Sophistry

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ex-l

ex-BK

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Sophistry

Post20 Aug 2010

The word "sophistry" comes from Ancient Greece where the sophists were a category of teachers who were meant to teach excellence or virtue to young statemen and the nobility. They were mainly traveling intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects for money, speculating about the nature of language and culture, and employing clever logic or verbal skills to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade, impress or convince others of their value. Great performers perhaps ... but perhaps lacking in deeper qualities.

Whatever they did or did not know, they were characterised by their command of words which could be used to entertain or impress an audience. However, their practice of charging money for education, and thereby only providing wisdom to those who could pay ... and sometimes pay very high fees ... led to them being condemned by the likes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Is the current trend of leading Brahma Kumari adherents charging for values education and leadership coaching just not another, identical, manifestation of the same thing?

The modern usage of the term is generally negative. It comes from a word meaning "one who makes a business out of wisdom". The image of a "sophist" is someone who uses intellectual tricks and ambiguities in their language in order to deceive others or to support false reasoning. Someone not concerned with truth and justice but involved in some kind of clever intellectual power game.

A term often used by writers is "idle sophistry" ... pointless and often vain philosophizing.
Hakuin Ekaku wrote:But how much more so when you turn your eyes within yourselves
And have a glimpse into your self-nature!
You find that the self-nature is no-nature,
The truth permitting no idle sophistry.

For you, then, open the gate leading to the oneness of cause and effect;
Before you, then, lies a straight road of non-duality and non-trinity.

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