GORGIAS

Ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Gorgias is said to have studied under the Acragantan philosopher Empedocles but the details of such apprentiship are not exactly known.

Gorgias's primary occupation was as a teacher of rhetoric. According to Aristotle, his students included Isocrates. Gorgias's philosophy 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. These difficulties are further compounded by the fact that Gorgias's rhetoric is frequently elusive and confusing.

Gorgias ushered in rhetorical innovations involving structure and ornamentation, and he introduced paradoxologia – the idea of paradoxical thought and paradoxical expression. For these advancements, Gorgias has been labeled the "father of sophistry". Plato was one of Gorgias's greatest critics as exhibited in the platonic dialogue named after Gorgias.

Gorgias is the author of a lost work: "On Nature" or "the Non-Existent" (also "On Non-Existence"). Rather than being one of his rhetorical works, it presented a theory of being that at the same time refuted and parodied the Eleatic thesis. The original text was lost and today there remain just two paraphrases of it. It is clear, however, that the work developed a skeptical argument, which has been extracted from the sources and translated as below:

1. Nothing exists;
2. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
3. Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others; and
4. Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood.