Concept
Sophist
Overview
teachers of 5th century BC Greece
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Sophist is discussed.
Because, in this way, oratory was one of the first requirements for the rule of a people, or for making something clear to them through their ordinary ideas, the Sophists trained men for common Greek life, for citizenship and for statesmen, without appearing to prepare State officials for an examination in specific subjects. For the particular characteristic of eloquence is to show the manifold points of view…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; opens on it
The state, however, seems never to have encouraged them further, than by assigning to some of them a particular place to teach in, which was sometimes done, too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed his gardens to his own school.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
STRANGER: Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as we proceed. Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire into the nature of the Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to make out what he is and bring him to light in a discussion; for at present we are only agreed about the name, but of the thing to which we both apply the name possibly you have one notion and I another; whereas we ought…
Plato, Sophist
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; the book is about it; author linked in the graph
Now the art of the Sophist is, as I believe, of great antiquity; but in ancient times those who practised it, fearing this odium, veiled and disguised themselves under various names, some under that of poets, as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, some, of hierophants and prophets, as Orpheus and Musaeus, and some, as I observe, even under the name of gymnastic-masters, like Iccus of Tarentum, or the more recently…
Plato, Protagoras
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph
But the wisdom of the Greeks was professional and disputatious, and thus most adverse to the investigation of truth. The name, therefore, of sophists, which the contemptuous spirit of those who deemed themselves philosophers, rejected and transferred to the rhetoricians--Gorgias,[36] Protagoras, Hippias, Polus--might well suit the whole tribe, such as Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus, and their…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Sophist
- Callicles
- Timon of Phlius
- Hesiod
- Heraclitus
- Zeno of Elea
- The Clouds
- Tommaso Campanella
- Leucippus
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Marsilio Ficino
- Gongsun Long
- Plato
- Protagoras
- Aristippus
- Socrates
- Dio Chrysostom
- Jacques Derrida
- Iamblichus
- W. K. C. Guthrie
- Favorinus
- Prodicus
- Gorgias
- Gaius Musonius Rufus
Related ideas
- Egalitarianism
- Aristophanes
- Greco-Roman world
- Cognition
- Jesus
- Gorgias (dialogue)
- Greek language
- Callicles
- Athens
- Classical Athens
- Herodotus
- Homer
- Philosophy
- Aelius Aristides
- Ancient Greek mathematics
- Atheism
- The Clouds
- Ancient Corinth
- Justice
- Lucian
- Thrasymachus
- Athenaeus
- Isocrates
- Sophistical Refutations
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
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