Misunderstanding the Sophists I: They Were Only Concerned with Speeches

The idea that the basic difference between Plato/Socrates and the sophists was in their chosen genre, comes from a reading of Gorgias and Phaedrus. In Gorgias Socrates implores Gorgias not to make long speeches because he cannot follow them, one among many examples of Socrates playful, or not so playful, irony. In Phaedrus, at least since Weaver's "Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric," the focus has shifted from speeches, still condemned, to writing, also condemned. In both dialogues, dielectic is favored over rhetoric as a form of argument that has the potential to lead toward truth.

This basic interpretation of Plato, prominent among rhetoricians, requires that we simply ignore Euthydemus, in which the brothers and sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus teach a new kind of "fighting," that of question and answer, IE dialectic.

In the opening, Socrates is rushing to meet the brothers in order to become their student--irony yet again. Without going too deeply into the dialogue, which I encourage you to read or listen to, Plato contrasts true dialectic with the dialectic of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus on the basis of motives. The brothers simply wish to win every argument, and will twist the answers of their interlocutor in order to do so. Socrates wishes to teach his interlocutor.

This difference between Socrates and the sophists is emphasized by Aristotle in Metaphysics when he compares his method, analytics, to Plato's dialectics and the sophists. He claims that analytics is more powerful than dialetics; and simply brushes the sophists off due to their "way of life." In other words, their virtue/motives, not their methods, keep them from being philosophers.

Of course, in this case as in all others, what we know of the sophists comes from their opponents. We need to keep that irony in mind.