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expectations of a given community. That is, the base is quantity,
not quality. The will of the masses, according to the Sophists,
will be the basis of regulations, and after this point in history this
always has the most bearing and, more importantly, is the point
of reference. As Callicles says:
The reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of laws are the majority
who are weak; and they make laws and distribute praises and censures
with a view to themselves and to their own interests; and they terrify
the stronger sort of men, and those who are able to get the better of
them, in order that they may not get the better of them; and they
say, that dishonesty is shameful and unjust; meaning, by the word
injustice, the desire of a man to have more than his neighbours; for
knowing their own inferiority, I suspect that they are too glad of
equality. And therefore the endeavour to have more than the many,
is conventionally said to be shameful and unjust, and is called in¬
justice (compare Republic), whereas nature herself intimates that it
is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful
than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well
as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that
justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the
inferior. (Plato 2013. 483.c-d.)
Interestingly, the ideal norm here is confronted with empirical real¬
ity, according to which it might even be right. (Although—excuse
me for the humor—Callicles did not read Kant.)
So, according to the Sophists, laws were created by weak people,
by the masses, which the class we call philosophers hates more than
anything else. For Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, the masses are not only
content to live all at the same level (as long as that level is as low as
possible), but actually feel good about it, because their community
expects nothing from them but compliance. They do not have to
toil; they do not have to strive for more. From their perspective,
which is neither broad nor deep, the whole world looks the same.
This “mole perspective,” which Plato called the cave life, is com¬