Wisdom,Truth,and the Limits of Speech in Job and in Plato’s Gorgias

Abstract

This article compares the critique of traditional wisdom in Job to the critique of sophistry in Plato’s Gorgias. Sophistry is not conducive to pursuing truth, for its rhetorical mode of speech is about persuasion rather than learning. Similarly, the responses of Job’s friends to his suffering are inadequate because they stem from traditional wisdom’s misguided conceit that human speech can explain a complex world. Job and the Gorgias reject traditional wisdom and sophistry as “bullshit” in philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s definition: speech that aims not to be true but only to sound true. This is the archenemy of authentic wisdom.