The Emergence of Philosophical Anthropology: The Moment of Sophistry

Abstract

The Bruno Cany’s article is devoted to rethinking of the role and importance of sophistry in the history of the Greek thought. The author stresses that modern scholarship is gradually moving from the purely negative evaluation of the sophists to the realization of their most important positive role in the formation of anthropological ideas, where the sophists actually were forerunners of Socrates and Plato. Sophistic anthropology is characterised by the following traits: 1) its fundamental concepts are concepts of virtue and logos; 2) in the sophistry the process of thinking has a visual character: it is an archaic trait that opposes the sophistry to the mode of thinking based on conceptual abstractions; 3) the way of thinking characteristic for sophists has a prominently tragic nature associated with the painful birth of the European individual man; 4) sophistic thought is realized in the practice of «double utterances». The author examines those general features of the sophistic anthropology as exemplified by doctrines of three prominent sophists: Protagoras, Hippias and Prodikos. In conclusion, the author proves that sophistry in the history of European thought marks the emergence of individual man and his autonomy from theological and physical determinations, the appearance of interiority and the eve of the anthropological revolution in Greece.