39 Facts About Gorgias

Gorgias was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily.

Gorgias was born circa 483 BC in Leontinoi, a Chalcidian colony in eastern Sicily that was allied with Athens.

Gorgias had a brother named Herodicus, who was a physician, and sometimes accompanied him during his travels.

Gorgias had a sister, whose name is not known, but whose grandson dedicated a golden statue to his great uncle at Delphi.

Gorgias was well known for delivering orations at Panhellenic Festivals and is described as having been "conspicuous" at Olympia.

Additionally, although they are not described as his students, Gorgias is widely thought to have influenced the styles of the historian Thucydides, the tragic playwright Agathon, the doctor Hippocrates, the rhetorician Alcidamas, and the poet and commentator Lycophron.

Gorgias is reputed to have lived to be one hundred and eight years old.

Gorgias won admiration for his ability to speak on any subject.

Gorgias accumulated considerable wealth; enough to commission a gold statue of himself for a public temple.

Gorgias is particularly frustrating for modern scholars to attempt to understand.

The greatest hindrance to scholarly understanding of Gorgias's philosophy is that the vast majority of his writings have been lost and those that have survived have suffered considerable alteration by later copyists.

Many of Gorgias's propositions are thought to be sarcastic, playful, or satirical.

Gorgias has been labelled "The Nihilist" because some scholars have interpreted his thesis on "the non-existent" to be an argument against the existence of anything that is straightforwardly endorsed by Gorgias himself.

Gorgias presented his nihilist arguments in On Non-Existence; however, the original text is no longer extant.

Ostensibly Gorgias developed three sequential arguments: first, that nothing exists; second, that even if existence exists, it is inapprehensible to humans; and third, that even if existence is apprehensible, it certainly cannot be communicated or interpreted to one's neighbors.

Gorgias is known for contributing to the diffusion of the Attic Greek dialect as the language of literary prose.

Gorgias was the first orator known to develop and teach a "distinctive style of speaking".

Gorgias' writings are intended to be both rhetorical and performative.

Gorgias goes to great lengths to exhibit his ability of making an absurd, argumentative position appear stronger.

The performative nature of Gorgias' writings is exemplified by the way that he playfully approaches each argument with stylistic devices such as parody, artificial figuration and theatricality.

Gorgias argues that persuasive words have power that is equivalent to that of the gods and as strong as physical force.

Gorgias believed that his "magical incantations" would bring healing to the human psyche by controlling powerful emotions.

Gorgias paid particular attention to the sounds of words, which, like poetry, could captivate audiences.

Unlike other Sophists, such as Protagoras, Gorgias did not profess to teach arete.

Gorgias believed that there was no absolute form of arete, but that it was relative to each situation.

Gorgias believed that rhetoric, the art of persuasion, was the king of all sciences, since he saw it as a techne with which one could persuade an audience toward any course of action.

Gorgias is the author of a lost work: On Nature or the Non-Existent.

Gorgias set out to prove that it is as easy to demonstrate that being is one, unchanging and timeless as it is to prove that being has no existence at all.

Regardless of how it "has largely been seen" it seems clear that Gorgias was focused instead on the notion that true objectivity is impossible since the human mind can never be separated from its possessor.

Gorgias attempted to prove that words and sensations could not be measured by the same standards, for even though words and sensations are both derived from the mind, they are essentially different.

The Encomium of Helen is considered to be a good example of epideictic oratory and was supposed to have been Gorgias' "show piece or demonstration piece," which was used to attract students.

The Encomium opens with Gorgias explaining that "a man, woman, speech, deed, city or action that is worthy of praise should be honored with acclaim, but the unworthy should be branded with blame".

Gorgias explains that Helen could have been persuaded in one of four ways: by the gods, by physical force, by love, or by speech.

Gorgias explains that, by nature, the weak are ruled by the strong, and, since the gods are stronger than humans in all respects, Helen should be freed from her undesirable reputation.

Gorgias' text provides a clever critique of 5th century propagandist rhetoric in imperial Athens and is the basis for Plato's parody, Menexenus.

Plato answers Gorgias by reaffirming the Parmenidean ideal that being is the basic substance and reality of which all things are composed, insisting that philosophy is a dialectic distinct from and superior to rhetoric.

Aristotle criticizes Gorgias, labeling him a mere Sophist whose primary goal is to make money by appearing wise and clever, thus deceiving the public by means of misleading or sophistic arguments.

Since the late twentieth century, scholarly interest in Gorgias has increased dramatically and the amount of research conducted on him is even beginning to rival the research on his more traditionally popular contemporary Parmenides.

Gorgias's distinctive writing style, filled with antithesis and figurative language, has been seen as foreshadowing the later development of Menippean satire, as well as, in more recent times, the mannerist, grotesque, and carnivalesque genres.