Gorgias’s speech “On non-being”: the order of arguments and their philosophical content in two narratives that retell it

Abstract

The paper discusses the philosophical features of two narratives retelling Gorgias’ treatise “On non-being”: the skeptical version of Sextus Empiricus’ and the peripatetic version of an anonymous author. The author proposes a comparative analysis of the arguments adopted by the informants in their presentation of Gorgias’s thoughts. She examines sev­eral philosophical problems raised by Gorgias in his treatise as they were discussed in the retellings of his speech. The paper shows how these two versions complement and clarify each other in relation to a number of philosophical topics. It shows how Gorgias reno­vates and transforms Parmenidean initial assumptions and transfers the discussion topic from how thought could be directed to an external object and what the properties of such an object are to how thought could be directed to a non-being. Accordingly, in relation to the doctrine of Gorgias, the paper considers the problems of intentionality, the question of the privileged status of any of the mental states, the nature of the word or speech as an autonomous way of knowing of external objects, the problem of meaning as reference, and issues of intersubjectivity in cognition. It is concluded that the preference for one narrative significantly impoverishes our understanding of the doctrine of Gorgias, whereas a joint analysis of both versions is able to demonstrate the inclusiveness of sophistry problems shown by Gorgias in the general philosophical and the epistemologi­cal paradigm of both ancient and modern philosophy.