Reactionary Minds in antiquity

I've been reading a lot about the Sophists lately, part of the rich tradition of ancient Greek thought that is unhelpfully and unfortunately lumped into the term "pre-Socratics." What's remarkable is how well some of the dynamics of ancient Athens fits with the Corey Robin thesis. Although we are more likely to identify them for their particular intellectual tradition, the Sophists were generally speaking wandering teachers, itinerants trained in the arts of rhetoric, poetics, and logic who would instruct whomever could pay their fee. In traditional Athenian society, education was provided for young men across social classes, but advanced education was reserved for the upper classes, who had the resources and connections necessary to pair their young men off individually with older mentors who would guide them through their educations. The Sophists democratized education, and for this reason they were feared by the Athenian ruling class, who at times acted to forbid Sophist teaching.

It wasn't merely the fact of teaching for those outside the aristocracy but also the content and purpose of such teaching that undermined the established order. As I.F. Stone puts it in The Trial of Socrates,

There is a strong element of class prejudice in the Socratic animosity towards the Sophists. They were teachers who found their markets in democratic cities like Athens among a rising middle class.... They wanted to be able to challenge the old landed aristocracy for leadership by learning the arts of rhetoric and logic so they could speak effectively in the assembly.... [H]igher education remained the monopoly of the aristocracy until the Sophists came along. They provoked upper-class antagonism by teaching the arts of rhetoric-- for an ability to speak well in public was the open door to middle-class political participation in the debates of the assembly and the higher offices of the city.

Sophists also threatened through the radicalism of their teachings. Although ancient Athenian religion was never as prescriptive or rigid as the monotheistic religions tend to be, the profound agnosticism found among major Sophistic thinkers like Protagoras must have rankled Athenian society. The Sophists also posed radical critiques of the meaning of knowledge and existence of truth, topics which provoke reactionary responses even today. Alcidamas of Elaea expressed the earliest known condemnation of slavery in human history, in a time when slavery was an essential part of the economy and the social structure. In every sense, the Sophists represented an intellectual tradition that challenged the status quo.

It's therefore no surprise that they have been shrouded in mistrust and dismissal by history. For centuries, the Sophists were dismissed as deceitful and illogical. Even today, "sophistry" is a term that refers to weaselly, conniving discourse. Rhetoric itself labors in an assumed worldview that distrusts it, under the inherently reactionary theory that the truth can be articulated plainly without the need for ornamentation. It's no accident that this long tradition of disrespect stands in contrast to the reverence for Socrates and Plato-- two explicitly anti-egalitarian thinkers who expressed a longing for authoritarian power and a distrust of the common man. Those in power write the history, and its up to us to recognize, even 2,500 years later, those whose arguments were belittled and misconstrued because they challenged the current power structure. And it behooves us to recognize one of the constants of human history: the power and persistence of class struggle.