Gorgias, Encomium of Helen

In the English language in the twenty-first century, the term "sophistry" still exists to refer to a plausible-sounding but misleading argument, an evaluatively negative term to describe bad reasoning. Although the term derives from the original Sophists in Athens in the 5th century BCE, the modern usage of the term is inaccurate in describing the likes of the Sophist Gorgias. By examining Gorgias' "Encomium of Helen" and the related "dissoi logoi" fragment (sometimes attributed to Protagoras) we can see the real origins of sophistry in legal argumentation. In a society -- like that of Athens, or like most of the contemporary world -- that believes in jury trials as a means of obtaining justice, a work like Gorgias' "Encomium of Helen" represents the idea that even the most unlikely candidates deserve a good defense.

Athenian sophists like Gorgias were basically teachers of rhetoric. Because Plato frequently...
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