In this episode of Notions of Progress — the first of a two-part solo series — we ask a deceptively simple question: were the ancient Greek Sophists the original enlightenment-like thinkers of human progress? These were the famous and sought-after educators of fifth-century Athens. They charged fees, itinerant, and claimed that human excellence could be developed, not just inherited. For that, they were called sophists — a word that  still, today,carries a negative connotation.

Drawing on W.K.C. Guthrie’s A History of Greek Philosophy, Rachel Barney’s scholarship on technê and Sophistic thought, Joshua Billings’ work on the fifth-century enlightenment, and the authentic fragments of Protagoras himself, this episode examines whether the Sophists represent a genuine ‘enlightenment’ movement — one defined by empirical inquiry and skepticism toward inherited authority, and a theory of civilizational progress through techne,teachable skills.

The episode includes five key Greek terms that carry the conceptual weight of the Sophists’ argument, profiles the four major figures of the movement, and closes with Protagoras’s great myth of human origins from Plato’s Protagoras.

• Sophistês (so-fis-TAYS): Literally “one who makes people wise.” A professional teacher of practical wisdom and civic skill in 5th-century Athens. 
• Technê (tek-NAY): A Greek word with no exact English equivalent. It equates to systematic, teachable skills — but more than technique. Technê transforms its practitioner. The Sophists believed technê was a key driver of human progress.
• Aretê (ah-reh-TAY): Excellence, or virtue. For the Sophists, aretê was not a fixed gift of birth or divine favor — it was something that could be taught. 
• Nomos (NOH-moss): Law, custom, convention. What human beings have established through agreement and institutions. 
• Physis (FEW-sis): Nature, or natural reality. The tension between nomos and physis — between convention and nature — is one of the defining intellectual controversies of the fifth century as it  informed one’s belief in acquired vs inherited power

• How the word “sophist” went from a term of respect to an insult, and why it matters for reading the historical record
• George Grote’s 19th-century rehabilitation of the Sophists, and Eduard Zeller’s influential counter-verdict — a scholarly debate that still shapes how ancient philosophy is taught
• Joshua Billings on the fifth-century enlightenment: three characteristic modes of Sophistic thought — empirical research, arguing both sides, and critical reasoning about divine causality
• The four major figures: Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias — what distinguished each of them and what they shared
• Protagoras’s great myth from the Protagoras dialogue: a three-stage narrative of human progress from vulnerable animals to skilled craftsmen to citizens capable of governing themselves
• Whether the Sophists represent the first systematic theory of progress through human agency — and what that question means for the larger arc of this podcast

Aristophanes’ The Clouds as hostile source material

The earliest surviving satire of Sophistic teaching is not a philosophical argument — it’s a comedy. In The Clouds (423 BCE), Aristophanes portrays Socrates running a “Thinkery” where students learn to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger. Scholars like W.K.C. Guthrie treat this as evidence of public anxiety about Sophistic education, not as an accurate description of what the Sophists actually taught.

Protagoras was reportedly  tried, banished, and his books burned in the Athenian agora. He was tried for impiety, expelled from Athens, and — according to ancient sources — his books were gathered and burned publicly in the agora. The man who said human beings were “the measure of all things” was destroyed by the very democratic city that prided itself on open debate. His books have not survived.

Plato may have built his philosophy in the shadow of Socrates’ death — and the Sophists were part of what he was reacting against

In 399 BCE, a jury of 501 Athenian citizens voted to execute Socrates. Plato was in his late twenties and witnessed it. In The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Karl Popper argued that what followed was an act of intellectual betrayal: Plato, he wrote, was Socrates’ “most gifted disciple” who “was soon to prove the least faithful.” The jury that condemned Socrates was composed of precisely the kind of citizens the Sophists had spent decades empowering — ordinary Athenians. Whether this was a conscious act of revenge or something Plato could not fully acknowledge, Popper carefully stated “I cannot doubt the fact of Plato’s betrayal... But it is another question whether this attempt was conscious.” (The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1, Ch. 10, p. 194–195)

Plato /Socrates/Aristophanes

In Plato’s Apology, Socrates himself argues that Aristophanes’ portrayal — performed 24 years before the trial. Addressing the jury, he seeks to disparage the playwright's work stating “You have seen this yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes — a Socrates swinging about there, saying he was walking on air, and talking a lot of other nonsense about things of which I know nothing at all."¹

1. Plato, Apology 19c, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).

00:00 Introduction to the Sophists and Their Legacy

05:37 THe Movement and It’s Moment

09:35 Key Figures of the Sophist Movement

11:52 Protagoras: In His Own Voice

19:37 The Wound That Wouldn’t Close

20:49 What’s Next?

