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Gorgias of Leontini

Γοργίας

Sophistrhetoric

The Sophist and master of rhetoric who argued that nothing exists — and if it did, could not be known.

Gorgias of Leontini (c. 483–375 BCE) was a Sophist celebrated for a dazzling rhetorical art and for a notorious argument that nothing exists; that if anything existed it could not be known; and that if known, it could not be communicated.

His display speeches and his account of persuasion’s almost magical power over the soul made him the type of the rhetorician, against whom Plato wrote the dialogue bearing his name.

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