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The chapter presents the Sophists’ more original contributions to political thought and shows how some of their ideas, which were often developed in the course of their practice as advisors or pedagogues, influenced the work of the two major philosophers of the next generation, Plato and Aristotle. The chapter’s first section shows the debt of early theorizing on constitutions to the Sophists’ practice of antilogia or debate but also to the discussions about democracy that mark Athenian intellectual life in the last decades of the fifth century, and shows how such theorizing provides the springboard for Plato’s pursuit for the best constitution. Its second section focuses on the criticism of law and argues that (despite what continues to be a dominant interpretation in the study of Sophistic thinking) such criticism should not be understood as a threat to morality but rather as constructive reflection on the nature and the limits of legislation.
The Academy was a philosophical school established by Plato that safeguarded the continuity and the evolution of Platonism over a period of about 300 years. Its contribution to the development of Hellenistic philosophical and scientific thinking was decisive, but it also had a major impact on the formation of most of the other philosophical trends emerging during this period. This volume surveys the evidence for the historical and social setting in which the Academy operated, as well as the various shifts in the philosophical outlook of Platonism during its existence. Its contribution to the evolution of special sciences such as mathematics is also examined. The book further includes the first complete annotated translation in English of Philodemus' History of the Academy, preserved on a papyrus from Herculaneum. It thus offers a comprehensive picture of one of the most prominent and influential of all educational institutions in ancient Greece.