The Sophists And Their Rhetoric In The Classical Age

In the 5^th century of BC in the Greece,rhetoric and philosophy are equally important.While the sophists has made an indelible contribution to the development of rhetoric in ancient Greece and event of the whole classical rhetoric.However,influenced by Plato,western academia have evaluated the sophists so unfairly that they ignored the position of sophists in the entire classical rhetoric history.At present,the study of rhetoric has not broken through the category of linguistics yet.Few people analyze the ancient Greek sophist’s rhetoric from the historical field.Therefore,I understand the sophists and their rhetoric through two ways in my paper:Firstly,studying classical sophist’s remaining works and their works evaluated by classical writers.Secondly,reading the research results about the sophists and their rhetoric from western contemporary historians and philosophers.Meanwhile,I follow two parallel clues thinking and writing.Firstly,the sophists’characteristics and their application and development of rhetoric,and I have analyzed them from their backgrounds.Secondly,philosophers at that time had criticized the sophists forming a structure with two opposing elements against Greek culture,and how classical rhetoric became mature under such circumstances.In this paper,I have firstly analyzed related research results,and regard the sophists as a group of freelancers mainly appearing in the middle and later periods of the 5^th century of BC,who were active for a long time in various city-states of Greece.They taught Oratory,rhetoric and other knowledge,and at the same time write charged political speech and court justification for others.What’s more,they also have multiple identities,such as orator,professional teachers,politicians,philosophers,etc.The development and flourishment of the sophist’s rhetoric movement not only based on the views of many scholars which fully take advantage of the Athens democracy environment,but also deeply influenced by the Greco-Persian Wars,naive materialism philosophy and the rise of prose literature.Actually,this rhetorical campaign meets the current needs and value pursuit of the Greek people more.The sophist’s rhetoric development has also met various attacks and impediment,which especially caused the philosophers’suspect.Thus,the ancient Greek world formed two irreconcilable existence way------"rhetorical"or"philosophy"?Through the analysis of the both opposite aspects,i also extract the common ideas of ideology and thinking patterns.Finally,there are also discussions about howthe classical rhetoricbecame mature and unified under such a various environments and disputes.