Reply #26: Yep, Plato and Aristotle gave the Sophists a bad reputation they don't deserve.

[Odin2005]

The Sophists were ardent supporters of democracy and a kind of "proto-liberalism," some Sophists were the backers of a anti-slavery movement that almost succeeded and would of succeeded had the anti-democratic intellectual reaction led by Plato and Aristotle (both you defended slavery as part of the natural order of things) not of gained the upper had. The sophists were skeptics, but they weren't skeptics in the negative way the term "sophistry" denotes today. They were extremely brilliant critics of dogmatic adherence to tradition and were critical of the anti-democratic BS spewed by the propagandists of the elites. Socrates was not himself a sophist, but he carried their skepticism as far as it could go. Sadly, Socrates's pupil Plato betrayed the legacy of his humble and skeptical teacher.