The Greek Sophists

The Greek Sophists PDF Author: John Dillon
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141913363
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
By mid-5th century BC, Athens was governed by democratic rule and power turned upon the ability of the citizen to command the attention of the people, and to sway the crowds of the assembly. It was the Sophists who understood the art of rhetoric and the importance of transforming effective reasoning into persuasive public speaking. Their enquiries - into the status of women, slavery, the distinction between Greeks and barbarians, the existence of the gods, the origins of religion, and whether virtue can be taught - laid the groundwork for the insights of the next generation of thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.

The Greek Sophists

The Greek Sophists PDF Author: John Dillon
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141913363
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 494

Get Book

Book Description
By mid-5th century BC, Athens was governed by democratic rule and power turned upon the ability of the citizen to command the attention of the people, and to sway the crowds of the assembly. It was the Sophists who understood the art of rhetoric and the importance of transforming effective reasoning into persuasive public speaking. Their enquiries - into the status of women, slavery, the distinction between Greeks and barbarians, the existence of the gods, the origins of religion, and whether virtue can be taught - laid the groundwork for the insights of the next generation of thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.

The Sophists

The Sophists PDF Author: William Keith Chambers Guthrie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sophists (Greek philosophy)
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description


Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire

Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire PDF Author: G. W. Bowersock
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9781280763663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description


Gorgias, Sophist and Artist

Gorgias, Sophist and Artist PDF Author: Scott Porter Consigny
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570034244
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Aristophanes depicted him as a barbaric sycophant, Plato as a shallow opportunist, and Aristotle as an inept stylist, but the Greek teacher of rhetoric Gorgias of Leontini (483-375 BCE) has been again attracting attention from scholars. Consigny (English, Iowa State U.) articulates a coherent account of the enigmatic thinker and writer. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Plato's Counterfeit Sophists

Plato's Counterfeit Sophists PDF Author: Håkan Tell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674055919
Category : Sophists (Greek philosophy).
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Plato's Counterfeit Sophists explores the place of the sophists within the Greek wisdom tradition, and argues against their almost universal exclusion from serious intellectual traditions. This book seeks to offer a revised history of the development of Greek philosophy, as well as of the potential--yet never realized--courses it might have followed.

The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues

The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues PDF Author: David D. Corey
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438456174
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Draws out numerous affinities between the sophists and Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. Are the sophists merely another group of villains in Plato’s dialogues, no different than amoral rhetoricians such as Thrasymachus, Callicles, and Polus? Building on a wave of recent interest in the Greek sophists, The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there exist important affinities between Socrates and the sophists he engages in conversation. Both focused squarely on aret? (virtue or excellence). Both employed rhetorical techniques of refutation, revisionary myth construction, esotericism, and irony. Both engaged in similar ways of minimizing the potential friction that sometimes arises between intellectuals and the city. Perhaps the most important affinity between Socrates and the sophists, David D. Corey argues, was their mutual recognition of a basic epistemological insight—that appearances (phainomena) both physical and intellectual were vexingly unstable. Such things as justice, beauty, piety, and nobility are susceptible to radical change depending upon the angle from which they are viewed. Socrates uses the sophists and sometimes plays the role of sophist himself in order to awaken interlocutors and readers from their dogmatic slumber. This in turn generates wonder (thaumas), which, according to Socrates, is nothing other than the beginning of philosophy.

Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists

Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists PDF Author: Michael Gagarin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521437684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Including the works of more than thirty authors, this edition of early Greek writings on social and political issues includes the origin of human society and law; the nature of justice and good government; the distribution of power among genders and social classes.

Later Greek Literature

Later Greek Literature PDF Author: John J. Winkler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521239478
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
A body of Greek literature collected in an attempt to draw attention to often underrated literary excellence.

SOPHIST

SOPHIST PDF Author: Plato
Publisher: 右灰文化傳播有限公司可提供下載列印
ISBN:
Category : Electronic book
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
Theodorus. Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement of yesterday; and we bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is a disciple of Parmenides and Zeno, and a true philosopher. Socrates. Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in the disguise of a stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and especially the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and visit the good and evil among men. And may not your companion be one of those higher powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to spy out our weakness in argument, and to cross-examine us? Theod. Nay, Socrates, he is not one of the disputatious sort-he is too good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at all; but divine he certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to all philosophers. Soc. Capital, my friend! and I may add that they are almost as hard to be discerned as the gods. For the true philosophers, and such as are not merely made up for the occasion, appear in various forms unrecognized by the ignorance of men, and they "hover about cities," as Homer declares, looking from above upon human life; and some think nothing of them, and others can never think enough; and sometimes they appear as statesmen, and sometimes as sophists; and then, again, to many they seem to be no better than madmen. I should like to ask our Eleatic friend, if he would tell us, what is thought about them in Italy, and to whom the terms are applied. Theod. What terms? Soc. Sophist, statesman, philosopher. Theod. What is your difficulty about them, and what made you ask? Soc. I want to know whether by his countrymen they are regarded as one or two; or do they, as the names are three, distinguish also three kinds, and assign one to each name? Theod. I dare say that the Stranger will not object to discuss the question. What do you say, Stranger?

The Sophistic Movement

The Sophistic Movement PDF Author: G. B. Kerferd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521283571
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man.