Back during the time of ancient Greece, Sophist performers such as Protagoras and Gorgias would play the part of the oral intelligentsia. Mostly downhill in effort, they would avoid the difficult process of definition by arguing on the more convenient side that no such virtue as definition can exist as one can never arrive at the conclusion of an absolute truth. To prove their point, they would put on shows charging the wealthy Greeks good money to watch them first argue one side of the truth and then later argue the other side of it equally well.
Understand, there was a serious lack of paper during this time. For example, Homer the Greek poet during the 8th century BCE had to be an oral composer as there did not exist enough paper to print books for people to read his stories. Instead, troubadours would venture about Greece as traveling actors. Indeed, having set the literary works of Homer and other "Cyclic" authors to memory, they would travel around the three continents of the Greek world to give performances actually acting them out in front of Greek audiences.
So, by the time of the advent of the Greek Zenith of ancient philosophy, while there was huge amounts of knowledge in the form of raw data, very little of it was defined. In fact, the oral tradition so took center stage among the Greek elite that such abilities as reading and writing were not considered intelligent endeavors. For example, after finishing the writing of his dialogues to a formal status, Plato felt the need to orally perform them in front of an audience. Aristotle, the only student of Plato who could often read and write would then record the dialogues onto paper.
It has been said that after the delivery of a very boring dialogue, often the the only two members left in the audience after the performance were Plato and Aristotle.
With this established, I'd like to make a subtle distinction between what was a Greek Sophist and what was a Greek philosopher. As a Greek Sophist would utilize eloquence to establish his own natural abilities as the foundation he stood upon, the ancient Greek philosophers stood upon a foundation that was already established by their Presocratic ancestors.
Let's use these modern sophisticated times as an example to better explain the relationship between the Sophists and the Greek philosophers. Today, the term "diversity" is often used without much thought. However, during the time of Socrates, he would never have allowed such thoughlessness. After all, he was the one who created inductive reasoning as a rational process of definition, what he would often refer to as the Dialectic, or what professors often call the Socratic Teaching Method today.
In response to someone utilizing the term "diversity," Socrates would have asked the question, "What is diversity?"
In responding back, Plato his student might say: Well, diversity is created by the mingling of different cultures.
Socrates would then respond back by asking: What is a culture?
And so on.
Now, understand, as Plato expressed exhaustingly in his dialogues, this type of questioning by Socrates would go on and on extensively in order to reduce inductively towards the best answer. After many years of answering these endless kinds of questions, Plato felt he had developed a short cut!
For example, when Socrates might ask a question like, "What is clothing fashion, Plato?" Plato would stop to reason to himself, "Okay, as informal wear can be anything from under garments, to pajamas, to going totally naked by wearing nothing at all, formal wear can be outer wear, the adorning of a silk robe, or the wearing of a suit and a tie.
In this way, Plato quickened the process advancing the slow inductive Socratic Teaching Method to that of his own method of "The Theory of the Forms."
But, then again, the Sophists weren't wrong in what they were arguing. Let's say, for example, that it isn't possible to walk on the golden path of the ultimate Truth. Plato's argument wasn't against this virtue of the Truth being unapproachable, but that certain Best-Principled Statements could provide quality truths in a direction towards that ultimate one. There could be a path made of rubies for example. There could be other paths made of silver, precious gems, and pearls.
In this way, the Greek philosophers created truth engines, factories in which raw data were inputted in order to manufacture the output of quality truths.
So, to answer Socrates question of "What is cutlure?," Plato would have asked himself the questions "what is informal culture?" and "what is formal culture?"
Well, he might reason, in an informal culture, the poorly advanced people live mostly by laws. In contrast, in a formal culture, the advanced people live more by a higher order.
To cut to the chase, what was the answer our Founding Fathers provided to the question of what is formal-culture?
The Unanimous Declaration of the
Thirteen United States of America
In Congress, July 4, 1776
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; . . ..
In their declaration of a new natural law, our Founding Fathers established a whole new order - a new economy so to speak - divorcing the people in the process from the prior order of the Old World. Upon this base of a new order, they then erected new laws within the United States Constitution. To bind both this new order and these new laws together, our Founders also established for the people a proclamation of a Bill of ten natural rights - unalienable rights - as they were greater in power, according to John Locke, than the absolute power the king once declared for himself and his royal family.
Fd. Uncle Emanuel Watkins
Prime Minister of these united States
And Acting Supreme Court over these united States