"Wise men" is the collective name of a group of vocational teachers who were paid by apprentices in Greece in the 5th-4th century BC. With Athens as the center, they traveled all over Greece, trained young people in rhetoric, argument and speech, and taught them the skills of participating in politics, governing the country and handling public affairs. Before the 5th century BC, a wise man generally refers to a person who is smart and has certain knowledge and skills. For example, when Homer mentions sculptors, shipbuilders and chariot drivers, they are all called "wise men". Later, natural scientists, poets, musicians and even politicians were also called "wise men". The famous Greek "seven wise men" means "seven wise men" in Greek. By the 5th century BC, especially in the era of Plato and Aristotle, "wise man" had the above meaning, but it mostly refers to professional teachers who teach young people with wages. Plato and Aristotle regard the wise as people who distort the truth and play with specious wisdom because of their eloquence and sophistry. Therefore, the wise man has become synonymous with sophists in history. The study of the wise is mainly based on the records and reports of the activities and judgments of the wise in the relevant works of Plato, Aristotle, Sextus empiricism and others.
This school has two founders: protagoras and gorgias. They have different apprentices, different experiences, different or even opposing philosophical views, and perhaps there is no material to prove that they have any personal contacts. However, we believe that wise men have some important similarities in academic work besides the same occupation, such as contempt for theory, concern for reality and open skepticism. Academically, they all put argumentation and rhetoric in the first place in teaching; Secondly, they all doubt the existence of God. Therefore, except in linguistics, rhetoric and argumentative essays, the wise men have challenged other theories, that is, they have taken a skeptical and negative attitude towards traditional culture and established and developed a new discipline, namely linguistics and rhetoric.
The wise can be regarded as a school, but because most of protagoras's works are rhetoric, there are only a few philosophical fragments of great significance; Although gorgias has more philosophical reasoning, he only teaches rhetoric, so the so-called "school of the wise" has a problem in the history of philosophy (not linguistics). Perhaps it is for these reasons that some people regard the school of the wise as an educational school and a cultural group.
The wise man was the enlightener of ancient Greek philosophy, which was true for the whole Greek thought at that time, especially for the Athenian thought at that time. At that time, the Enlightenment was not only a wise man, but also an ideological warrior like Anaxagoras, empedocles and democritus, who had a devastating impact on conservative traditional ideas. But the profession of wise men makes them more like later humanists. Although they didn't pay much attention to the teaching of natural science knowledge (except for Hippias later), their whole ideological system of paying attention to practical interests showed some similar characteristics with the development of human thought later in an earlier era. In the era of the wise, all their knowledge (ethics, rhetoric, debate) contains a philosophical principle, an ideological system and ideological principles, and they are all individualistic, skeptical and relativistic. Plato would not regard a rhetoric school without philosophical principles as one of his main enemies.
Slave-owner democracy and the school of the wise in ancient Greece. The age of the Wise School was the heyday of ancient Greece-Perikles. After Perikles firmly grasped the political power, he inherited and developed the tradition of slave-owner democracy in Cleisthenes, and carried out various reforms in politics, economy and culture. He encouraged science and culture in Athens, attached importance to construction, attracted talents from all over Greece, and made Athens a cultural center at that time. Perikles himself set an example, regardless of his homeland, was busy with political affairs, made friends with progressive people at that time, worshipped Anaxagoras as a teacher, and did everything possible to protect them politically, so that they could express their opinions freely and fight against conservative traditional ideas.
Slave owner democracy is first of all to implement political equality between slave owners and freemen. All free citizens of Athens participate in political affairs and express their opinions, not by birth and power, but by the correctness of their opinions to gain public trust. All interested and talented freemen can participate in various scientific and cultural activities, make public speeches, participate in Olympic competitions and perform their own scripts. In order to ensure that poor freemen can also participate in political and cultural activities, Perikles also grants public office allowance and drama allowance. Law is no longer the will of the king, nor is it a traditional habit, but should be written and made public so that everyone can explain and apply it according to reason. Therefore, the court's decision is no longer based on swearing to God, but on reasoning, no longer relying on hiring a special litigation lawyer, but can defend in person. All this, although confined to a small scope, that is, within the slave owners, is still a wonderful social picture compared with aristocratic oligarchy. Because of this system, Athens set an example for all Greece and became a monument of ancient science, culture, philosophy and economic prosperity.
