Plato’s irritation with the Sophists was never about style. It was about moral purpose. As Jonny Thomason discusses in his Big Think essay (it’s a short read and well worth your time), Plato’s frustration with the Sophists was their quest for persuasion at any cost, not the search for truth.
The Sophists were not engaged in the labor of discernment; they were engaged in the craft of winning. Their skill was not phronēsis—practical wisdom oriented toward what is true and good—but technē, a technique for taking advantage of the audience’s weaknesses. They knew how to perform. They did not care to understand.
That same pathology afflicts far too much of modern legal practice. Sophistry is not dangerous primarily because it is glib or manipulative; its real danger is that it treats argument as a form of combat, a chance to subdue an adversary rather than illuminate an issue. Eristic reasoning (argument for the sake of prevailing) has become a professional default even in contexts where the costs of such are profound. Family law, perhaps more than any other field, shows what happens when the profession confuses “winning” with advocacy.
Sophistry Is About Defeat, Not Discovery
Plato’s critique of the Sophists was withering because their aim was so small: they treated discussion as a zero-sum game in which cleverness triumphed over substance. Their questions were not asked to probe reality but to maneuver opponents. Their answers did not aim to clarify but to prevail.
He charged them with:
- valuing the appearance of wisdom over the pursuit of it,
- bending logic toward advantage rather than toward accuracy,
- detaching argument from any responsibility to the truth,
- rewarding victory even when built on unstable premises.
Eristic argument corrodes both intellect and civic life. It mistakes the ability to corner an opponent for the ability to understand a problem. And this is not a relic of ancient Athens. The modern courtroom often exhibits the same vices.
Without Vigilance, Law Tends to Drift Into Eristic Thinking
Lawyers Often Argue to Win, Not to Clarify
Our system is designed for—and claims to facilitate—a search for truth, but its day-to-day administration and incentives have given way to corruption. Too many practitioners are seduced by the thrill (and profit) from “beating” the opposing party.
You see it everywhere:
- arguments engineered to trap rather than illuminate and explain,
- interrogatories and depositions used to script a narrative instead of uncovering facts,
- tactics that cloud rather than clarify,
- procedural gamesmanship used to distort rather than refine the issues.
When winning becomes the goal, truth suffers the collateral damage.
The profession recites lofty rhetoric about justice, but seductive eristics creates a culture of competitive posturing, an “art” of persuasion detached from an obligation to truth.
Dialectical Advocacy: A Better Way
How Plato’s Dialectic Maps Onto Good Legal Practice
Dialectic, in Plato’s hands, was not wordplay. It was disciplined inquiry. It required humility, patience, and the willingness to follow an argument wherever it led, even when the destination was inconvenient. Dialectic exposes contradictions, tests assumptions, and refines positions. Its loyalty is to reality, not to advantage.
A dialectical lawyer:
- seeks to understand before seeking to persuade,
- interrogates his or her own assumptions as rigorously as the opponent’s,
- abandons or modifies positions when the facts demand it,
- prioritizes evidence and reason over leverage,
- earnestly builds arguments that withstand earnest scrutiny rather than overwhelm an interlocutor.
The difference between eristic argument and dialectical argument is not stylistic but moral and intellectual.
Family Law Shows the High Cost of Eristic Advocacy
Competitive Argumentation Fails Families and Children
In family law, eristic argument is not merely unattractive, it is destructive. You see it in:
- arguments crafted to wound the other parent instead of illuminating the parent’s strengths and weaknesses
- weaponizing a child’s fears, words, or circumstances as leverage to win advantage rather than to illuminate the child’s actual needs or lived reality,
- motions filed as pressure tactics rather than problem-solving tools,
- narratives shaped to inflame rather than to understand,
- exaggerations or omissions justified because “they work.”
The damage is concrete. Distortion of truth poisons every level of the system: it dupes courts and entrenches harmful narratives about parents, destabilizes children’s relationships and identities. It fractures families on false premises. and ultimately erodes public trust in the legal process that society depends on to resolve its most intimate conflicts.
Too Many Lawyers Conflate “Adversarial System” With “Hostile.”
The adversarial model was never designed to be a contest; it was designed so that each side would test, refine, and clarify the issues so the court could discern the truth and act on it prudently. Hostility is a distortion of the adversarial model, not an expression of it.
The lawyer who helps the court understand the truth always serves the client, the court, and the public better than the lawyer who merely performs convincingly.
Why Truth-Seeking Representation Serves Clients Best
Clients often arrive wanting a fighter. They imagine that legal success is a matter of crushing the opposition. But durable outcomes rarely emerge from rhetorical victories. They emerge from arguments that align with the facts, anticipate scrutiny, lead to rulings as feasible as they are fair, and honor the mandate to do justice.
Dialectical lawyers prepare clients for what is real, not what feels righteous in the moment. Eristic lawyers pander. The lawyer who pursues truth ultimately safeguards the client; the lawyer who pursues victory at the cost of truth saddles the client with brittle orders, damaged credibility, and conflict that endures long after the case is over.
Five Shifts Away From Eristic Advocacy
If the profession wants to reclaim its dignity and its usefulness, it must move decisively toward dialectical practice. To start:
- Reward intellectual honesty over tactical advantage.
- Teach and urge lawyers to refine arguments, not weaponize them.
- Expect concessions where the facts demand them—and commend those who make such concessions.
- Expose and penalize gamesmanship that obscures or distorts the truth.
- Reorient client counseling toward reality, fairness, and durable outcomes, not strategies that foster fraud and undermine integrity.
This is not a call for softness, it is just the opposite; because choosing the hard right over the easy wrong promotes enduring good and prevents lasting harm. It is a call for principle, even when it’s difficult, even harsh.
Judges don’t need a gladiator. They need a guide.
An adversarial system functioning properly consists of each side investigating, testing, and refining the issues so the court can reach the truth and craft rulings conducive to it. It does not require hostility, posturing, or constant friction. Confusing those two concepts is how lawyers turn ordinary cases into needless battlegrounds and mistake aggression for competence.
A lawyer who helps the court understand the truth should always outperform the one trying to “win” the fight.
The Choice Between Eristic and Dialectic Is No Contest
Plato’s quarrel with the Sophists was never an argument about aesthetics. It was an argument about moral seriousness. Sophistry treats argument as combat and truth as optional. Dialectic treats argument as investigation and truth as its goal. Modern law stands at the same crossroads:
- Eristic lawyering produces distortion, escalation, and injustice.
- Dialectical lawyering produces clarity, progress, and just outcomes.
Law is, at its best, a search before it is a contest. The profession needs more advocates who understand that distinction and who practice accordingly.
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