Roberta Ioli

Dalla vertigine dialettica del trattato "Su ciò che non è" alle provocatorie orazioni incentrate sulle figure mitiche di Elena e Palamede, il filosofo e retore Gorgia trasforma la potenza persuasiva del linguaggio in una vera e propria azione terapeutica: l'anima va curata con la pratica dell'armonia, con uno stile rigorosamente strutturato e, insieme, smascherando false verità e vuote ontologie. La parola, perduta l'unicità definitoria e la corrispondenza all'essenza delle cose, non può che rinunciare alla propria pretesa veritativa. In questo vuoto si inserisce l'azione del logos retorico, creatore di un nuovo gioco linguistico, un nuovo "sapiente inganno" di cui anche chi ascolta può entrare a far parte. Il volume raccoglie tutti i frammenti del sofista Gorgia di Leontini e le testimonianze sulla sua vita e sulla sua opera, centrale per la storia del pensiero occidentale nel passaggio dalla riflessione eleatica e atomistica alla tradizione platonico-aristotelica.

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the connection between ancient medicine and sophistry at the end of 5th century B.C. Beginning with analyses of some passages from the De vetere medicina, De natura hominis and De arte, the article identifies many similarities between these treatises, on the one hand, and the sophistic doctrines, on the other: these concern primarily perceptual/intellectual knowledge and the interaction between reality, knowledge and language. Among the Sophists, Gorgias was particularly followed and imitated, as he was admired not only for his tremendous rhetorical skills, but also for his philosophically significant work On not being, which probably influenced various discussions in the Hippocratic treatises. However, if Gorgias argues in favor of language as dynastēs megas, the authors of VM, NH and De arte consider knowledge to be far more relevant and reliable than logos. These Hippocratic treatises criticize the philosophical thesis and the resulting kind of reductionism. Above all they defend the supremacy of medicine over any other art. By using the same argumentative and rhetorical strategies that were employed by Gorgias, these treatises reverse the thought of those Sophists who exalted only the technē tōn logōn.

The aim of my paper is to investigate Gorgias’ argument against motion, which is found in his Peri tou mē ontos and preserved only in MXG 980a1˗8. I tried to shed new light both on this specific reflection and on the reliability of Pseudo-Aristotle’s version. By exploring the so called “change argument” and the “argument from divisibility", I focused on the particular strategy used by the Sophist in his synthetikē apodeixis, which should be investigated in relation to the dispute between monistic and pluralistic ontology. In this regard, the puzzle from “divisibility everywhere” and its connection with the void as not-being can provide new elements to grasp the philosophical background in which the Sophist moves. On the one hand, Gorgias’ argument against motion is part of a broader dispute on the divisibility/indivisibility of being; on the other, his original elaboration of this puzzle seems to be perfectly understandable within the controversy between Eleatics and Atomists, and coherent with the argumentative style of the Sophist.