Philosophy is a way of life. It is not a trade nor is it a profession. The closest term would be vocation, a calling to live a certain way via profound commitment to an open (free) discovery of the world. This is what old Socrates was attempting to do.

Sophistry is a professional path in which people instruct others in the rigors of experimentation and the wide base of knowledge necessary to get a handle on persuasive certainties about society & nature. As a profession, there are certain standards to be met for entry, to be granted for authority, and to be assured for recompense of effort, production, and time.

My belief: The modern system of industrial “education” is the triumph of sophistry over Socrates.

What I mean by this is that teachers & scholars are sophists. That you are paid for your instructional & persuasive skill is the basic definition of this profession. Now, I am not one of those who always means by the term something pejorative. It is quite clear from his dialogs that even Plato–who most people “read” as hating all sophists–did not completely disrespect or loathe every person in the ancient world who was called a sophist. His portrayals of Protagoras & Gorgias are at times quite sympathetic. It is the likes of Callicles & Thrasymachus who are painted in the broad strokes of being vile human beings. Plato shows them as taking what they learned from the likes of a Gorgias only to succeed financially & politically.

So… Not all sophists are bad. Most are pretty nice people with the best of intentions. Some of my greatest friends are sophists.

Here is my taxonomy of modern sophistry:

1. The Crass Manipulator: these are the folks who do in fact use every rhetorical technique to control others.

2. The Persuaded Functionary: These are low level researchers and unimpressive thinkers who have been persuaded of the need to continue the process of moving students through compulsory learning for the good of society. They are the mediocre teachers who can never seem to rise to the challenge of being educators.

3. The Careful Persuader: These are the bright folk who develop a very rigorous discipline for doing interesting research that bolsters and broadens any given discipline through a concern for clear, distinct explanations about objects and processes of study.

4. The Persuasive Creator: Paradigm shifters whose work elucidates new avenues of research and invigorating kinds of possibilities for further study.

I believe every person who is paid to teach philosophy or any other discipline is perforce a sophist. But saying this, I also realize that I will perturb a number of my most cherished friends. Nevertheless, I can no longer continue in “respectful” silence.

I am saying all of this in an attempt to open my friends & colleagues up to philosophizing as a way of life. Professional work is but a portion, a side track. The broad avenue of living takes us beyond the narrow limits that dominate professions and disciplines.

It matters a great deal that those who are in fact doing sophistry, try to figure out what kind of sophist they are and try to find an opening in their lives to follow their vital vocation.

Obviously, a great deal of benefit to society comes from the Careful and the Creative. Some benefit comes from Functionaries since not everyone has the ability to excel at a discipline. But such also offer a deal of poor training as part & parcel of our compulsory systems of industrial instruction.

The manipulator, who I have called the loathsome sophist, is that person who is merely trying to control, to gain the upper hand and to win at all costs. This person is not only in the academy but can be found throughout society as a whole, especially in business and politics. But it is important to note that they respect knowledge as the most crass kind of power.

The key insight I get from what has been a slowly dawning realization is that latter types make themselves too available to Crass Manipulators because these are often the men & women with the money and the power to fund those who do most of the instruction, research, and creation  in our society.

Maybe if the brightest minds—especially among Careful Persuaders & Persuasive Creators—would come to admit this to themselves, they would comprehend a little better how they have helped to create a system of research & instruction that makes art, science, and religion standing reserves from which Crass Manipulators draw power to gain the entire world while simultaneously destroying ALL LIFE ON EARTH.