The idea that nothing is real except in the mind of the individual finds its roots in the Greek Sophists, who argued that since nothing can be perceived except through the senses — and since all individuals sense, and therefore perceive, things differently — there is no absolute truth, only relative truth.

Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates all developed theories of public speaking in opposition to the Sophists, and their ideas took on institutional form through the development of permanent schools where public speaking was taught.

Oratory was taught as an art form, used to please and to influence other people via excellent speech ; nonetheless, the Sophists taught the pupil to seek aretē in all endeavours, not solely in oratory.

Among the most important were Heraclitus (" all is fire ", all is chaotic and transitory ), Anaxagoras ( reality is so ordered that it must be in all respects governed by mind ), the Pluralists and Atomists ( the world is composite of innumerable interacting parts ), the Eleatics Parmenides and Zeno ( all is One and change is impossible, as illustrated by his famous paradoxes of motion ), the Sophists ( became known, perhaps unjustly, for claiming that truth was no more than opinion and for teaching people to argue fallaciously to prove whatever conclusions they wished ).

* Garagin, M., P. Woodruff, Early Greek Political thought from Homer to the Sophists, Cambridge 1995.

* Garagin, M., P. Woodruff, Early Greek Political thought from Homer to the Sophists, Cambridge 1995.

According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias, a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic, regardless of his experience in that field.

The contemporary neo-Aristotelian and neo-Sophistic positions on rhetoric mirror the division between the Sophists and Aristotle.

Sophists like Protagoras put great emphasis on speech as a means that could help in making these decisions for the community.

In addition, Sophists had great impact on the early development of law, as the sophists were the first lawyers in the world.

A later sophist who wrote one of the only remaining accounts of these great orators in his Lives of the Sophists, Philostratus describes Asianism as a form that “… aims at but never achieves the grand style .” He adds that its style is more, “ flowery, bombastic, full of startling metaphors, too metrical, too dependent on the tricks of rhetoric, too emotional .” This type of rhetoric is also sometimes referred to as “ Ionian ” and “ Ephesian ”, because it came from outside of Athens.

Julius Pollux ( Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης, Ioulios Poludeukes ) ( 2nd century ) was a Greek or Egyptian grammarian and sophist from Alexandria who taught at Athens, where he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the Academy by the emperor Commodus — on account of his melodious voice, according to Philostratus ' Lives of the Sophists.

The study of rhetoric was contested in classical Greece: on the one side were the Sophists, and on the other side were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Đurić studied law, philosophy and classic philology in Belgrade, where he obtained his PhD with the thesis on Ideas of the Natural Law in Greek Sophists ( 1954 ).

Using the methods both of a man of the kalam and of a philosopher, he wrote studies on Avicenna's Al-Isharat wa -‘ l-tanbihat ( Remarks and Admonitions ) and Kitab Al-Shifaʾ ( The Book of Healing ); attempted to solve the difficulties ( hill al-mushkilat ) of al-Suhrawardi's Kitab al-talwihat ( Book of Elucidations ); wrote a treatise comparing ( tanasub ) the Ash ' arites and the Sophists ; two other encyclopaedic treatises, The Hidden Secrets ( al-Asar al-khaffyah ) in philosophical sciences, the autographed version of which is at Najaf, and a Complete Course of Instruction ( Ta ' lim tamm ) on philosophy and the kalam, etc.

* Isocrates – In his well-known treatise, Against the Sophists, Isocrates rebukes sophists for charging exorbitant fees for promises they could not keep (“ producing ” learners who could speak on any subject at length ).

There is also an important passage respecting ideas, preserved by Alexander of Aphrodisias, from a work of Phaenias, Against Diodorus, which may possibly be the same as the work Against the Sophists, from which Athenaeus cites a criticism on certain musicians.

In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly at Athens, " sophist " came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others: " Sophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience.

This liberal attitude would naturally have precipitated into the Athenian assembly as Sophists acquired increasingly high-powered clients.

The opinions expressed about Castaneda seem to have a notable echo in the opinions about Sophists in ancient Greek.

