosophers who present themselves as seeking objective “truth” rather than rhetorical victory, the Sophists would insist that every speaker is a rhetor, inevitably engaged in a project of demolishing and potentially displacing his or her adversary’s arguments. Second, Nietzsche’s Sophists would consider all language to be inherently creative, seeing in each use of language a fabrication of a persuasive image or argument designed to persuade an adversary or audience. As such, the Sophists construe language not as a transparent window through which one may observe an independent and pre-existing reality, but as an apparatus for weaving elegant and enchanting texts, each of which articulates its own perspective.

Nietzsche accounts for the agonistic and poetic aspects of the Sophists’ model of language with what he identifies as the fundamental instruments of language, the tropes. According to Nietzsche, the Sophists maintain that

the tropes are not just occasionally added to words but constitute their most proper nature. It makes no sense to speak of a ‘proper meaning’ which is carried over to something else only in special cases” (DAR 25).

Stated another way, Nietzsche’s Sophists would maintain that “[W]hat is called language is actually all figuration” (DAR 25). Unlike a member of the “Socratic school” such as Aristotle, who maintains that the fundamental unit of language is the “name” or “noun,” a symbol that represents or mirrors “actual things” existing in the world, Nietzsche suggests that the Sophists would presumably consider the fundamental linguistic unit to be a creative maneuver in a verbal agon. For the trope is a “turn” in a rhetorical competition, analogous to a maneuver or “turn” performed by a wrestler in a match. As such, a trope does not derive its meaning by referring to an external, determinate reality that exists independently of discourse and serves as its “foundation.” Rather, the trope acquires meaning within each particular agon in which it is used, and the only criteria for its “proper” use are the ultimately arbitrary protocols of the contest itself. In this respect, the tropes are not alterations of a stable “literal” language capable of objectively mirroring the world; instead, speech is “literal” only to those people who fail to recognize that they have been captivated by its metaphors, synecdoches and metonymes. The tropes in this sense are variations upon other tropes, devices with which a rhetor may fabricate a persuasive account that may be accepted as “literally true.”

Corresponding to what he identifies as the agonistic and creative aspects of the Sophistic model of language, Nietzsche distinguishes two branches of the Sophistic movement. The first branch is represented by Protagoras of Abdera, who emphasizes the importance of the competitive agon. Nietzsche writes that

Sophism originated with Protagoras’ journey through the Hellenistic cities, which began ca. 455 B.C. He influenced Attic eloquence much earlier than did the Sicilians. He promises to teach to hetto logon kreitto poiein: how one can by means of dialectics help the weaker case to win out. . . . (HGE 215).

Protagoras emphasizes the “combative” aspect of rhetoric, instructing his students in a dialectical skill enabling them to overpower their adversaries in any verbal competition on any subject. The second branch of Sophistic teaching is that of the Sicilian Gorgias, who emphasizes what Nietzsche characterizes as the overtly “artistic” dimension of Sophistic eloquence:

Innovation already begins with Gorgias: he came adorned festively and magnificently-- like Empedocles he appeared in a purple garment-- with a worldwide reputation and presented the epideictic oration: in it one wants to display one’s ability; there is no intention to deceive: the content is not the issue. Pleasure in beautiful discourse acquires a realm of its own where it does not clash with necessity. It is a refreshing pause for a nation of artists; for once they want to indulge in an exquisite treat in oratory. The philosophers, hover, have no sense for this activity (for they had no understanding of the art which lived an flourished around them, nor of sculpture), and so their hostility is too vehement (HGE 216).

It may be observed that these two branches of Sophistry are by no means exclusive, and that the agonistic and the artistic are correlative for Protagoras as well as for Gorgias. Thus, Protagoras uses poetic myths as well as logical arguments to convince audiences and defeat interlocutors, a practice he is presented as exhibiting in Plato’s Protagoras; and Gorgias may be seen as using his artistic performances to challenge not only the prevailing tenets of the culture, such as the culpability of Helen of Troy, but to mock and potentially subvert the authority of “rational thought” itself.

