‘노모스-퓌시스 대립명제’에 나타난 소피스트들의 비판적 사유

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to reilluminate the critical thoughts of the sophists of the 5th-4th century B.C. in ancient Greece from their perspectives presented in the ‘nomos-physis antithesis’ debate. While nomos, which means ‘law’ or ‘convention’, and physis, which means ‘nature’ or ‘true nature’, were not traditionally in opposition to each other in meaning, they were widely regarded as contrasting in the time of Plato, and thus the antithesis appeared as one of the very popular themes in the debates between Socrates and the sophists. This is why understandinging the meanings of these two words and their conceptual relationship is a key to understanding the overall picture of the ancient Greek thoughts of the time. The discussion begins, in the second chapter, by examining the traditional relationship between nomos and physis through the arguement that ancient religion and philosophy were closely related to each other, and investigating how the meanings of the words changed when they later became considered as opposed to each other. In the third chapter, what the sophists who began to appear in the 5th century Athens following Protagoras, the first sophist, criticised regarding the contemporary laws and customs is discussed. The major issue of this chaptor is how the traditional authority of nomos, which was founded on natural essence―physis―itself of the society, came to be decontructed by what theoretical points of argument of the sophists. And in the fourth chapter, the sophists' perspectives in the nomos-physis antithesis themselves are reflectively discussed. The author pays special attention to the arguments that the sophists' concept of physis is none other than human's true nature and in that case what possible errors can be made and what additional insights we can gain, and finally in what points and to what extent of the sophists thoughts we can accept from the nomos-physis antithesis debated is discussed.