13 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Calicles is an Athenian politician depicted in Plato's Gorgias who argues that conventional justice is a conspiracy of the weak against the naturally strong.
Roman statesman and writer — Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor — who wrote De Agricultura (On Farming, the oldest surviving Latin prose) and was famous for his austere conservatism and his repeated insistence that Carthage must be destroyed (Carthago delenda est).
Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher who synthesized Greek philosophy for a Latin audience and whose translations and adaptations transmitted Greek philosophical terminology to the Western tradition.
Demosthenes was the greatest Athenian orator of antiquity, famous for his Philippics warning Athens of the Macedonian threat under Philip II.
Greek Stoic philosopher — head of the Stoic school after Chrysippus — who was part of the Athenian embassy to Rome in 155 BCE that introduced Greek philosophy to Rome, alongside the Skeptic Carneades and the Academic Critolaus.
Ancient Greek sophist and rhetorician from Leontini, Sicily — who argued that nothing exists, that even if it did it could not be known, and that even if it could be known it could not be communicated — and who developed rhetoric as the supreme art of persuasion.
Athenian logographer (speech writer) — one of the ten canonical Attic orators — whose speech on love (arguing that it is better to gratify the non-lover than the lover) opens Plato's Phaedrus and is used by Socrates as a foil for his own account of eros.
Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher — Consul (63 BCE) — who translated Greek philosophy into Latin, defended the Republic against Caesar and Antony, and whose execution by Antony's soldiers made him the martyr of Roman republicanism.
Pericles was the dominant Athenian statesman of the Golden Age who oversaw the construction of the Parthenon and led Athens at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.
Plato's dialogue set by a river outside Athens — featuring Socrates's three speeches on love (the last, the palinode, recanting the first's dismissal of eros) — and the discussion of rhetoric (only philosophy-based rhetoric is genuine rhetoric), the myth of the charioteer, and the critique of writing.
Greek sophist from Abdera — the first professional educator to charge fees — whose claim that 'man is the measure of all things' is the founding statement of philosophical relativism, and who appears as a sympathetic interlocutor in Plato's Protagoras dialogue.
Aristotle's treatise on dialectical reasoning — the art of arguing from generally accepted opinions (endoxa) to conclusions — providing a handbook for philosophical debate.
A rhetorical pattern identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel (2005) — where an arguer defends a controversial claim (the bailey) by retreating to a less controversial claim (the motte) when challenged, then reoccupying the bailey when pressure eases.