Literary notes about sophistry (AI summary)
In literature, “sophistry” is frequently invoked as a term of denunciation—an accusation against arguments or practices that are seen as misleading, deceptive, or intellectually dishonest. Plato’s works, for example, juxtapose sophistry with earnest philosophical inquiry, noting its pervasive influence in fields as varied as law, medicine, politics, and theology ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]), while other authors use the term to signal when rhetoric or reasoning strays into mere artifice or moral subterfuge ([6], [7], [8], [9]). Throughout works by writers ranging from Rousseau and Schopenhauer to Dickens and Poe, sophistry appears as a critique of arguments that sacrifice genuine truth for persuasive manipulation, ultimately serving as a reminder of the dangers of valuing style over substance ([10], [11], [12], [13]).
- Again, there is the sophistry of classes and professions.
— from Gorgias by Plato - There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology.
— from Gorgias by Plato - There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology.
— from Gorgias by Plato - There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology.
— from Gorgias by Plato - There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology.
— from Gorgias by Plato - That was a sophistry.
— from The Lani People by Jesse F. Bone - Is not all literature passing into criticism, just as Athenian literature in the age of Plato was degenerating into sophistry and rhetoric?
— from Phaedrus by Plato - I never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded it with chicane and sophistry.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke - Politicians indulge in the same sophistry about the love of liberty as philosophers about the state of nature.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - My situation, after all sophistry and reflection, had finally to be summed up in three awful words— Lost!
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne - And, in general, how is it possible that philosophy, degraded to the position of a means of making one's bread, can fail to degenerate into sophistry?
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer - His reply is a curious mixture of truth, political sophistry, false assumption, and blind selfishness.
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - An appeal to one’s own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
