Philosophy and Sophistry Research Assignment Paper (Essay Sample)

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Philosophy and Sophistry
The literal meaning of philosophy in Greek is the love of wisdom. The term refers to the boldness of the people who aim at knowing the truth always and become wise instead of dogmatically holding onto their beliefs. At a particular point of time, philosophy was the term used to refer to the attitude used in pursuing all domains, such as theology, ethics, science, and logic. In addition, philosophy referred to the rational debate and argumentation method used in the pursuit of knowledge. It aims at sincere consideration of the beliefs best supported by evidence and arguments. It generally supports the beliefs that can be justified using arguments and evidence (McLean, 162). On the other hand, there is Sophistry. The term sophist was used to refer to a wise person. People that support sophistry were originally rhetoric teachers that lived at the era that Socrates too lived. They were considered as major intellectual figures, and the term “sophisticated” is currently used when referring to crafty or intelligent people. During the era they existed, sophistry was approximately similar to rhetoric, which is the art of persuading people using language. However, sophistry is currently generally used in referring to manipulative kinds of rhetoric.
Both terms are different, although there are some similarities. Differentiating sophistry from philosophy is a very difficult philosophical issue. Plato took the issue of distinguishing a sophist from a philosopher very serious, he admits that there are difficulties faced when pursuing the answer to the questions. He travelled to various places trying to have lengthy talks with sophists from other countries. It is therefore not hard to argue that searching for the differences between sophistry and philosophy. The efforts directed towards establishing an explicit methodological difference between sophistry and philosophy is very weak. However, the major difference between the two ideologies is that philosophy mainly focuses on attaching evidence or argument to an idea to make it valid, while on the other hand, sophistry always seeks to convince people using language. However, it may not sound well to assert that the sophists were not concerned with genuine theoretical investigation of finding the truth. Therefore, Plato made an error in reasoning in his conclusions in the dialogues. According to Plato, the Socratic method of dialectical refutation is a particular kind of noble sophistry (Dustin et al., 106).
In this dialect, there is a large part that explains why modern scholarship on the difference between sophistry and philosophy has greatly focused on the difference manifested in moral character. For example, Nehamas has asserted that the disavowal of knowledge by Socrates is related to sophistry. On the other hand, the philosophy domain is founded upon what is taught during philosophy classes in the educational institutions. Natural science is not considered as a section of the philosophical domain since it is taught better in classes away from the philosophy department. Philosophy is concerned with ethics, epistemology (the study of rationality, justification, and knowledge), metaphysics (the nature of reality), and logic (the study of non-fallacious, valid, and consistent reasoning). This implies that philosophy mainly involves more controversial topics but not scientific ones. However, this case cannot be applied to logic, which is less controversial that the natural science. Scientists are expected to depend on the best logic.
Philosophy can be regarded as a way of life. When the word “philosophy “is used, it mainly refers to the philosophical domain expertise but not the general consideration for knowledge. The interest of achieving knowledge is perceived to be an objective of philosophy, as it is assumed to be the objective of any other person towards attaining knowledge, such as in science or mathematics. This type of interest could contribute a lot to the idea that philosophy is a ...