The contest for Paideia and the definitions of philosophy, sophistry and rhetoric in Ancient Greece

• Grant number: 10/20871-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: August 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Fundamentals of Education
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Sidnei Pagotto-Euzebio
• Grantee: Marcos Sidnei Pagotto-Euzebio
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project proposed aims at the development of research about the notions of philosophy, sophistic and rhetoric in ancient Greece, especially at the fourth century BC, when them started to have more contrasting contents in the scenery of ancient paideia, field on which somehow they all developed themselves. Indeed, even that the origins of the activity we call philosophy can be found in the seventh century BC, in the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, or which the early signs a techne rhetorike appear in the textbooks of Tisias and Corax, or in the teaching of Empedocles, in Magna Graecia in the fifth century BC, or even if identified Protagoras and Gorgias as first among the sophists, placed in what became known as "Greek Enlightenment", also in the fifth century, all these definitions are the result of later interpretations, and not without controversial character.It is true that many of the "authors" considered philosophers, rhetoricians and sophists by posterity never referred to themselves in these terms - and probably would refuse to understand such definitions in their restrictive sense, as it developed in the context of debates about the paideia marked by the legacy of Socratism, the Platonic Academy and the teaching of Isocrates and Aristotle. Thus, research will focus, on more specific terms, on how the definitions of philosophy, rhetoric and sophistry, without of a boundary line in your origin, go to establish themselves from contrasted manner in the agon by the primacy of paideia during the fourth century BC, through the creation or invention of philosophy, of rhetoric, of sophistry and the requirements of paideutics by the authors of this period in their works. (AU)