The Sophists, Wittgenstein, and Argumentation in Philosophy

Abstract

In this paper I suggest that an interesting (although rather dim) parallelism may be traced between the sophists' and Wittgenstein's views concerning the role of philosophy. In both cases the systematic approach is rejected and, rather, the importance of reasoning and argumentation is emphasized. Besides multiple differences, a crucial one is that the sophists aimed at forming linguistic seducers whose main goal was to persuade their opponents, while Wittgenstein advances a technique to systematically break down philosophical puzzles.