The chapter presents the Sophists’ more original contributions to political thought and shows how some of their ideas, which were often developed in the course of their practice as advisors or pedagogues, influenced the work of the two major philosophers of the next generation, Plato and Aristotle. The chapter’s first section shows the debt of early theorizing on constitutions to the Sophists’ practice of antilogia or debate but also to the discussions about democracy that mark Athenian intellectual life in the last decades of the fifth century, and shows how such theorizing provides the springboard for Plato’s pursuit for the best constitution. Its second section focuses on the criticism of law and argues that (despite what continues to be a dominant interpretation in the study of Sophistic thinking) such criticism should not be understood as a threat to morality but rather as constructive reflection on the nature and the limits of legislation.

A discussion of the role of character in Plato, initially focused on Thrasymachus in the Republic, and on arguing that his person is less important to Plato than his view of politics as domination of the weak by the strong. The Socrates of that and other dialogues is certainly one of the most vividly characterised figures in world literature. Nonetheless, when this unique individual speaks of philosophy and the philosopher, he directs our attention away from individuals towards a realm of abstract generalities. Once the magnetism of Socrates has established the legitimacy of philosophy (under that name), Plato has reason to make philosophy independent of his idiosyncratic central figure. Accordingly, in some later writings he relegates Socrates to the margins, and brings on stage a nameless, generic philosopher – a visitor from Elea – to discuss the paradoxes of not-being in the Sophist and political expertise in the Statesman.

Plato’s treatment of justice in the individual in Book IV of the Republic has been heavily criticised. His radical proposal that it consists in an ordering of elements of the soul, parallel to justice in the city conceived as a social order maintained by specialisation of roles assigned to the three classes he specifies, is often seen as too remote from what anybody would recognise as ‘justice’. The criticism rests on two principal misconceptions: of the connection Plato is positing between psychic harmony and just behaviour, and of what he takes psychic harmony to consist in. First, he assumes law-abiding citizens behaving with what he like anybody else would count as justice. What harmony of the soul provides is the best explanation of their inner motivation for so behaving. Second, harmony is conceived as achieved when each element in the soul is focused as it should and will be, following good upbringing and education such as is described for the Guards in Books II and III.

In the course of discussing the nature of justice in the first book of the Republic, a number of claims are made concerning the nature of technê and what it is to be skilful or to have an ability. Nawar shows how three of these claims, which do significant conceptual work in both Plato and Aristotle, can be explained and defended. The first claim, by Socrates, concerns the ‘two-way’ nature of certain skills. For instance, the person who is skilful at hitting is not only proficient at hitting well, but also proficient at avoiding being hit. The second claim, by Thrasymachus, is that the practitioner of a technê is, in a certain way, infallible and cannot fail to bring about what they intend. The third claim, made by Socrates, is that technai are not value-neutral, but rather are directed at the good of their object. Namar examines these claims, clarifies them, and attempts to explain them (so far as possible). Furthermore, he shows that these claims play an important role in Aristotle’s thought and examines how Aristotle aims to incorporate or adapt these claims in his own discussion of the modal and teleological aspects of skills and rational capacities.