To Make the Weaker Argument Defeat the Stronger

To Make the Weaker Argument Defeat the Stronge,r ALEXANDER SESONSKE I MEN OFTEN DECIDEQUESTIONSof importance by argument; hence the lack of surprise, in either Plato's day or ours, that some men should profess the ability to "make the weaker argument defeat the stronger" or "make the worse appear the better cause." That such men should be denounced is equally unremarkable ; for the profession acknowledges a distinction of better or worse, weaker or stronger, to be made among causes or arguments, but then purports to settle matters of substance without regard for, or in opposition to, this distinction. We who read Plato will most likely think first of the Sophists when we hear the phrase "to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger." For, though he does not often state the charge in just these terms, Plato's treatment of Sophists, whether in the sharply etched portrait of Protagoras or the schematic logic of the Sophist, seems designed to display this aspect of their activity. Protagoras' preference for "myth" over reasoned argument, like his tendency to disrupt the Socratic dialectic by making a speech, is a tactical device in the "battle of words" that he takes his conversation with Socrates to be. Hippias' eagerness to join in the game of interpreting Simonides' poem and Thrasymachus ' remark at the end of Republic I, "Well, this is a feast day, Socrates; let all this be your share of the entertainment," differ markedly in style from Euthydemus' extravagant claim that he can refute any proposition whether true or false. But the underlying attitude toward argument differs very little. Plato often reveals his view of the enterprise which embodied this attitude, perhaps nowhere so succinctly as in the final "definition" of the Sophist as a dissembling imitator of appearances, creating a shadow-play of words, the illusion of sound argument, at Sophist 268c. Plainly enough, these dialogues do not merely display, but accuse; an accusation embedded in a portrayal sufficiently brilliant to convict the Sophist for all succeeding ages as one concerned in argument with victory rather than truth, and one who has mastered the arts of persuasion and refutation well enough to achieve victory, regardless of truth, in most ordinary encounters. An exhibition of this verbal skill may be harmless entertainment when it occurs on an idle afternoon in the house of Callias or Callicles or Cephalus. The young men who listen and cheer are not convinced by the "sophistic" arguments and thus led astray--the word-play, not the substance of the talk, evokes their attention and admiration. But just herein lies Plato's deep distrust. For these [217] 218 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY same young men will pay to learn the verbal skill; will later imitate this sophistic jugglery of words in assembly and court of law, bringing to the most serious business of the city the sophist's zeal for victory in disregard of truth. If, then, we may justly take the phrase "to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger" as a summary of Plato's complaint against the Sophists, it might be useful to state fully the crime which provokes the charge. When put to the Socratic test, the Sophist, like the poet and the politician, reveals his ignorance. But this cannot be the root of Plato's animus, for in his ignorance the Sophist differs not from any other man. Nor can it be that, though ignorant, he persists in argument~--for this too is true of every man, including Socrates. But ignorant men, in the Socratic sense, may seek the truth and speak the truth. Though Plato early insists upon and later elaborates the difference between genuine knowledge and opinion or belief, he never limits truth to the expression of knowledge. Socrates, who disavows all knowledge, does not hesitate to claim to speak the truth, nor to be able to distinguish truth from falsity. His claim is put most strongly in the Apology: "From me you shall hear the whole truth"; "Think only of the truth of my words and give heed to that." 1 The truths which Socrates then speaks are predominantly truths about events in Athens, the encounters and relations of men. They are...