Sophism Legacy

2026-06-18, by Dmitri Zdorov

The ancient Greeks, of course, had a breakthrough in the development of society, one that benefited our entire civilization for thousands of years. And although, naturally, we cannot replicate direct democracy as they had it, and it is not even clear whether it is possible or desirable, those are philosophical questions.

But here is what is interesting, their democracy was destroyed not so much by enemies from the outside, but to a great degree by a disease from within. Namely, sophism.

Sophism is not simply “clever argumentation,” as it is sometimes presented. The real danger of sophism is that it separates language from truth, and then unleashes language techniques to the detriment of ideas. It teaches people not to search for what is real, what is good, what is just, but to win the argument. To dominate the conversation. To make the weaker argument appear stronger. To turn word trickery into a weapon.

At first this looks like intelligence, it even looks like education. A person learns to argue, to deconstruct, to question assumptions, to expose hidden motives. All of this can be useful, of course. But then, at some point, the mechanism becomes detached from reality. Questioning becomes a universal poison. Every moral principle is revealed to be “just a construct.” Every institution is explained as a mask for power or corruption. Every disagreement is interpreted not as a disagreement about truth, but as oppression, privilege, ideology, or bad faith.

And after that, real conversation becomes impossible. And that, of course, leads to the destruction of society, because there are only two ways to deal with conflicts, either with words or with violence.

It seems to me, actually, that the current extensive prevalence of radical-left ideology in academia and education and, really, the whole rise of neo-Marxism across many societies in the West is pretty much the fruit of sophism specifically. Not because every left-wing idea is false, and not because society has no injustices. Of course it has. But because this whole style of thinking often does not try to understand reality as it is. It tries to interpret everything through a prefabricated moral and political machine. Especially when history has shown us how pure socialist government ideas lead to tyranny, repression, and often even mass starvation, as they tend to fight wealth and make enormous efforts to eliminate first the rich, then everyone who does not want to be poor.

Their conclusion is known in advance. The language only has to produce the justification.

In this sense, sophism is a perfect fertilizer for bad ideas. The seeds may vary from identitarianism, epistemological relativism, social constructivism, and whataboutism to often just plain deception. But sophism gives them the soil in which they grow. It gives them a method. It gives them a language. It gives them the ability to avoid reality while still sounding intelligent, moral, and sophisticated.

The framing is everything there, as these ideas feed on something very real, like the natural human feeling that life is unfair. Because life is unfair. People are born with different talents, different families, different bodies, different luck, different tragedies. Any decent society should try to reduce unnecessary suffering and give people a fairer chance. A rising tide lifts all boats. But that is not the same thing as declaring war on merit, competence, hierarchy, distinction, responsibility, and achievement.

This is why sophism is so dangerous. It does not look like barbarism. It looks refined, educated, moral, even compassionate and empathetic. It comes from universities, from intellectuals, from people with good vocabularies and confident voices. But inside it there is a rot, the refusal to submit words to reality, and the feeling of superiority and knowing it all.

And when a civilization loses that habit, when it no longer demands that arguments correspond to truth, it becomes defenseless. Any absurdity can be made respectable. Any cruelty can be renamed justice. Any failure can be explained away by theory. Any opponent can be declared morally illegitimate instead of being answered.

For me sophism is one of those dangerous mental viruses that can infect an entire civilization. Incurable, like herpes, it never fully disappears. Only prevention, intellectual hygiene, and timely treatment help to contain it.

Tags: philosophypoliticssociety