Sophistic epistemology

The second contribution to Greek culture that Nietzsche attributes to the Sophists is in the field of epistemology. This contribution is integrally related to the Sophists’ rhetorical model of language, for such a model implies that every claim to knowledge is “conditional,” anchored in the contingencies of specific rhetorical situations. In his account of Protagoras, Nietzsche observes that the Sophist considers rhetoric to be universal in its application, in that his

dialectics was to make all other arts and sciences superfluous: how without being a geometrician one can outargue the geometrician; and likewise on natural philosophy, wrestling, the practical life of the state (HGE 215).

Using his rhetorical “art,” Protagoras is able to undermine the dogmatic claims of every self-styled “expert” to possess privileged discourses or methods that enable them to speak “non-rhetorically” about any subject whatsoever. For if every assertion is construed as the expression of a rhetor engaged in an agon, and as such is conditioned by his or her own ethos and pathos, then no speaker is warranted in claiming that his or her assertions are unconditionally true. Stated another way, Protagoras would hold that every use of language is made within a “game,” wherein the validity of any assertion is determined by arbitrary protocols of each game, as they are interpreted by the participants and observers of that game, and not by reference to an “independent” or universal criterion that governs all games. In Nietzsche’s vocabulary, Protagoras would construe every assertion as inherently perspectival, eschewing the possibility of a “non-perspectival way of seeing,” a “neutral” standpoint from which to observe the “world itself.”

Protagoras’ refusal to countenance claims to unconditional or non-perspectival truths has profound ontological consequences, for if every assertion is an articulation of one’s own perspective, then one is never warranted in claiming access to an independent “reality.” Stated another way, the “real world” for Protagoras is identical with the “apparent” world, in that whatever a persuasive rhetor is able to render apparent becomes “real” for his or her audience. In this respect, Nietzsche observes that for the Sophist “in general everything appears only as the speaker’s power represents it” (HGE 213), an observation that recalls Protagoras’ remark that “humanity is the measure of all things.” Furthermore, since individuals and the contingent rhetorical situations in which they engage are always changing, Protagoras implies that the world of appearance is itself subject to change. In this respect, Nietzsche maintains that Protagoras echoes Heraclitus, who “altogether denied being” (PTG 51) and who depicted reality as a “flux” or process of “becoming” (PTG 51). But Nietzsche suggests further that Protagoras’ conception of “becoming” is not a metaphysical claim about the ultimate nature of reality, but rather a statement about humanity’s inability to acquire certain knowledge about such a putative “reality.” Just as Protagoras claims that he is unable to know anything about such transcendental entities as the gods, he would presumably insist that he is unwarranted in attributing any ultimate features to the “world in itself.” Nietzsche seems to read Protagoras in this way, claiming that he represents “a synthesis of Heraclitus and Democritus” (WP 428), the latter of whom Nietzsche depicts as challenging the certainty of sensation, and as seeing the world as “utterly without reason and instinct, endless whirled. All myths and gods useless” (WPh 6[21]). As a “synthesis” of Heraclitus and Democritus, Protagoras would presumably repudiate as unwarranted any metaphysical claim about an ultimate reality, a domain of “Being” that transcends and is independent of individual rhetorical situations.

In his discussion of Gorgias, Nietzsche suggests that the “Western” Sophist’s artistic rhetoric has significant epistemological and ontological implications, challenging the possibility of certainty and subverting prevailing truths about the ultimate nature of the world. Nietzsche observes that Gorgias uses his overtly extravagant tropes to overcome the limitations of the prevailing view of “reality,” one that has been fabricated with a language that his audience accepts as a literal representation of reality. Nietzsche notes that

The severe constraint which the French dramatists imposed upon themselves. . . was as important a training as counterpoint and the fugue in the development of modern music, or the Gorgian figures in Greek rhetoric. To restrict oneself so may appear absurd; nevertheless there is no way to get beyond realism other than to limit oneself at first most severely (perhaps most arbitrarily). In that way one gradually learns to step with grace, even on the small bridges that span dizzying abysses, and one takes as profit the greatest suppleness of movement. . . (HA 221).

