Sophistic Doctrine. An early Greek philosophical
position regarding freedom was the simple denial of
all intrinsic limitations upon the pursuit of voluntary
aims. Moral convention and social structure are mere
conveniences of life, and can be made the instruments
of masterminds who know how to get outside them
and to manipulate them. Such was, or was said to be
(e.g., by Plato, Republic 336b ff.) the doctrine of cer-
tain fifth-century Greek Sophists who claimed to teach
well-placed young men the art of success in public life.
In opposition to this doctrine, Socrates and Plato
shifted attention from external to internal constraint—
from the rub between one's own will and one's neigh-
bor's to the rub between one's reason and one's passion
or appetite. A man's true self was his Reason; to be
free was to rule one's passions; it was no true freedom
to make one's fellowmen the instruments of mindless
appetite, or of exorbitant ambition.