This lively political situation will inevitably lead to the grand occasion of a hundred flowers blooming ideologically. At that time, it was not without contradictions and struggles, and the traditional forces were still very strong. Anaxagoras was almost killed because he said the sun was flint, and he was forced to leave Athens under the protection of Perikles. Protagoras could not live in Athens because he doubted the existence of God, but democracy was being consolidated and his thoughts were being liberated. All kinds of opinions have opportunities to express themselves. This stage indicates a bumper harvest of human thoughts and breeds a huge ideological system. Now, almost all scholars agree that it is hard to imagine Socrates, Plato and Aristotle without the school of the wise. During this period, Perikles, a statesman, Thucydides, an architect and Sophocles, euripides and aristophanes appeared. Every one of them is great, and Greek democracy has provided them with a vast universe, which is not far from fruitful results. Sure enough, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the superstars of ancient European wisdom, were produced.
The Greek school of wise men is the last school of ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates, and it is no accident that this school is in the heyday of democracy. The fate of the ancient wise school is also the fate of the ancient Greek slave owners' democracy. The decline of the intelligentsia reflects the decline of Athenian democracy. Only after Spartan aristocratic oligarchy and Athenian democracy were fully demonstrated, some great thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle, made great summaries and improvements on the basis of predecessors' experience. This is like the bourgeois revolution. After the Italian Renaissance, different types of revolutions and systems in Britain and France produced the philosophical summary and great perfection of Kant and Hegel. After summing up and synthesizing, it is always comprehensive, and both positive and negative experiences and lessons should be considered. Therefore, on the surface, Kant and Hegel are not as radical as Locke, Rousseau and Diderot, but they are incomparable in philosophical depth. The development of history is often unbalanced. Kant and Hegel lost the radical spirit and lively and bold thoughts of Locke and Diderot, and Plato and Aristotle also lost the lively spirit of wise men, although they became ancient models in philosophical depth.
Because the Athens government at that time was able to listen to every citizen's opinion on politics, every Athenian citizen (except women) had a sense of ownership. They take the world as their responsibility, care about the affairs of the city-state, are willing and dare to express their opinions, dare to debate, insist on what they think is right, and oppose or even satirize what they think is wrong. They are all self-respecting, because Athenian citizens are free men, they are independent and sometimes even self-righteous, but their purpose is only one, that is, to be good citizens of a city-state. In their view, the prosperity of the polis is not someone else's business, but their own business, and the unity of the polis is completely consistent with their own independence. In order to prosper and unite, they should also restrain their inappropriate desires, which is a natural requirement; They also want to study and exercise, but this restraint is conscious and this kind of study and exercise is free. In the physical and intellectual exercises necessary for being a good citizen, people are free to choose what they like. This is the mental outlook that the people of ancient Athens once had, and the theoretical spirit of the wise school reflects this mental outlook. Protagoras's famous saying, "Man is the measure of all things", made an incisive philosophical summary of the mental outlook of Greek freemen at that time. This generalization of individualism and relativism will eventually lead to skepticism, but at that time it was a portrayal of self-confidence and positive spirit.
The rhetoric of the educational discipline jointly engaged by the wise men is carried out under the guidance of this universal spirit. Since everyone is the measure of things, there is no objective and simple truth. Only rhetoric-language skills can strengthen a person's argument, and learning this skill can turn a weak argument into a strong one. Wise men made great contributions to rhetoric and linguistics, and their debating skills were also at a high level at that time. Gorgias reached the opposite conclusion with Elias' own argumentation method.
On the one hand, the rhetoric skills of the wise school are based on individualism and sentimentality, on the other hand, they are based on acknowledging the inevitability of the opposite theory. Protagoras thinks that everything can have two opposing theories, and further develops Zhi Nuo's skill of exposing contradictions in concrete arguments. Rhetoric skills focus on choosing good and following, developing to the extreme, true and false. This idea is also a realistic embodiment of expressing opinions at the citizens' meeting and choosing the most favorable one from many objections to implement. Democracy is not to avoid contradictions, but to affirm the rationality of contradictions and make them fully developed. This principle played a positive role in the heyday of Greek democracy.
