For this post, I wanted to further explore the connections I saw in class between the sophists and the modern day lawyers. The sophists really seem to be the forerunners of our modern conception of lawyers. The most obvious connection is the emphasis on rhetoric. I think that when most people picture a lawyer, they imagine them arguing a case in a courtroom. The sophists are also all about arguments as well. They claimed that they are able to take and defend any argument using rhetoric. Isn't this exactly why people hire defense lawyers?
I also think that both sophists and lawyers tend to share a view that you do not always have to pursue the truth, and a willingness to defend things that they know are not true. When I pointed this out in class some people thought I was attacking lawyers with the statement but that i really not how I feel. I think that in many instances this mindset is a positive otherwise how would any guilty party get proper representation in court. Likewise, I think the sophists felt the same way and reflect this attitude by offering training to any who could afford it. They were not concerned with how the rhetoric might be used but simply wanted people to know rhetoric and be able to defend ideas.
A really good point about the society need for argumentation NOT aimed at the truth. We might think that such an institution is actually a round-about way of preserving the truth in certain minority cases. Suppose everyone thought that an innocent person was guilty and no one was willing to defend him on the grounds that it would be immoral. Without that heuristic in place, we'd have no way of making sure truth got a fair hearing where the majority had already made up their mind.
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