Though he left no handbooks, his speeches (" Antidosis " and " Against the Sophists " are most relevant to students of rhetoric ) became models of oratory ( he was one of the canonical " Ten Attic Orators ") and keys to his entire educational program.

His attitude towards the Sophists was by no means oppositional ; in one dialogue Socrates even stated that the Sophists were better educators than he was, which he validated by sending one of his students to study under a sophist.

Eunapius was the author of two works, one entitled Lives of the Sophists, and the other consisting of a continuation of the history of Dexippus.

In addition to the orations, other works include his autobiographical Antidosis and educational texts, such as Against the Sophists.

Isocrates ( 436-338 BC ), like the sophists, taught public speaking as a means of human improvement, but he worked to distinguish himself from the Sophists, whom he saw as claiming far more than they could deliver.

Specializing in rhetoric, the Sophists were more professional educators than philosophers.

The play depicts Socrates, a contemporary of Aristophanes, as tinkering with odd devices and performing implausible experiments to determine the nature of the clouds and sky, and presents his philosophical method as a means for deceiving others and escaping blame, closer to the later descriptions of his opponents, the Sophists, than to those usually ascribed to him.

He described how the Progressives preached a “ hedonistic doctrine of change ” whereas the essentialists stressed the moral responsibility of man for his actions and looked toward permanent principles of behavior ( Demiashkevich likened the arguments to those between the Socratics and the Sophists in Greek philosophy ).

He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit instead of discovering truth.

The Greek Sophists of the 5th century BC were for the most part skeptics.

The societal roles the Sophists filled had important ramifications for the Athenian political system at large.

The historical context provides evidence for their considerable influence, as Athens became more and more democratic during the period in which the Sophists were most active.

The Sophists certainly were not directly responsible for Athenian democracy, but their cultural and psychological contributions played an important role in its growth.

The Sophists were notorious for their claims to teach virtue / excellence and for accepting fees for teaching.

The Lives of the Sophists, a collection of the biographies of twenty-three older and contemporary philosophers and sophists of the author, is valuable as the only source for the history of the Neoplatonism of that period.

He was a representative of the School of Names ( Sophists or Dialecticians ), and is famous for ten paradoxes about the relativity of time and space, for instance, " I set off for Yue ( southernmost China ) today and came there yesterday.

This contrasted with the attitude of contemporaneous Greek Sophists, who claimed to be wise and offered to teach wisdom for pay.

The most detailed source for the life of Maximus is Eunapius in his Lives of the Sophists, but he is also referred to by Ammianus Marcellinus, the emperor Julian, and Libanius.

Aristotle dismisses the study of accidents a science fit for Sophists, a group whose philosophies ( or lack thereof ) he consistently rejects throughout the Metaphysics.

** Alcidamas, " Against the Sophists ," trans.

Lives of the Sophists.

Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome.

Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome.

However, even the original instructors of Western speech — the Sophists — disputed this limited view of rhetoric.

He further argues in his piece Against the Sophists that rhetoric, although it cannot be taught to just anyone, is capable of shaping the character of man.

Rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers known as the Sophists circa 600 BC.

The Sophists were a disparate group who travelled from city to city, teaching in public places to attract students and offer them an education.

Meanwhile, among Greek scholars, the literary historian and philologist Jacques Bompaire, the philologist and philosopher E. Dupréel, and later the literature historian Jacqueline de Romilly pioneered new studies in the Sophists and the Second Sophistic.

Against the Sophists.

* Jacqueline de Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens ( French orig.

He also gives the reader a short summary of the history of philosophy, including his interpretation of the philosophy of Socrates as part of an ongoing dispute between " cosmologists " admitting the existence of a Universal Truth and the Sophists, opposed by Socrates and his student Plato.

Prominent Sophists include Protagoras ( 490-420 BCE ) from Abdera in Thrace, Gorgias ( 487-376 BCE ) from Leontini in Sicily, Hippias ( 485-415 BCE ) from Elis in the Peloponnesos, and Prodicus ( 465-390 BCE ) from the island of Ceos.