Are my beliefs and actions more platonic or more sophistic?

My answer is heavily influenced by both the work I do, the cross-disciplinary nature of my work, and by the core beliefs that we teach at my place of work. I’ve been a Chief Operating Officer at Greenbrier Academy for Girls, and in that position, I often analyzed our business decisions based on the model that we embody: relationality. The gist of relationality at the therapeutic boarding school for struggling teenage girls is that virtue-giving and -receiving relationships lead to better mental wellbeing. What a great topic to study in this class!

When my husband was offered a position at a med school last month, I had to step down from my position (as it is quite difficult to manage day-to-day matters living a state away). Now I’m doing research for the school and continuing writing about the model. Already we have hit on some philosophical viewpoints from Aristotle and Plato that contribute to our company’s model. Yet, much to my surprise, the Sophists have also contributed to our current ways of thinking.

We certainly belief and teach that our word are influential and important, that our rhetoric can be impactful on even our mental wellbeing and that of those around us. And, like the Sophists, our employees are paid to model and teach positive relationships that are associated with our words and actions.

On the other hand, this model itself has two camps: strong relationality and weak relationality. The laughable part is that BOTH camps define themselves as strong relationality and the other as weak relationality. Our view contends that a person’s spiritual or religious component of their life (or choice to not have this as an aspect of their life) influences their relationships. We are extremely contextually oriented so we believe that all aspects are influential. This adds a potential component for absolute truth in the sense that Plato would understand it. YET, to complicate matters, we view truth (or as we usually term it, virtue) as contextual [read: truth is not absolute but is contextual]. It’s almost Platonic with a twist of Sophistic. Here’s an example my supervisor often uses.

In the 1940s, there was a family living in Nazi Germany. The mother was trying to teach her children good morals through leading by example. One day the Gestapo knock on the door of their home. The mother answers and is asked if her children are at home. She is faced with the dilemma of telling the truth or protecting her children. What are her options? Here the mother faces two values (or virtues): honesty and loyalty. According to abstract truth, principles are unchangeable. In other words, it is always wrong to lie. Abstract truth is outside of context. Here, in the story above, we do have a context. How is truth situated in the story’s context?

Relational truth rejects the idea of contextlessness. Contextlessness in abstractionism is apparent because truth is thought to transcend specific experiences. In other words, truth is seen as universal because it is not bound to specific experiences. Since it is not associated with context, there is no question about whether or not the mother in the story above should tell the truth. Abstract truth says one should always be honest. Relational truth, however, looks at the situation and asks what is the best solution across multiple values.

What is the difference between relational truth and abstract truth? We make decisions based on virtue in context, seeking to make the best choice for all involved. Note that we are not promoting relativity, which is the idea that there is no right or wrong. Rather, we are asking the question, “What is the most virtuous choice for the situation?”

As you can see from the rather lengthy explanation I’ve gone into, my hand reach to both the sophist and platonic belief systems and use information from both.