Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments and essay sources
- List of abbreviations: Frequently cited names and titles
- EPISTEMOLOGY
- 1 Methods of sophistry
- 2 Kριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας
- 3 Epicurus on the truth of sense impressions
- 4 Sceptical strategies
- 5 The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus
- 6 On the difference between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics
- 7 The problem of the criterion
- ETHICS
- Name index
- Index of passages cited
1 - Methods of sophistry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments and essay sources
- List of abbreviations: Frequently cited names and titles
- EPISTEMOLOGY
- 1 Methods of sophistry
- 2 Kριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας
- 3 Epicurus on the truth of sense impressions
- 4 Sceptical strategies
- 5 The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus
- 6 On the difference between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics
- 7 The problem of the criterion
- ETHICS
- Name index
- Index of passages cited
Summary
The Sophists of the fifth century B.C. have had a spectacular comeback over the last few decades. One scholar after another, in philosophy as well as in history or in classical literature, has argued that we ought to get away from Plato's devastating campaign to ruin their reputation, and restore them to their rightful place in the history of Greek thought. Perhaps the most complete and balanced picture of their role in the intellectual history of Athens has come from Jacqueline de Romilly. More recendy still, Thomas Cole (1991) has argued, on the basis of what we can find out about their literary activities, that the tradition that makes the Sophists mere rhetoricians as opposed to philosophers is anachronistic in the sense that it imposes an Aristotelian distinction between (rhetorical) form and (argumentative) content upon a period in which such a distinction was not and arguably could not be made. The upshot of these reappraisals tends to be the judgment that the Sophists were both philosophers and rhetoricians, so that their contribution to both fields must be taken seriously. They have a place in both histories, and it is no use confusing the picture by pretending, as Plato does, that they were orators posing as philosophers.
Strictly speaking, though, we ought to say that the Sophists were neither philosophers nor rhetoricians, given that the establishment of philosophy and rhetoric as distinct disciplines came about only in the fourth century.
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- Information
- Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics , pp. 3 - 21Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
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