Horn Affairs’s guest blogger Assefa Fafa criticizes on the views of Abraha Desta, an Ethiopian facebook activist and and executive committee member of the Arena Tigrai party, on political parties coalition.

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(Assefa Fafa)

What prompts me to write this reflection is a personal felling that political sophism is taking root in our political discourse. I have also to mention that as a student of non-sophist philosophy I felt that it is my duty to add some value to tackle the exponentially growing political sophism in Ethiopia.

Let me briefly put what sophism and its political dimension is.

History of philosophy tells us that it was during the Fifth Century B.C. that Sophism developed and emerged as a timely ideology, which increasingly became the hegemonic “counterculture” in Greece. In general, it can be said that the classical feature of Greece Sophism was its radical negation of the intellectual developments of early Greek science and philosophy. It was generally an effort that has tried and to some extent even succeeds to discard the concepts of higher principles, which are”beyond” or “behind” what is perceived by the senses. Sophism was, in simple terms, anti-Thales, anti-Pythagoras; and anti-Solon as well, who were the fathers of science, philosophy and statecraft.

To examine the political aspect of Sophism it would be imperative to look Plato’s Protagoras Dialogue. In this famous dialogue, the top Sophist Protagoras, debating with Socrates, clearly describes what is called the”Sophist Project”. Protagoras argues that “I tell you quite openly, I’m a Sophist, and I’m an educator…. Other teachers torture the young people, by forcing them, who just escaped from science, back into the study of science, even though the youth does not like it. They force upon them the teaching of mathematics, astronomy, geometry, and music. But the youth coming to me, will learn nothing but what they desire to learn”. Additionally he also states that he will educate his pupil about how to participate in politics. This is typical Sophism, giving somebody what he desires.

In Plato’s Gorgias Dialogue Socrates asked Gorgias: “Who are you? What are you doing?” Slimy Polos (Sophist disciple of Gorgias) cuts in, praising Gorgias’ intellectual greatness.Socrates responds: “Listen, we want to know what Gorgias is doing. He himself should say, what he is doing.” So Gorgias answers: “I’m a Sophist, concerned with, primarily, rhetoric: the art of speaking—irrespective of the content of speech. I teach the art of persuasion, in particular in politics and legal affairs. And, I may say, that I have developed this skill of rhetoric to the point that I stand above those who possess real knowledge.” Socrates answers: “So you admit, you operate with opinion, assumptions—not knowledge and scientific competence. And for your rhetoric to succeed, you need an audience, a crowd. The Sophist, without any real knowledge, appears to the ignorant crowd, as knowing more, and being more convincing than those who do possess genuine knowledge.”

After few conversation Socrates start to attack the Sophist and said that “tell you what your great Sophistic skill really is: You try to create in people a feeling of being flattered, or adulated. This is how you target your audience.That’s more efficient than intimidating a crowd. And for the feeling you generate in the crowd—that of being flattered and adulated—I have a comparison.This is the same feeling you have when you scratch an itch. It gives you a certain release, but one would barely call it feeling well. Listen, Gorgias,aren’t you really operating on the dark side of politics? If you are sick, if your body is sick, you turn to medicine. You try to adopt a healthy life-style you do sports. You try to stick to sophrosyne—avoiding excesses of all kinds.That’s what it means, becoming healthy again and staying healthy. If I make analogy to Sophism, I would say, it’s no medicine, no sports, no sophrosyne—Sophism is cosmetics, creating a false appearance.”

Sophism not about courageously standing for truth, justice or democracy. It is just feeding the consumer with what they want to hear or know. Not what they should know and stand for objectively. Politics of sophism does not need cardinal principles, rules or higher values, rather it just rhetorically provide the crowd what they want to hear in persuasive and seductive manner. The sources of such politics is not virtue, it is fulfilling the temporal thirsty of the crowd. There is no need to stick to science, philosophy and their procedures to pursue the crowd. Your job is to appease them and never challenge the public even when it comes to higher values such as justice and humanity.

