Sophists

Sophists
Although the term originally applied to generally wise men, it was applied by Plato to various teachers of whom he disapproved, including Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, and Hippias of Elis. Plato generally treats them as charlatans who talked purely for victory and took money for teaching the technique. In fact their general stance seems to have been not unlike that of Socrates, with a reasonably sceptical attitude to speculative cosmologies, such as those of the Eleatics, and a reasonable insistence on going to the foundations of morality and epistemology.

Philosophy dictionary. . 2011.

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  • Sophists — • A group of Greek teachers who flourished at the end of the fifth century B.C Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006. Sophists     Sophists      …   Catholic encyclopedia

  • sophists — Group of itinerant professional teachers, lecturers, and writers prominent in Greece in the later 5th century BC. The sophistic movement arose at a time when there was much questioning of the absolute nature of familiar values and ways of life.… …   Universalium

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  • SOPHISTS —    a sect of thinkers that arose in Greece, and whose radical principle it was that we have only a subjective knowledge of things, and that we have no knowledge at all of objective reality, that things are as they seem to us, and that we have no… …   The Nuttall Encyclopaedia

  • SOPHISTS —    wandering teachers of RHETORIC and PHILOSOPHY in the Greaco Roman world. They rejected all RELIGION and gave rationalistic explanations to natural phenomena upholding ETHICAL and SOCIAL RELATIVISM …   Concise dictionary of Religion

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  • Lives of the Sophists — is the title of at least two different works:* a book by Eunapius * a book by Philostratus …   Wikipedia

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  • sophist — /sof ist/, n. 1. (often cap.) Gk. Hist. a. any of a class of professional teachers in ancient Greece who gave instruction in various fields, as in general culture, rhetoric, politics, or disputation. b. a person belonging to this class at a later …   Universalium

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