Lycophron (Sophist)

Lycophron (/ˈlaɪkəfrɒn/; Greek: ) was a sophist of Ancient Greece.

The central point about Lycrophron as attacked in "The Politics" of Aristotle, is that Lycrophron rejected the idea that the state exists to make people "just and good", instead holding the view that justice and law is about preventing people violating the bodies and goods of each other. This is the only reference to Lycrophron in "The Politics".

The details of his life remain obscure, other than a number of references in the works of Aristotle. Lycophron was probably among the students of Gorgias, and is mentioned as a sophist by Aristotle. He rejected the supposed value of an , claiming that

Now the nobility of good birth is obscure, and its grandeur a matter of words.

Meaning that there is no factual difference between those well-born and those low-born; Only words and opinion assign value to these different circumstances of birth. This statement may indicate that Lycophron shared the beliefs of Antiphon, that (regardless of their ancestry) both Greeks and barbarians are born with the same capacities: An egalitarian belief that was a minority view in the 5th century BC.(this view of Lycophron has nothing to do with egalitarian ideas concerning income or wealth). He is also known for his statement (reproduced by Aristotle, in the latter's Politics, 1280b10), that "law is only a convention, a surety to another of justice". Also translated as "a guarantor of men's rights against one another". He thus believed that law is a matter of agreement, a social convention and not a natural or universal standard (there is no evidence that Lycophron rejected the idea that law is a universal standard - indeed his view appears far more universalist than that of Aristotle, in that Lycophron proposes a single standard, what would now be called the non aggression principle, in relation to all states). In this respect his views on law are similar to those of Protagoras. This means that he treats law as a mere means, in the context of a (perhaps primitive) social contract theory, without considering it as something special, in contradistinction to, e.g., Plato but similar to both Thrasymachus and Callicles, albeit that their theories have – as far as can be ascertained from the information available about them – more specific characteristics.

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