Sophism: Modern day Sophists

Sophists
Student:
Professor:
Course title:
Date:
Part 1: Modern day Sophists
In ancient Greece, sophists were any class of professional teachers who provided instructions in a variety of fields for instance rhetoric, general culture, disputation or politics. In essence, they were itinerant intellectuals and professional teachers who frequented Greek cities such as Athens in the 2nd part of the 5th century BCE (Lawhead, 2011). They provided young rich men with an education in excellence or virtue in return for a fee, and in so doing attained fame and wealth whilst also arousing major opposition and antipathy. This class of people prided themselves on having the ability of making weaker arguments stronger. Sophists relied on rhetoric and persuasion and they argued in support of whichever side of a case they were being paid to argue for, or any side they thought would serve their best interest (Lawhead, 2011). The members of our modern society that most closely resemble the Greek sophists include politicians, lawyers and advertisers. This is primarily because many of these individuals are usually concerned only with convincing people to believe them; they are not concerned with the truth.
Advertisers: the job of an advertiser is basically to sway people to expend cash buying their services/products. Though a few advertisers are reliant on deception and outright lies to make the public spend money on their services/products, the majority of them rely on persuasion (Lawhead, 2011). Politicians: some contemporary politicians spend a lot of time selling themselves, and a politician has to persuade people to believe that they are actually the most suitable candidate f...