ABSTRACT
The attitudes of modern English-speaking readers to the sophists, and to Plato’scriticisms of them, have been formed, directly or indirectly, by debates between Grote and his critics. Grote was moved to write his defence of the sophists by the prevailing attitude he saw among German critics, under the influence of Hegel. Hegel believed that Plato’s presentation of the sophists was correct, and that Plato presented them as holding a specific and mistaken philosophical position. According to Hegel, the sophists have an important place in the development of philosophy because they shook up ordinary unreflective convictions, and drew the conclusion that nothing could be known to be true and no objective facts, independent of the beliefs held by this or that particular subject, could be recognized:
The Sophists thus knew that on this basis nothing was secure, because the power of thought treated everything dialectically. This was the formal culture which they had and imparted, for their acquaintanceship with so many points of view shook what was morality in Greece (the religion, duties, and laws, unconsciously exercised), since through its limited content, that came into collision with what was different. Once it was highest and ultimate, then it was deposed. Ordinary knowledge thus becomes confused, as we shall see very clearly in Socrates, for something is held to be certain for consciousness, and then other points of view which are also present and recognized, have similarly to be allowed; hence the first has no further value, or at least loses its supremacy.1
