Usage of the term ‘philosophy’ in the time of Isokrates.
IN a passage of the
Phaedros1 just before that quoted at the beginning of the last chapter, Sokrates asks what a man is to be called, who, whatever may be his particular line of work—whether for instance he is a Homer, a Lysias, or a Solon—works in the light of true knowledge, using no terms which he cannot define, making no statements which he is not prepared to defend. It might be presumptuous, Sokrates says, to call such a man, or any man, ‘wise;’ but he may fairly be called ‘a lover of wisdom,’ a ‘philosopher.’ It is probable that the term ‘philosophy’—said to have been invented by Pythagoras—did not come into general use at Athens much before the time of Sokrates; and that, for nearly a century at least, ‘philosopher’ continued to be the laudatory name for the man of intellectual or literary pursuits generally,—as ‘sophist,’ used with the same large meaning, came by degrees to have more and more of a disparaging sense. The
paramount intellectual eminence of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the lessened importance of Rhetoric after the extinction of the old political life, led to the name ‘philosopher’ being gradually appropriated, from about the end of the 4th century B.C., to the speculative seeker for truth
2. Aristeides, writing in the latter half of the second century A. D., objects to this restriction of the term, saying that in the best times ‘philosophy’ meant simply ‘literary study and refinement;—being used, not in its present sense, but for
discipline or
culture (
παιδεία) generally
3.’ Now it is in this general sense that Isokrates applies the term ‘philosophy’ to his art, ‘the discipline of discourse,’
ἡ τῶν λόγων παιδεία, as he more precisely terms it. In the speech
On the Antidosis he expressly marks this general sense:— ‘Now you have heard all the truth about my
faculty, or
philosophy, or
study—whichever you like to call it4.’
This use of the term ‘philosophy’ though
Modern prejudice against him caused by his use of it. |
warranted by the ordinary usage of his day, has in modern times proved a serious misfortune for Isokrates. ‘Philosophy’ has for us only its later and restricted meaning: its original and larger meaning has been forgotten. Isokrates and Plato were strictly contemporaries—one, the great speculative thinker, the other, the great popular educator, of his century. The tendency to contrast them is natural. On the one side stands the true philosopher; on the other, the graceless anti-Plato who is continually insisting that his political rhetoric is philosophy. Now, to be just, we ought to remember that the point of the supposed contrast depends partly on an altered verbal usage. When Isokrates speaks of his Philosophy, he means his Theory of Culture. It may be worth while to inquire what this theory was, and to see how far that which Isokrates professed to do was done well by him.
