The Sophists, Human Nature, and the First Political Societies: a Reply to Robitzsch

In a series of recent works, Jan Maximilian Robitzsch has argued that a number of sophistic authors deny that humans are naturally social animals. According to Robitzsch, the accounts of early human political history in these authors take humanity’s weakness as a starting point and, building upon that, they maintain that humans entered into political society out of a concern for their own well-being rather than any natural inclination. Robitzsch’s interpretation is unfortunately overly simplistic and at times presents an inaccurate picture of the early Greek thinkers and what they thought about human nature and history. Features of his interpretation are also shared by other scholars, who make similar errors. In this article, I argue against Robitzsch and show that there was more diversity among the sophistic authors than he suggests vis-à-vis the question of why humans first entered society and also that in a number of relevant texts, there is a clear sense in which humans are naturally social animals.