Impact of Epistemological Approaches on Political Theories with Emphasis on Sophist's Views

This article aims to show that political theories are dependent on epistemological theories, through introducing the conflicting political theories of sophists in ancient Greece and their dependence on their conflicting epistemological views. The relativism and pseudo-nihilism of the first generation sophists including Protagoras and Gorgias had a profound impact on their positivist political opinions just as the stability of political realist views of the later sophists were under the influence of anti-relativist views of Greek philosophers like Socrates. This shows that scholar's epistemic views have a decisive impact on their political views. Thus the positivist political views of modern scholars are the consequence of epistemic relativism they have accepted. Since epistemic relativism is not logically defendable it can be concluded that positivist political theories are [em1] defendable either.