Rhetoric, Moral and Human Nature in the Sophistic of the Ancient Greek World

Abstract

the objective of this research is twofold; On the one hand, the conceptions on the history of philosophy that insist on starting with Plato are questioned, and, on the other hand, it focuses on the philosophical movement known in ancient Greece as sophists, in order to recognize and reflect on the contributions of this movement for the later development of western philosophical and scientific thought. In this sense, it explains the context of its origin and development in ancient Greece, the importance of its teachings –especially rhetoric and the study of language– for later reflection on education, politics, law, psychology and modern anthropologies, his redefinition of morality centered on a self-constitutive human nature, as well as the criticisms to which they were subjected –mainly by Plato– and which partly built and consolidated the pejorative image that, for centuries, accompanied his name. On what were these criticisms based? Were these criticisms founded?