Gorgias

Gorgias
Born483 BC
Leontinoi, Sicily
(today Lentini, Italy)
Died375 BC
EraPre-Socratic philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolSophists
Main interests
Ontology, epistemology, rhetoric, moral relativism

Gorgias (/ˈɡɔːriəs/;[1] Greek: Γοργίας; 483–375 BC)[2] was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. 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."[3] He has been called "Gorgias the Nihilist" although the degree to which this epithet adequately describes his philosophy is controversial.[4][5][6][7]

Prominent among his claims to recognition is that he transplanted rhetoric from his native Sicily to Attica, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose.[8]

  1. ^ "Gorgias" entry in Collins English Dictionary.
  2. ^ Higgins, C. Francis. "Gorgias". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  3. ^ W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 270.
  4. ^ J. Radford Thomson (1887). A dictionary of philosophy in the words of philosophers. Reeves and Turner. p. 225. Gorgias the Nihilist.
  5. ^ Rosenkrantz, G. (2002). The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time*. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64(3), 728-736.
  6. ^ Gronbeck, B. E. (1972). Gorgias on rhetoric and poetic: A rehabilitation. Southern Journal of Communication, 38(1), 27–38.
  7. ^ Caston, V. (2002). Gorgias on Thought and its Objects. Presocratic philosophy: Essays in honor of Alexander Mourelatos.
  8. ^ Chisholm 1911.

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