That is, Gorgias’s overtly artificial figures of speech serve as self-imposed constraints that enable him to overcome the prevailing conception of the “real.” Through his explicitly artificial “performances,” Nietzsche suggests, the Sophist affirms “an anti-metaphysical view of the world-- yes, but an artistic one” (WP 1048). For insofar as Gorgias presents his discourse as constructed from highly artificial rhetorical figures, he suggests that his own discourses, despite their persuasiveness, are themselves “fabrications,” and not literal truths about “reality-in-itself.” Through his own distinctly personal use of artificial figures, the Sophist draws attention to his own inescapable presence, and thereby underscores the fact that the views he offers are his own, and are not to be mistaken as objective, universal “truths.”

Sophistic immoralism

The third contribution to Greek culture that Nietzsche attributes to the Sophists concerns their view of morality, one that is integrally related to their rhetorical model of language and their critique of knowledge. In an assertion that appears on its face to echo Plato’s criticism, Nietzsche affirms that the Sophists are “immoralists,” in that they “possess the courage of all strong spirits to know their own immorality” (WP 428). In this claim, Nietzsche seems to acquiesce to Plato’s depiction of Sophistic morality as the egoism articulated by Callicles, whose sole objective is to advance his own selfish interests. But Nietzsche’s notion of “immoralism” as it applies to the Sophists is very different from the egoism of Callicles. Since Nietzsche’s Sophists repudiate every claim to be able to articulate “objective” or non-perspectival truths about the nature of reality, they consequently would reject the attendant claim to be able to discern and articulate dogmatic moral “rules,” prescriptions about how one “ought” to behave and live. Instead, they would maintain that every assertion is made within a creative rhetorical contest, and that its putative “validity” or truth is established by its persuasiveness or success in that particular contest, dependent upon the contingencies of the participants and audience. This anti-dogmatism ushers in an “immoralism” in that one recognizes that every moral claim is conditional, anchored in the presuppositions and values of the speaker. Thus Nietzsche asserts that

The Sophists verge upon the first critique of morality, the first insight into morality:-- they juxtapose the multiplicity (the geographical relativity) of the moral value judgments;-- they let it be known that every morality can be dialectically justified; i.e., they divine that all attempts to give reasons for morality are necessarily sophistical. . . . They postulate the first truth that a ‘morality-in-itself, a ‘good-in-itself’ do not exist, that it is a swindle to talk of ‘truth’ in this field” (WP 428).

In this vein, Nietzsche sharply distinguishes his own reading from that advanced by George Grote, insisting that “Grote’s tactics in defense of the Sophists are false: he wants to raise them to the rank of men of honor and ensigns of morality-- but it was their honor not to indulge in any swindle with big words and virtues--” (WP 429).

But whereas Nietzsche’s Sophists would maintain that every moral pronouncement is “interested,” and that every moral “truth” is a swindle, they would not thereby affirm a Calliclean egoism, wherein each individual strives to satisfy his or her desires. Indeed, Nietzsche suggests that the Sophists would oppose such an egoism, for he implies that they would reject the notion that the “ego” or the “self” possesses permanence, just as they repudiate the assertion that any entity may possess a permanent “being” outside the flux of appearance and becoming. If the “self” is a fabrication, then the “immoralism” of the Sophists would counsel not the affirmation of one’s egoistic desires but rather a “self-overcoming” that encourages an openness to transforming one’s desires. Nietzsche attributes such a view to the culture of the Sophists as a whole in his notion of the “dionysian,” one that affirms “passing away and destroying,” a life of “becoming, along with a radical repudiation of being (TI “Ancients” 3). And he speaks of the Greek sophistic culture as comprising a “leisure class whose members make things difficult for themselves and exercise much self-overcoming. The power of form, the will to give form to oneself” (WP 94). Insofar as he presents them as the advanced teachers of this culture, Nietzsche depicts the Sophists as

“Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems; the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility even in the sacrifice of its highest types-- that is what I called Dionysian. . . . Not in order to get rid of terror and pity. . . but in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming beyond all terror and pity-- that joy which includes even joy in destroying” (EH, BT 3).

By affirming “self-overcoming,” the Sophists do not posit their “own” desires or values as invariable or foundational; instead, they use the agon as an opportunity to challenge and thereby to overcome their own limitations, and in this manner achieve a greater degree of excellence. Stated another way, Nietzsche’s Sophists would reject the notion of a permanent “self” lying behind each contingent rhetorical situation, and eschew all unconditional rules that inhibit personal development. Sophistic “immoralism” is in this sense a repudiation of Calliclean selfishness, for the Sophists would see one’s desires as being as contingent and conditional as one’s most cherished beliefs; and they would presumably urge individuals to be open to abandoning those desires that inhibit their freedom and growth.

Just as he depicts the Sophists’ epistemological rivals to be the dogmatic philosophers who privilege their own methodology as providing access to unconditional truths, Nietzsche depicts the Sophists’ moral rivals to be those same Socratic schools who use dialectic “as a way to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: evidently because Sophistry counted as the way to immorality)” (WP 578). Nietzsche observes that it is because of the enormous historical influence of the Socratic schools that the Sophists tend to be “pale and ungraspable to us-- for now we suspect that it must have been a very immoral culture, since Plato and all the Socratic schools fought against it!” (D 168). Intervening on behalf of the Sophists in their “quarrel” with the philosophers, Nietzsche depicts the Sophists as champions of “this life,” individuals who repudiate the escapist attempts to flee to a domain of unconditional truth and moral absolutism. In this vein, Nietzsche attributes the “decline” of Greek culture not to the Sophists’ professed immoralism, but to the “theoretical” Socratic schools. like Socrates and his rationalist followers, whom he also considers responsible for the demise of Greek tragedy (BT 15). Refusing to countenance the valorization of the Socratic thinkers, Nietzsche exclaims that one should not

judge the Greeks by their philosophers, as the Germans have done, and use the Philistine moralism of the Socratic schools as a clue to what was basically Hellenic! After all, the philosophers are the decadents of Greek culture, the counter-movement to the ancient, noble, taste (to the agonistic instinct, to the polis, to the value of race, to the authority of descent) (TI “What I Owe” 3).

And he asserts that

One cannot insist too strongly upon the fact that the great Greek philosophers represent the decadence of every kind of Greek excellence and make it contagious-- “Virtue” made completely abstract was the greatest seduction to make oneself abstract: i.e., to detach oneself” (WP 428).

In Nietzsche’s reading, the Sophists’ immoralism affirms the healthiest characteristic of Hellenic culture, in that it encourages individuals to enjoy struggle, excel by overcoming their limits, affirm their own uniqueness, and insist upon personal freedom. In this respect the Sophist repudiates the moralism of the Socratic schools that Nietzsche denigrates as “the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional” (BGE 31); and in doing so the Sophist distinguishes himself from the “slave,” who “wants the unconditional and understands only what is tyrannical, in morals, too” (BGE 46).

