Definition of "sophistic"

[…] he is simply translating into Marxian terms the Sophistic view “that the more powerful will always take advantage of the weaker, and will give the name of law and justice to whatever they lay down in their own interests.”

2004, Brian Leiter, “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud”, in Brian Leiter, editor, The Future for Philosophy, page 84

But when we consider his wish to reconcile Philosophy and Rhetoric, it must be remembered that, if the new Sophistic differed in most of its essential features from the Sophistic of Plato’s contemporaries, it was Philosophy as conceived by Isocrates rather than Plato that Themistius had in mind.

1896, Wilmer Cave Wright, The Emperor Julian’s Relation to the New Sophistic and Neo-Platonism: With a Study of His Style, page 19

Rather, to use Whitman’s phrase, Sophokles “thought through” a great deal more of the sophistic than their attacks on religion or their fascination with religion.

1995, Peter W. Rose, Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece, page 272

The luminaries of the ‘first sophistic’—Philostratus cites Gorgias, Critias, and others—treated, we are told, abstract philosophical themes.

2005, Tim Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic, page 4