Most Famous Sophism Philosophers

The Sophists were professional teachers of rhetoric, argument, and civic virtue who flourished in fifth-century Greece. Itinerant by training and often by profession, they taught the young men of Athens and other cities how to speak persuasively in the assembly and the courts. Their relativism, their challenge to traditional values, and their indifference to the objective truth of either side of any case earned them the fierce criticism of Plato. Yet they raised many of the questions about language, knowledge, and convention that subsequent Greek philosophy would set itself to answer.

Philosophers in this tradition

Antiphon c. 480 BC – 411 BC · Greek
Antiphon was a Greek sophist of late fifth-century Athens, sometimes identified with Antiphon of Rhamnus, the celebrated orator and statesman of the same period. The two long fr...
Gorgias 483 BC – 375 BC · Greek
Gorgias of Leontini was a Greek Sophist and rhetorician who lived to a great age, traveling between Sicily and Athens as a celebrated public speaker. His treatise On Non-Being a...
Critias c. 460 BC – 403 BC · Greek
Critias was an Athenian aristocrat, sophist, tragedian, and statesman of the late fifth century BC and the most prominent of the Thirty Tyrants who ruled Athens after the city's...
Polus c. 440 BC – c. 380 BC · Greek
Polus of Acragas was a Greek sophist and rhetorician of the late fifth century BC, a pupil of the great rhetorician Gorgias and the author of a now-lost handbook of rhetoric. He...
Protagoras 490 BC – 420 BC · Greek
Protagoras of Abdera was a Greek thinker traditionally counted as the first of the Sophists. He traveled widely as a teacher of rhetoric and civic virtue, charging substantial f...
Thrasymachus c. 459 BC – c. 400 BC · Greek
Thrasymachus of Chalcedon was a Greek sophist of late fifth-century BC Athens and one of the most celebrated rhetoricians of his generation. His own writings on rhetoric and pol...
Antiphon the Sophist c. 480 BC – c. 410 BC · Greek
Antiphon the Sophist was an Athenian sophist and intellectual of the late fifth century BC, traditionally distinguished by modern scholars from his contemporary, the orator Anti...
Hippias of Elis c. 470 BC – c. 400 BC · Greek
Hippias of Elis was a Greek sophist of the late fifth century BC and one of the most colorful intellectuals of the age of Socrates. He boasted of a complete polymathic competenc...
Hippodamus of Miletus c. 498 BC – c. 408 BC · Greek
Hippodamus of Miletus was a Greek architect, urban planner, mathematician, and political philosopher of the fifth century BC, traditionally credited with the design of the recta...
Lycophron c. 425 BC – c. 380 BC · Greek
Lycophron was a Greek sophist and rhetorician of the late fifth and early fourth century BC, a pupil of Gorgias and one of the boldest political philosophers of the sophistic tr...
Prodicus of Ceos 465 BC – 395 BC · Greek
Prodicus of Ceos was a Greek sophist and rhetorician of the late fifth century BC, contemporary with Socrates. Coming to Athens as an envoy from his island, he remained as a cel...