You act according to the demand of the mass and Abraha Desta has correctly concluded that the political consciousness of Ethiopian’s is low. . There is no problem with this statement. I also agree with Abraha on this point and take the argument further that if we are to be called political party we are aiming to lead and educate the mass based on not the above assumption. But that is not the way Abraha Desta is doing his politics.

So do we have political sophists in Ethiopia? Is it possible to label our politics as the politics of sophism? Yes and I argue that our politics is full of Sophists, Abraha Desta being one among many.

Why do I call Abraha a Sophist? What did he do or say to qualify as a Sophist? Is he not simply doing ‘modern’ politics of party opposition? Again I am saying that he is not doing modern opposition party politics for he simply misunderstood the fundamental and distinguishing element of political party; i.e. Aggregating interest of particular group that would serve as the main social base of the party when Abraha wrote that:

“If you stand only for particular group of a society, while you were supposed to stand for all, it will affect the nation wide common struggle in a negative way” (translation mine).

Political philosophers named this basic error of understanding politics that have the potential to ruin the subsequent processes that would emanate from such misunderstanding. Due to objective reasons it is very hard to dream of a catchall party at this time in Ethiopia. Of course negating sciences one of the main components of classical Sophism.

Another fallacious argument that may strengthen my argument is the following statement of Abraha:

“what will Arena do after winning in Tigrai region? It cannot hold the federal power. So what shall it do? Shall they secede? Arena Tigrai has no aim of secession”.(Translation mine)

In basic philosophy we call this False Dichotomy, also known as Faulty Dilemma.

Abraha is assuming that there are only two alternatives, capturing national power or Secession, when in fact there are more options such as governing Tigrai as a regional state and so on.

Superficially, the statement seems persuasive to conclude that Arena’s decision to cooperate with other parties is a mandatory one since the alternative is going for secession. At this point, a typical Sophist manipulation is underway.

The main aim is to pursue the public by whatever means necessary including committing grand fallacies like he did in the above mentioned post of him post. Abraha knows the sensitiveness of the secession agenda and he framed his argument as such to terrify, seduce and finally pursue his audience about the obligatory nature of inter-party cooperation. Cooperation among and between parties is a ‘mass’ cry and he must be loyal to that end i.e. a typical Sophist politics!

Abraha is simply practicing Sophist Political tradition, nothing less nothing more. Some may think the usual contradictions in Abraha’s statements simply show that he is confused or lack knowledge as the following two conflicting statements are found in one post of him.

“the politics of we and them is divisive. VS The TPLF choosed to cooperate with others after they won the war while their original idea was to seceed. Where us WE do not blame TPLF for cooperating with the supposedly enemy. After all we got no enemy”. (translation mine).

YES he is NOT confused! He is just doing politics of the Sophists and he stated it clearly as follows:

‘politics is not only about truthfulness, it is also about public opinion. in politics the desires of the electorate must gain primacy'(Translation mine).

This is the very essence of Sophism, it is not about truth or higher principles. This statement is sophist because sophists denied the primary significance of higher principles in nature (such as ‘truthfulness), and similarly there are no higher principles governing society. For Sophists Natural law is a fantasmagoria. It is more profitable to focus on the immediate benefit than standing for principle or ‘truth’.

I may say to Abraha Desta, like Socrates did, “So you operate with opinion,assumptions—not knowledge and scientific competence. And for your rhetoric tosucceed, you need an audience, a crowd. The Sophist, without any real knowledge, appears to the ignorant crowd, as knowing more, and being more convincing than those who do possess genuine knowledge.”

The funny part is his statement in the introduction part, which says:

“in order to design our future political line we shall choose true or real political direction”(Translation mine).

I hope the reader gets what it means by Sophist Politics and I promise the second part will be posted soon. Your comments and questions are most welcomed.

Let me conclude my note by Prof. Gebru Tarekegn’s statement (in 2013):

The main reason for the proliferation of political parties is to get access to benefits associated with authority.…What differentiates the existing ample parties? Is it fundamental idealization difference? Ideological? or difference among the founding personalities? If we examine all the parties, ranging from the small to the big ones, they are established based on interest of the individual. That individual decides everything. They are not parties that depend on ideological conviction and discipline.

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