Abstract

Provocative aphorisms of the most notable fifth century Sophist, Gorgias, such as «Nothing actually exists» or his realist tenet that «it is not speech that serves to reveal the external object, but the external object that proves to be explanatory of speech» have been subject to endless cycles of interpretation. I do not propose to offer here a full analysis of Gorgias' thought, but rather some new suggestions as to how to interpret Gorgias on the basis of how scholars have interpreted Gorgias. I shall put special emphasis on the analytical approaches to Gorgias' thought