The Sophists: (5^th century B.C)

·        Sophist means a wise and informed person. They would educate the people for money and taught that man cannot know the answers to nature.

·        The sophists asked what things man does are natural and what is socially induced.

·        The sophists think themselves smart and take money for their ideas whereas a philosopher knows that he doesn’t know very much and wants to know more. The meaning of a philosopher is a lover of wisdom.

Phales (615-546 B.C)

·        Phales preferred to consider and analyze the motives of individual and group behavior.

Gorgias (483-375 B.C)

·        Gorgias wrote a book called On Non-being and Nature, which basically said that nothing exists and people are not too sure if he actually believed this.

·        He gave up philosophy and became a teacher of persuasion. In a dialog by Plato Gorgias and Socrates meet and Socrates is angered at Gorgias because he believes in showing lots of emotion, even if one has to fake it, like at a tragic performance.

Protagoras  (500/480-410 B.C)

·        “Man is the measure of all things,” said Protagoras. The question of good or bad depends on the situation of the person in question.

·        Protagasis was an atheist, but he didn’t admit it, when asked he only said that he knew very little about the gods and he preferred to spend his time on other things.

Calicles  (5^th century B.C)

·        Calicles believed that it was human nature to strive for power, and nothing can (or should) stop it.

Thrasymachus  (5^th century B.C)

·        Thrasymachus was a teacher in Athens. In The Republic, by Plato Thrasymachus is at a banquet with Socrates, and the two get into an argument on the subject of justice. Thrasymachus gets enthusiastic and rude, finally concluding that justice was only the will of the strongest, and whoever wins calls what he has done justice. Socrates gives a long speech saying that by using logic one can see that justice does exist. (like most of Plato’s dialogs no one is sure if the banquet really happened)

Historians:

Herodotus (484-428 B.C) Historian

·        Herodotus was said to be the first historian. He wrote Historia, a book of researches, which was motivated by his passion to find the motives of the victories of the Persian Wars, and try to answer questions like how did the Athenian and Trojan armies defeat the Persians. He collected facts than he began to look into science and the psychological motivations of the leaders.

Thucydides (465-400 B.C)

·        Thucydides carried on the work of Herodotus, he explored the little “accidents” that had occurred in war, that had made a difference in history and wrote a book called The Peloponnesian War.