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Sophistry
A sophist () was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught ''arete'', "virtue" or "excellence", predominantly to young statesmen and nobility. The arts of the sophists were known as sophistry and gained a negative reputation as tools of arbitrary reasoning. "Sophistry" is today used as a pejorative for a superficially sound but intellectually dishonest argument in support of a foregone conclusion. Etymology The Greek word is related to the noun . Since the times of Homer, it commonly referred to an expert in his profession or craft. Charioteers, sculptors, or military experts could be referred to as in their occupations. The word has gradually come to connote general wisdom and especially wisdom in human affairs such as politics, ethics, and household management. This was the meaning ascribed to the Greek Seven Sages of 7t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations. Aristotle defined rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion", and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he called it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics". Aristotle also identified three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric, or phases of developing a persuasive speech, were first codified in classical Rome: i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gorgias
Gorgias ( ; ; – ) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. W. K. C. Guthrie writes that "Like other Sophists, he was an itinerant that practiced in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to ask miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies." W. K. C. Guthrie, ''The Sophists'' (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 270. He has been called "Gorgias the Nihilist", although the degree to which this epithet adequately describes his philosophy is controversial.Rosenkrantz, G. (2002). The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time*. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64(3), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War. The u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thales
Thales of Miletus ( ; ; ) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Philosophy, philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. Thales was one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Seven Sages, founding figures of Ancient Greece. Beginning in eighteenth-century historiography, many came to regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek philosophy, Greek tradition, breaking from the prior use of mythology to explain the world and instead using natural philosophy. He is thus otherwise referred to as the first to have engaged in mathematics, History of science#Pre-socratics, science, and deductive reasoning. Thales's view that all of nature is based on the existence of a Arche, single ultimate substance, which he Theory, theorized to be Water (classical element), water, was widely influential among the philosophers of his time. Thales thought the Earth floated on water. In mathematics, Thales is the namesake of Thales's theorem, and the interc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippias
Hippias of Elis (; ; late 5th century BC) was a Greek sophist, and a contemporary of Socrates. With an assurance characteristic of the later sophists, he claimed to be regarded as an authority on all subjects, and lectured on poetry, grammar, history, politics, mathematics, and much else. Most current knowledge of him is derived from Plato, who characterizes him as vain and arrogant. Life Hippias was born at Elis in the mid 5th-century BC (c. 460 BC) and was thus a younger contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates. He lived at least as late as Socrates (399 BC). He was a disciple of Hegesidamus. Owing to his talent and skill, his fellow-citizens availed themselves of his services in political matters, and in a diplomatic mission to Sparta. But he was in every respect like the other sophists of the time: he travelled about in various towns and districts of Greece for the purpose of teaching and public speaking. The two dialogues of Plato, the '' Hippias major'' and the ''Hippias min ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prodicus
Prodicus of Ceos (; , ''Pródikos ho Keios''; c. 465 BC – c. 395 BC) was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known as a speaker and a teacher. Plato treats him with greater respect than the other sophists, and in several of the Platonic dialogues Socrates appears as the friend of Prodicus. One writer claims Socrates used his method of instruction. Prodicus made linguistics and ethics prominent in his curriculum. The content of one of his speeches is still known, and concerns a fable in which Heracles has to make a choice between Virtue and Vice. He also interpreted religion through the framework of naturalism. Life Prodicus was a native of Ioulis on the island of Ceos, the birthplace of Simonides, whom he is described as having imitated. Prodicus came frequently to Athens for the purpose of transacting business on behalf of his native city, and attracted admiration as an orator, although ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protagoras
Protagoras ( ; ; )Guthrie, p. 262–263. was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue '' Protagoras'', Plato credits him with inventing the role of the professional sophist. Protagoras is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that "Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not" which was usually rendered simply as "Man is the measure of all things," interpreted (possibly wrongly, since he disagreed) by Plato to mean that there is no objective truth; Protagoras seems to have meant that each person's own personal history, experiences and expectations, developed over their lifetime, determine their judgments, opinions, and statements regarding "truth" (which is the title of the book in which Protagoras made this statement). When a person makes a judgment about a certain thin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athens
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southernmost capital on the European mainland. With its urban area's population numbering over 3.6 million, it is the List of urban areas in the European Union, eighth-largest urban area in the European Union (EU). The Municipality of Athens (also City of Athens), which constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire urban area, had a population of 643,452 (2021) within its official limits, and a land area of . Athens is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE. According to Greek mythology the city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iatrosophist
Iatrosophist (, ) is an ancient title designating a teacher of medicine. It comes from 'doctor' and 'learned person'."sophist, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2018, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/184755. Accessed 29 August 2018. People who have been referred to by the title include: * Adamantius * Cassius Iatrosophista * Gessius of Petra * Magnus of Nisibis * Oribasius * Palladius (physician) * Paul of Aegina Paul of Aegina or Paulus Aegineta (; Aegina, ) was a 7th-century Byzantine Greek physician best known for writing the encyclopedia, medical encyclopedia ''Medical Compendium in Seven Books.'' He is considered the “Father of Early Medical Writing ... * * Zeno of Cyprus See also * Iatrosophia References {{reflist Byzantine physicians ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deipnosophistae
The ''Deipnosophistae'' (, ''Deipnosophistaí'', lit. , where ''sophists'' may be translated more loosely as ) is a work written in Ancient Greek by Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of Greek literature, literary, Ancient history, historical, and Antiquarian#Antiquarianism in ancient Rome, antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist for an assembly of Grammarian (Greco-Roman world), grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on. Title The Ancient Greek, Greek title ''Deipnosophistaí'' () is a Compound (linguistics), compound of ' ( ) and ''sophistḗs'' ( ). It and its English language, English derivative ''s'' thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greek symposium, symposia. However, the term is shaded by the harsh treatment accorded to sophist, professional teachers in Plato's Socratic dialogues, which made the English term ' into a pejora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The ''Suda'' says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, implies that he survived that emperor. He was a contemporary of Adrantus. Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the ''thratta'', a type of fish mentioned by Archippus (poet), Archippus and other comic poets, and of a history of the Syrian kings. Both works are lost. Of his works, only the fifteen-volume ''Deipnosophistae'' mostly survives. The ''Deipnosophistae'' The ''Deipnosophistae'', which means 'dinner-table philosophers', survives in fifteen books. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh and fifteenth, are extant only in epitome, but otherwise the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gymnosophist
Gymnosophists (, ''gymnosophistaí'', i.e. "naked philosophers" or "naked wise men" (from Greek γυμνός ''gymnós'' "naked" and σοφία ''sophía'' "wisdom")) were ancient Indian philosophers who pursued asceticism to the point of regarding food and clothing as detrimental to purity of thought. mentioned several times in Ancient Greek literature. They are mentioned in association with the Persian magi, the Chaldaeans of the Assyrians or the Babylonians, the druids of the Celts, and the priests of Egypt. Some sources claim that famous figures such as Lycurgus, Pythagoras, and Democritus may have met them. They are mentioned by authors such as Philo, Lucian, Clement of Alexandria, Philostratus, and Heliodorus of Emesa. These reports are thought to have served as models to Cynics as well as Christian ascetics. Many authors have discussed the purported questions by Alexander the Great and answers by the Gymnosophists. There were also gymnosophists in Upper Egypt who we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
