The criticism of the sophists was directed against the entire tradition on which Greek society was based, and principally against the moral conceptions which hitherto had been unquestioned: good and evil, right and wrong. The criticism was essentially negative; that which hitherto had been imagined as absolute was demonstrated to be relative, and the relative was identified with the invalid. Thus they could not help running up against the popular ideas of the gods, and treating them in the same way. A leading part was here played by the sophistic distinction between nomos and physis, Law and Nature, i.e. that which is based on human convention, and that which is founded on the nature of things. The sophists could not help seeing that the whole public worship and the ideas associated with it belonged to the former – to the domain of “the law.” Not only did the worship and the conceptions of the gods vary from place to place in the hundreds of small independent communities into which Hellas was divided – a fact which the sophists had special opportunity of observing when travelling from town to town to teach; but it was even officially admitted that the whole ritual – which, popularly speaking, was almost identical with religion – was based on convention. If a Greek was asked why a god was to be worshipped in such and such a way, generally the only answer was: because it is the law of the State (or the convention; the word nomos expresses both things). Hence it followed in principle that religion came under the domain of “the law,” being consequently the work of man; and hence again the obvious conclusion, according to sophistic reasoning, was that it was nothing but human imagination, and that there was no physis, no reality, behind it at all. In the case of the naturalists, it was the positive foundation of their system, their conception of nature as a whole, that led them to criticise the popular belief. Hence their criticism was in the main only directed against those particular ideas in the popular belief which were at variance with the results of their investigations. To be sure, the sophists were not above making use of the results of natural science in their criticism of the popular belief; it was their general aim to impart the highest education of their time, and of a liberal education natural science formed a rather important part. But their starting-point was quite different from that of the naturalists. Their whole interest was concentrated on man as a member of the community, and it was from consideration of this relation that they were brought into collision with the established religion. Hence their attack was far more dangerous than that of the naturalists; no longer was it directed against details, it laid bare the psychological basis itself of popular belief and clearly revealed its unstable character. Their criticism was fundamental and central, not casual and circumstantial.
From a purely practical point of view also, the criticism of the sophists was far more dangerous than that of the old philosophers. They were not theorists themselves, but practitioners; their business was to impart the higher education to the more mature youth. It was therefore part of their profession to disseminate their views not by means of learned professional writings, but by the persuasive eloquence of oral discourse. And in their criticism of the existing state of things they did not start with special results which only science could prove, and the correctness of which the layman need not recognise; they operated with facts and principles known and acknowledged by everybody. It is not to be wondered at that such efforts evoked a vigorous reaction on the part of established society, the more so as in any case the result of sophistic criticism – though not consciously its object – was to liquefy the moral principles on which the social order was based.– A. B. Drachmann, 1922 Atheism In Pagan Antiquity
A few big wars to save an ancient structural integrity (and winning!), the golden age of Greece was rendered to obscurity, and even Macedonia died in a generation – all roads then were leading to Rome, a former Trojan outpost. It's now a global infestation since the Spanish inquisition and Merlin led revolt against Mab's enchanted 'kingdom' just in time for statehood and the bourgeois revolution. But heaven's fall was never even threatened till kids found gothic punk grown up on top of some old funk from a former generation.
Could it be that ethereal fourth dimension is home to the juxtaposition of Buckminster-Fuller's "synergy" (neither worker nor a boss can produce a home t.v., that feat belong to the factory!) with Thomas' & Thomas' theorem that the consequences of an illusion attain to it reality? Then the death of gods is proved with Merlin's final dictum, "I turn my back on thee!" bringing on modernism, and the old polysynergy collapsed in a puff of blue magic with little consequence except to steadfast believers who would as soon die where they stand as move to the side of statistical infrequency. With what do we replace the corpses given the theory of a vacuum of power attending the king's assassination? Simple: the birth of possibility as a case of spontaneous generation: physis 3; nomos zip. A real vacuum would suck power into nothing. I would imagine Merlin's incantation would work as well on political executives and other corporate sops – they're not, after all, gods! ... that distinction belongs to cops.
Today the bigheads still buy the spin of folk as mob, as mindless mechanism prone to idiocrity (or is it mediacity?) believing anything. But other than the steadfast few, everyone knew all along it was safer to appear swayed by official talking points (or elsewise called P.R.), to "act as if" than contradict officially obtained wisdoms, that is, until the death of poetry (encrypted pantomime) and only the word was given, when philosophers and playwrights were thereafter thought creative and not absconders of general tendencies already well afloat, or taking others' gut feelings and making of them rhetoric (education once was just a public entertainment).
A cop by any other name's a stalwart magistrate, a burly priest, a set of ungood habits – no gut to ever get it but employed in censorship. A play by Euripides was well received only when it resonated with an audience – the authorities be damned. Had it not we'd have never known that Sisyphus-king was just a moron, but the gods, a cruel joke. And hemlock's for impiety, free thinking gets the yoke or in this gentle day and age, you're set to making license plates and die alone and broke. Hans Christian Andersen full well understood that public thinking's insufficient: to make the higher archy sink takes total disinvestment, or resounding off the walls a proclamatory "Bullshit!"
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