The one who controls language controls reality
Rhetoric, the Sophists of ancient Greece taught us, isn’t about sharing truth, but about winning arguments.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— Unknown
Around 427 BCE, a man named Gorgias arrived in Athens. A phenomenal improvisational thinker and speaker, Gorgias was known for being able to convince nearly anyone of anything — even on topics he knew little or nothing about. For him, knowledge of the topic at hand was not a prerequisite for persuasion; according to Gorgias, all a speaker had to know was how to talk about that particular subject.
One of his most impressive feats, Gorgias was able to convincingly argue that nothing exists: “If the nonexistent exists,” he postulated, “the existent will not exist, for these are opposites to each other, and if existence is an attribute of nonexistence, nonexistence will be an attribute of existence.”
While the semantics of this statement may seem convoluted and foreign to us, for the people of ancient Greece, among whom language was not yet thought of as something that represented the world, Gorgias’ arguments were difficult to reckon with. To them, truth was not absolute but relative and contextual. Thus, a skilled speaker could reshape reality by distorting how the audience perceived it — the strength of their convictions only making them more believable.
Gorgias was what Plato and others referred to as a Sophist, itinerant intellectuals in the fifth century BCE who taught the art of rhetoric (i.e., the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing). The ancient Sophists of Athens often used antilogic — which involves “the assignment to any argument of a counterargument that negates it” — to question the possibility of absolute truths.
“In the minds of many Athenians, the Sophists were the first to figure out how to create an alternate reality using only words, and so they were the reason that words had become detached from reality in the first place,” writes Robin Reames, author of The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times.
Thus is the power of rhetoric.
The advent of literacy in Athens had brought with it the unanticipated and unwelcome retreat of truth, as people could no longer distinguish reality from falsehood. And because language was not yet viewed as representing the world, truth was equivocal to simply winning an argument.
Gorgias was not trying to prove that nothing exists. He was simply trying to demonstrate what language – which was deemed separate from reality – is capable of. “Language is not the things themselves,” Gorgias said, “and it has no substance in the way that visible and audible things have.”
Many well-to-do Athenians, eager to acquire Gorgias’ skills of persuasion, paid him good money to learn his methods — a fact that afforded him access to and the ear of many of Athens’ most prominent citizens and leaders. Ultimately, Gorgias’ rise would correlate with Athens’ demise, as leaders, persuaded by his arguments, launched a military effort to liberate Sicily – Gorgias’ home city – from Sparta. A move that ultimately resulted in Sparta’s conquest of Athens.
The Sophists of ancient Greece may be long gone, but their influence still lingers — at a time when the search for truth is, well, complicated.
Today, we use the term sophist to refer to someone “who uses slippery language to twist truth for his or her own personal gain,” as Reames writes.
Sound familiar?
The mark of sophist thinking and rhetorical maneuvering can be witnessed in the mechanisms of social media and legacy media today, as well as among the political elite. Just like in ancient Greece, sophists of today wield rhetoric like a knife to carve out a definition of truth that aligns with their personal goals and ambitions.
We’ve all seen and heard this type of language — the kind that uses emotion or confusion over logic or clarity, with a focus on igniting passions and emotions and influencing our decision making. Rather than simply informing us about the world, rhetoric attempts to sway how we think, how we feel and how we respond.
But whether we recognize rhetoric’s deployment and its ability to manipulate us is another thing. Unlike ancient Athenians, we have the benefit of hindsight.
Yet we’ve continued to make the same mistakes over the years. Consider one Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin …
“I have here in my hand a list of 205 — a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
— Sen. Joseph McCarthy
During the Cold War, Sen. Joseph McCarthy used fear, accusation and repetition to convince the American people that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. His infamous claim that he had “a list of 205” communists in the State Department was never substantiated, yet because of its specificity and the fear it elicited, it dominated public imagination.
Like the Sophists, McCarthy understood that in a society where speech shapes policy, truth can be outmaneuvered by emotion. “McCarthyism” itself became synonymous with weaponized rhetoric — persuasion by insinuation.
Just as Athens under the Sophists grew vulnerable to internal division and poor judgment, McCarthy’s America witnessed civic distrust and fear-driven politics that chilled open discourse.
The Sophists taught that in a democracy, the one who controls language controls reality. McCarthy proved the same nearly two millennia later. Both flourished in moments of fear and flux, when citizens craved certainty more than truth.
But, thankfully, history is our greatest teacher. If we allow it.
We have the ability to learn from the mistakes of our past. To do so, we must go further than just considering whether or not the words we read or hear are true; we have to think critically about the language used and its goals.
How is the writer or speaker trying to make us feel?
Do they attempt to use neutral language?
Do they evoke emotions, or do they use straightforward descriptions?
What is their overall tone?
For ancient Athenians the vehicle was literacy. For us, it’s social media and, increasingly, AI.
But unlike in ancient Greece, it’s not literacy that poses the challenge today, but a prevailing illiteracy that threatens the very idea of truth itself.
In this time of pervasive, polarizing rhetoric, where do you go for truth, and how can we be more discerning in our pursuit of it?
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A very interesting and elegantly written essay. The parallels are quite accurate. It's an interesting question, though: how do you argue with those who have already bought into "alternative sources of information"? I've tried. Only sophistical methods work. These people literally won't accept any treatment other than manipulation. Only very, very long personal conversations can sometimes slightly pierce the shell of ignorance.
Great piece that relates to today. Thanks for crafting and sharing your abilities. I would also add influences who currently occupy this new podcastlandia space as modern sophists.