Rhetors and Philosophers: Intellectual Thought and Sophistic Style in the Ancient World

Catalog description

In a series of notorious dialogues, Plato delineated a distinction between two professions that were to define future intellectual history: philosophy and rhetoric, the science of thinking juxtaposed to the art of speaking. We will study the transformations of this distinction in four exceptional socio-cultural contexts: Classical Athens, Imperial Rome, Late Antique Alexandria, and Medieval Constantinople. We will discuss the basics and varieties of educational curricula (Aristotle's Academy, Second Sophistic, Neoplatonism), the social position and self-definition of ancient intellectual figures, and the ever-fluid boundaries between content and form, thought and style; ultimately, between philosophy and literature.