Philosophical thoughts. The wise have no unified organization and different political attitudes, and are not an independent faction. But in thought and theory, their views and basic tendencies are relatively consistent, so some people call them "wise men". The basic philosophical thoughts of the wise can be summarized as: (1) perception theory, relativism theory and skepticism theory. They accepted Heraclitus' thought that "everything is changing", affirmed the authenticity of the changing feeling phenomenon of movement, and opposed the Elijah school's view of denying the role of perceptual knowledge. However, they turned to relativism and skepticism, thinking that knowledge is feeling, and asserting that everyone's feelings are true. The same thing, if you feel cold, you feel cold, and I feel neither cold nor cold. Regardless of truth, personal feelings are the standard of truth. Protagoras's famous proposition "Man is the measure of all things" is a typical expression of this thought. (2) The ideological factors of naive dialectics. Kim Rotagora developed empedocles's thought that perceptual things are a mixture of opposites, and further put forward that every problem has opposing aspects. Through three arguments about "non-existence", gorgias refuted the metaphysical view that Elijah School denied non-existence, revealed the difference between thinking and existence, and touched the connection and transformation between existence and non-existence. (3) the established social historical view. They believe that politics, legal system and moral norms are neither natural nor created by God's will. They are formed in the long-term common life of mankind, and they are the established products formed by people in order to avoid being destroyed in mutual killing. Protagoras proposed that the polis originated from the "self-protection" of people, that justice and virtue should belong to all people, and that law and morality can only exist when they are beneficial to people. This is the truth. Hippia believes that law does not exist naturally, but is artificially created by tyrants, and the compulsion of law violates human nature. In Trasimaku's view, the justice of law is the embodiment of the interests of the strong. All these reflected the desire of Democrats at that time to break old traditions and old ideas. (4) Doubt and denial of God. In order to oppose the bondage of traditional ideas and religious myths, they tried to belittle the authority of God and deny the traditional image of God. Protagoras thinks that God is agnostic. People rely on their own strength to invent language, make houses, clothes, shoes and beds, and get health care from the soil. Prodico denied that God's attribute was immortal, and thought that God was just invented by people for their own benefit. People name the sun, the moon and rivers gods because they think they are good for themselves. According to Chretien, God is indifferent to man's fate.
The position of the school of wise men in the history of ancient Greek philosophy. The prosperity of democracy in ancient Greece turned philosophical thoughts from monism to pluralism, from one center to multiple centers. The original foundation put forward by ancient philosophers is gradually transformed from one material form into various forms, from Thales' One-water to empedocles's Four-water, earth, fire and gas, and then from limited material form to Anaxagoras's infinite "seeds". The highest generalization of this material-based pluralism in ancient times is the atomism of Abedra School. Atoms are both "one" and "many". Atoms are self-sufficient, independent and seamless, and can be combined with each other to form the form of everything, but they are unchanged.
If we regard the ancient atomism from leucippus to democritus as a unified school, we can't deny the influence of atomism on the wise, especially protagoras's thought. Protagoras's view that man is the measure of everything is the further development and application of the basic principles of atomism philosophy in social life. Every free citizen living in a democratic society is a small "atom" with its own independence, complacency and self-sufficiency. It has its own independence, has relations with others and combines with others to form a city-state. Of course, the people of the polis need to negotiate to form a unity, but in this unity, every citizen is free and still has the independence of "atom". They are impeccable and everyone's opinion is true. Such closed atoms go their own way, and of course they will collide. Everything changes and grows in the vortex collision of atoms. Contradictions, oppositions and conflicts are not terrible, and everyone's strong confidence cannot be shaken. "Atoms" are big and small, people are strong and weak, and the strong is king, just as big atoms push small atoms away in a collision. However, whether they are big or small, whether they are strong or weak, they are still "people". It is a natural law that those who can work hard have heavy responsibilities. The law is precisely to limit the abuse of power by the strong and protect the legitimate rights of the weak.
From the perspective of historical development, slave owners' free "atomic" democracy is a false phenomenon that cannot last long, because to maintain such an "atomic" life, there must be a considerable material and economic foundation. In the ancient slave society, this material economic foundation was not provided by the atom itself, but by slaves who were not "atoms". These slaves are not "people" and certainly not the "yardstick" of everything. Therefore, the democracy in ancient Greece was the democracy of slave owners, not slaves, so it was not the democracy of most members of society, let alone the democracy of all members, but only the democracy of a few people. Under such conditions, the so-called "democracy" is actually extremely limited and often distorted. In fact, the atom is not complacent. They need to provide clothes, food, shelter and transportation from outside. They are a "leisure class" and a necessary condition for these educated "atoms" not to produce. They are not "people" in the true sense, but some "spiritual aristocrats". Of course, it won't take long to maintain a person's freedom with the material wealth created by others, so ancient Greek democracy has a profound contradiction and quickly developed into a deformed state: most freemen are increasingly poor, and material wealth is highly concentrated in the hands of a few big slave owners. The life of some free people in Athens is even worse than that of some slaves (especially domestic slaves). Greek slave-owner democracy experienced a profound crisis.