A Neo-Nietzschean reading of the Sophists

I have argued that Nietzsche’s reading of the Sophists is openly partisan, anchored in his assessment of the cultural malaise of his own time and his commitment to cultural renewal; and that his reading is highly selective, attending to some fragments of the Sophists only cursorily while overlooking others altogether. The account he presents is thus uniquely his own, and in this respect a strictly “Nietzschean” reading is precisely the unique interpretation that I have attempted to reconstruct from his specific remarks. My reconstruction of his account of the Sophists may be of interest to Nietzschean scholars, I suggest, in that it may illuminate features of Nietzsche’s own theory of language, epistemology and ethics, indicating how he draws upon yet departs from the Greek thinkers he praises as his “co-workers and precursors” (WP 464). But reconstructing Nietzsche’s reading should also be of interest to contemporary students of the Sophists, in that it may enable us to articulate a “neo-Nietzschean” reading of the Sophists that draws upon Nietzsche’s method of reading and specific insights into the Sophists while being anchored in our own interests and commitments. Such a neo-Nietzschean reading is worth articulating, I submit, in that it may provide some possible new directions for the contemporary “Nietzschean turn” among Sophistic scholars who have not attended to Nietzsche’s own specific writings on the Sophists, and enable us to generate new perspectives on the Sophists. In what follows I will delineate several key features of a such a neo-Nietzschean reading of the Sophists.

An indispensible feature of our neo-Nietzschean reading will be the use of a “genealogical” method, one that encourages us to become aware of our own presuppositions, values or “biases,” and the ways in which they influence our interpretations. Unlike neo-positivist critics who attempt to articulate “objective” readings of the Sophists, we must discern the ways in which our readings of the Sophists are determined by previous selections and interpretations of their writings, and how our own values and commitments may enable us to generate new openings into the Sophists’ texts. In Hans-Georg Gadamer’s formulation, we are inescapably situated in a “hermeneutic circle,” wherein “the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience”(9). Correlatively, we must become cognizant of the ways in which our commitments lead us to select the material we are considering and interpreting, and disabuse ourselves of what Nietzsche calls the “idolatry of the factual” (UH 8), the illusion that we can account for independently existing “facts themselves” in their entirety. Given the diversity of our interests and our textual selections, our neo-Nietzschean interpretations will presumably differ in many respects from Nietzsche’s own. Our interest in and commitment to feminism, for example, may lead us to explore the ways in which the Sophists advanced arguments bearing on gender equality.[10] Our commitment to multiculturalism, and our interest in overcoming the misperceptions that perpetuate conflict between different peoples, may lead us to attend to the Sophists’ challenge to Athenocentrism, focussing perhaps on Gorgias’s advocacy of panhellenism and Hippias’ advocacy of cosmopolitanism.[11]

A second feature of our neo-Nietzschean reading concerns our understanding of the culture of fifth-century Greece and the Sophists’ contributions to it. As James Aune points out, most contemporary scholarship on Greek rhetoric, and consequently on the Sophists, is “remarkably sanitized,” in that it retains many of the tenets of the Enlightenment reading of Greek culture that Nietzsche repudiated (122). In our neo-Nietzschean reading, in contrast, we may draw upon and augment Nietzsche’s account of Greek culture, attending to the work of twentieth-century anthropologists, psychologists and artists, many of whom have themselves been inspired by Nietzsche’s suggestions. As Fredric Jameson characterizes this emerging “alternative” picture of ancient Greece,

the Nietzschean reassertion of the Dionysian and of the orgiastic counterreligion of the mysteries, the ritual studies of the Cambridge school, Freud himself (and Levi-Strauss’ rewriting of the Oedipus legend in terms of primitive myth), decisive reversals in classical scholarship (such as the work of George Thompson, Dodds’ The Greeks and the Irrational, and the newer French classical scholarship), and above all, perhaps, contemporary aesthetic reinterpretations of the Greek fact (such as Karl Orff’s opera Antigone)-- all converge to produce an alternative Greece, not that of Pericles or the Parthenon, but something savage or barbaric, tribal or African, or Mediterranean sexist-- a culture of masks and death, ritual ecstasies, slavery, scapegoating, phallocratic homosexuality, an utterly non- or anticlassical culture to which something of the electrifying otherness and fascination, say, of the Aztec world, has been restored (151).