The Fifth-Century Enlightenment:

Joshua Billings’ term for the intellectual culture of 5th-century Athens, characterized by empirical research and systematic collection of knowledge (historia/polymathy), the practice of arguing both sides of questions (antilogy), and critical reasoning about traditional beliefs including divine causality. Billings sets forth a compelling case as to why the Sophists were not peripheral figures but “the characteristic thinkers of the fifth-century enlightenment.” (Billings, 2021)

Technê as Constitutive, Not Instrumental:

Rachel Barney’s distinction between ancient technê and modern concepts of technique or technology. Ancient technê is constitutive: it shapes the practitioner’s character, identity, and judgment through the practice itself. Modern technology tends to be understood as value-neutral tools serving pre-existing goals. For the Sophists, all human progress — from fire to justice — moved through technê in this deeper sense.

The Constructed Reputation:

Because almost all surviving accounts of the Sophists are hostile — especially Plato and Aristophanes — historians must reconstruct what they actually taught against the grain of the dominant tradition. Guthrie argues this requires distinguishing between the Sophists’ genuine philosophical contributions and the caricatures constructed by their opponents first and foremost Plato.

Protagoras’s Myth of Human Origins:

In the Protagoras dialogue, Plato has Protagoras recount a three-stage account of human development: no natural advantages → practical skill through technê (fire and the productive arts, given by Prometheus) → political skill through justice and mutual respect (distributed equally to all by Zeus). This myth is treated by scholars including Guthrie as encoding Protagoras’s genuine philosophical views about civilizational progress and democratic capacity.

The Nomos–Physis Antithesis:

The central intellectual controversy of fifth-century Athens: what is the relationship between human convention (nomos) and natural reality (physis)? The Sophists engaged seriously with this question from multiple directions — it is not reducible to a single position. Guthrie’s chapter on the nomos-physis antithesis traces the spectrum of views, from cosmopolitanism and humanitarian anti-slavery arguments to the more dangerous conclusions drawn by figures like Callicles.

Primary Sources Referenced:

• Plato. Protagoras. (The great myth of human origins, 320c–322d)
• Plato. Meno. (The teachability of virtue debate)
• Aristophanes. The Clouds. (423 BCE — satirical source, hostile to Sophistic education)
• Protagoras. Fragments. (Collected in Diels-Kranz; key fragments on man as measure and the teachability of aretê)

Secondary Scholarship:

• Guthrie, W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. III: The Fifth-Century Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
• Barney, Rachel. “Sophistry.” In A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
• Billings, Joshua. “The Fifth-Century Enlightenment.” Chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic, 2021.
• Bonazzi, Mauro. The Sophists. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
• Retz, Tyson. Progress and the Scale of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. (See Episodes 3–4 of this podcast for Retz’s framework, against which the Sophists are being read)

Related Notions of Progress Episodes:

• Episode 2: The Promethean Question: Four Greek Answers (the Sophists’ linear ascent theory in the context of Hesiod, Plato, and Aristotle)
• Episodes 3–4: Five Faces of Progress — Prof. Tyson Retz (the “No Progress” category, against which the Sophists represent a dissident voice within the ancient Greek world)

Episode 5, Part 2: The Sophists vs. Plato — Was Progress Possible? In Part 2, we turn to Plato’s response. Where the Sophists saw progress as horizontal — the accumulation of skill, institutions, and civic virtue over time — Plato proposed something different: progress as vertical ascent toward eternal truth, the Forms, and the philosopher’s paideia (human formation toward the good). Werner Jaeger’s Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture will serve as our guide.

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Email: [email protected]

Notions of Progress examines ideas of technological and progress and human advancement from antiquity through contemporary AI debates. Each episode features ideas and insights from scholars and practitioners alike through in-depth conversations and essays. The show explores the intellectual history of progress narratives and the debated meanings of advancement. It traces how different historical periods and thinkers have understood—or rejected—the idea that humanity progresses through time.

Host: Marshall Madow is an independent researcher who holds an MA in History from Cambridge University (thesis on Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth) and an MSc from Oxford University, Said Business School (specialty in Complexity Science and Leadership). His current research interests include understanding progress narratives and technological progress from antiquity to the present.

Contact: [email protected]

Social: @NotionsProgress on X/Twitter

For full timestamps, transcript, and additional resources, visit: https://www.notionsofprogress.com/