This social crisis is reflected in the later development of the wise school, which further shows the evil consequences of individualism, subjectivism and relativism. Early wise men advocated relativism and skepticism, believing that things and truth and falsehood were transferred by personal feelings, and described personal wishes and demands as the decisive force to produce social, bureaucratic legal system and moral norms. They are keen on the superficial persuasiveness of language and logic, which is the dross of the wise man's thought. These dross have developed viciously, and theoretical pluralism has developed into egoism, selfishness and mercenary, which has contributed to the division of society. Academic rhetoric and linguistics have become vulgar word games. It is bound to fall into subjective idealism in cognition. The late wise man developed this idea and became a sophist by playing with concepts and words. Later, these thoughts had a negative impact in history and became the source of skepticism. From the middle of 4th century BC to the beginning of 3rd century BC, the Greek philosopher Pyrrho tried his best to exaggerate the relativism of wise men and went to extreme skepticism. All this makes the wise school go to its opposite side.
However, the thoughts of wise men also contain positive contents, which occupy an important position in the history of philosophy. It declared the end of ancient Greek natural philosophy centered on the formation of the universe and opened the way for the transformation of natural philosophy to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Since then, not only natural phenomena, but also social and life problems have become the theme of ancient Greek philosophy. It explores the relationship between subject and object, affirms the dynamic role of cognitive subject, and reveals the difference between thinking and existence, all of which mark the deepening of philosophical research; It breaks through the shackles of traditional religious myths, denies God's intervention in political and legal systems, moral customs and other phenomena of human social life, and emphasizes the creative role of human beings in the face of natural forces and social life, which has obvious anti-theological significance; His conventionalism thought is the theoretical basis of slave-owner democracy, which not only inspired Epicurus and Lucretius in ancient times, but also had a far-reaching influence on the social contract theory of the western bourgeoisie in modern times.
The positive significance and progressive function of the wise man's thought have long been denied. Plato and Aristotle correctly criticized the wise men for exaggerating their personal feelings, but refused to affirm their contributions. Later, many thinkers followed this prejudice and asserted that wise men are not philosophers, but a group of sophists and charlatans. This situation lasted until18th century. Wise people are often attacked because they charge tuition and love money, are vendors of wisdom, and even "prostitutes" of knowledge. In fact, modern scholars unanimously point out that all teachers, including painters, musicians, actors, rhetoricians, athletes and so on. At that time, he was sued. As for the wise school (especially in the later period), some people who cheat money have nothing to do with the wise school as a school. Hegel first broke through this stereotype, reintroduced the wise into the history of philosophy, and affirmed its positive aspects. Hegel said in the Lecture Notes on the History of Philosophy: "We should put this bad meaning aside and forget it. On the contrary, we are now going to further examine the position of the wise in Greece from its positive aspect, strictly speaking, that is, from the scientific aspect. " Then, the British historian grotte (1794- 187 1) discussed it in his History of Greece.
Enlightenment of the wise to Greek culture. Since then, the important position of the wise in history has been concerned by researchers. Among modern scholars, there are few people who completely deny the wise. Due to the arrangement of the original materials, the development clues of the wise men from the early stage to the later stage are more clear, and the importance of the early wise men in the history of Greek thought is more clear.
In order to fundamentally safeguard slavery and prevent it from collapsing, people realized that democracy is only one form of slavery, and people thought of another type-Spartan oligarchy. Many people think that it is better to make a saint king and listen to him than to leave him without food. In this way, such epoch-making figures as Socrates and Plato appeared. Therefore, the school of wise men who emphasized benevolence and particularity was replaced by Socrates and Plato who emphasized universality, universalism and philosophy. Sensitism, individualism, relativism and subjectivism have been replaced by rationalism, nationalism, absolutism and objectivism. After the decline of Greek democracy, slavery in Greece did not collapse. Alexander of Macedonia initiated the Hellenistic period, and Aristotle, an encyclopedic philosopher, was an early figure in that period.