Definitions

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  • noun Plural form of sophist.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The sophists were the intellectual men of an age of _humanism_,

    The Approach to Philosophy Ralph Barton Perry 1916

  • The chief result of it all was a race of remarkable public orators known as sophists or rhetoricians, wandering academic lecturers on the glories of the past or on commonplaces of philosophy, poetry, and history.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 1: Aachen-Assize 1840-1916 1913

  • Even in the verses with which the chorus conclude the play it is insisted that the worst crime of the sophists is their insult to the gods.

    Atheism in Pagan Antiquity Ingeborg Andersen 1897

  • Indirectly, as we shall see, Zeno had a great effect on subsequent philosophies by the development of a process of ingenious verbal distinction, which in the hands of so-called sophists and others became

    A Short History of Greek Philosophy John Marshall 1880

  • Slide 8: Religious climate during Sophocles time  Most know that the greeks revered the gods, but during sophocles's time, a group called the sophists insisted that gods were not real and that fate didn't drive human affairs and suffering; people did.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2008

  • Slide 8: Religious climate during Sophocles time  Most know that the greeks revered the gods, but during sophocles's time, a group called the sophists insisted that gods were not real and that fate didn't drive human affairs and suffering; people did.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2008

  • All that is something quite apart from the influence of the 'sophists' at a rather later date, though they too came both from the east and from the west, and though they had been influenced by the more strictly philosophical schools of these regions.

    The Legacy of Greece Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield Various

  • Thus the ideas of the "sophists" of the age of Voltaire were alive in the speculative world, not withstanding political, religious, and philosophical reaction.

    The Idea of Progress An inguiry into its origin and growth 1894

  • Now what astonishes me in the "sophists," as they are called, (1) is, that though they profess, the greater part of them, to lead the young to virtue, they really lead them in the opposite direction.

    The Sportsman 431 BC-350? BC Xenophon 1874

  • Faustina herself, and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day, who maintained, people said, their private "sophists" to whisper philosophy into their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet -- was assembled again a few months later, in a different place and for a very different purpose.

    Marius the Epicurean — Volume 2 Walter Pater 1866

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