ANTIPHON AND THE NATURE OF LIBERTY

Antiphon the Sophist (lived in the fifth century BC) is perhaps the most important of the virtually unknown pre-Socratics, whose contribution to the history of philosophical thought has been unjustly neglected. He is said to be the author of the treatise On Truth, of which only fragments have survived, but they are important fragments. They continue our discussion of justice, now reaching into a third consecutive entry of this series, and here are a few glimpses of it:

Most of the things that are legally just are [nonetheless]... inimical to nature. By law it has been laid down for the eyes what they should see and what they should not see; for the ears what they should hear and what they should not hear; for the tongue what it should speak, and what it should not speak; for the hands what they should do and what they should not do... and for the mind what it should desire, and what it should not desire. (On Truth)

Antiphon’s argument contrasts the notion of man-made laws, representing repression of liberty, with natural laws, which are the essence of liberty. There is a tangible and irreconcilable conflict between the two, but it must be clear which must be deemed superior. The laws of nature are necessary and immutable, whereas the man-made laws are artificial and expendable. The former are innate, whereas the latter are a result of people entering into a covenant among themselves. (Hobbes, take notice!--- Antiphon beat you to the covenantal explanation of the origin of the state!)

Antiphon is consistent in all aspects of his theory. Slavery for him is a most unnatural social institution.---

“By nature, we are all equal in every respect, the barbarians and the Hellenes, for all people have the same needs, we breathe air with our mouth and eat with the help of our hands.”

Among other things, Antiphon was a great mathematician, the first to give an upper and lower bound for the value of pi, by inscribing and then circumscribing a polygon around a circle, then proceeding to calculate the polygons’ areas. This method was applied to the problem of squaring the circle.

But his greatest achievement is unquestionably his revolutionary theory of natural (as opposed to artificial) law. By developing it, while being traditionally called a sophist, he has given sophism as such an excellent name, on which high note we are now delighted to close the whole series on sophism in this section.