Drawing upon these studies, we may situate individual Sophists in novel ways, generating entirely new “genealogical” interconnections. Attending to the mythological beliefs and magical practices of colonial Sicily, for example, we may situate Gorgias in a manner that underscores his awareness of the power of irrationality and the limits of logos. Drawing on the studies by Richard Enos of the violent and unstable culture of fifth-century Sicily, we may delineate the possible connections between Gorgias’s writings and revolutionary upheaval. [12] And pursuing the suggestions of Martin Bernal in Black Athena, we may explore the ostensible affinity of some nomadic Sophists for “African” and “Oriental” cultures.

Using a genealogical method and attending to the Sophists’ roles in Greek culture in these ways, we may supplement Nietzsche’s account of the Sophists’ conception of language and rhetoric. With Samuel Ijsselling and David Roochnik, we may further explore the Sophists’ role in the “ancient quarrel” between philosophy and rhetoric, examining the connections between the Sophists’ “rhetorical” model of language and their challenge to conventional “philosophical” inquiry. Concerning the deployment of figures of speech, we may pursue Nietzsche’s suggestion that Gorgias uses figuration to overcome the constraints of “realism.” Specifically, we may examine the ways in which the Sophist challenges the “reality” fabricated in such established genres or discourses as the Eleatic treatise, the discourse on Helen of Troy, the legal apology, and the Athenian funeral address. Drawing on specific studies of the linguistic conventions of these genres undertaken by G. B. Kerferd, Nicole Loraux, James Coulter, Arthur Adkins and others, we may examine specific ways in which Gorgias appears to appropriate and subvert established conventions.[13] In these inquiries, we may draw upon and supplement Nietzsche’s notion that the Sophists perceived speech and writing as a form of play. Drawing on recent discussions of play, and following the lead of Richard Lanham and Roger Moss, who attend to the Sophists’ playful use of parody and paradox, we may explore such texts as the Defense of Palamedes, in which Gorgias, adopting the persona of the mythical inventor of games, plays with traditional myths, the conventions of the legal apologia, and with the values and beliefs of his audience.[14]

Concerning the epistemology and ethics of the Sophists, we may pursue Nietzsche’s insight into the differences between Protagoras and Gorgias, exploring their respective views of knowledge and morality. One approach may be do draw upon Nietzsche’s notion of the “tragic” to explore the thought of some of the Sophists. In this we may follow Mario Untersteiner, who characterizes Gorgias as a “tragic” philosopher; and we may develop Eric White’s contention that Nietzsche’s conception of the dionysian illuminates Gorgias’s epistemology. Conversely, we may find that an equally fruitful reading would place Gorgias in the comic tradition, associating him with the Sicilian comic playwright Epicharmus, and examining the Sophist’s “carnivalesque” approach to knowledge.[15] Another approach may be to pursue the inquiries of Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, who draw on Nietzsche’s notion that the Sophists’ reliance upon cleverness and cunning suggests a conception of knowledge that is antithetical to a platonic or scientific quest for “certainty.”[16] In respect to ethics, we may explore the nature of what Nietzsche calls Sophistic “immoralism” in a variety of specific texts. With Roger Moss, we may examine the ways the Sophists refine their “violence” and “barely suppressed aggression” through the use of such tactics as paradox and parody (216). Following Eric White, we may inquire into the ways that individual Sophists such as Gorgias are able to overcome their personal limitations by “recreating” themselves in agonistic and epideictic performances (38). Our interpretations of the Sophists’ conceptions of knowledge and morality may differ dramatically from Nietzsche’s own, given that our values, interests and selection of texts will presumably differ from his. Yet insofar as we acknowledge our own perspectives and articulate compelling genealogies of the Sophists, we may generate neo-Nietzschean readings that are faithful to the spirit if not the letter of Nietzsche’s own interpretation.

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