Download Isocrates(436–338 BC)

Isocrates (436–338 BC)
Time and Place:
·Time: 436–338 BC
·The son of Theodorus, and born at Athens in B. C. 436
·Isocrates desperately wanted to play an important role in Athenian politics. A powerful case of
stage fright coupled with a weak voice precluded his participation in the public-oratory driven
Athenian Assembly.
·In 404 B.C., during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants, Isocrates fled to the island of Chios where
he operated a small school of rhetoric.
·In 403 B.C. Isocrates returned to Athens where, as a result of financial need, he became a
forensic logographer.
·In 392 B.C., at the age of forty-four, Isocrates set himself up as a teacher of rhetoric. His
academy, located near the Lyceum in Athens, became the first permanent institution of liberal
arts
education.
·When Greece lost its independence after the Battle of Chaeronea, Isocrates, in despair, starved
himself to death.
Cultural Influences:
·Theodorus, the father of Isocrates, was a man of considerable wealth. The wealth of Theodorus
provided Isocrates the greatest education of the day.
·He studied under such luminaries as Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, Theramenes, Tisias, and
joined the circle of Socrates.
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· In his earlier years Isocrates lived in the company of Athenian hetaerae, but at a later period he
married Plathane, the widow of the sophist Hippias, whose youngest son, Aphareus, he
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adopted.
·The first students in Isocrates’ school were Athenians. Some of his students included, Isaeus,
Lycurgus, Hypereides, Ephorus, Theopompus, Speusippus, and Timotheus.
·Following the founding of Isocrates’ academy, Plato (a rival of Isocrates) founded his own
academy as a rival school of philosophy.
Major Contributions to Rhetoric:
·Founded the first school of rhetoric.
·His school lasted for over fifty years, in many ways establishing the core of liberal arts
education as we know it today, including oratory, composition, history, citizenship,
culture and morality.
·Program of rhetoric
·Isocrates unambiguously defined his approach in the treatise Against the Sophists. This
polemic was written to explain and advertise the reasoning and educational principles
behind his new school.
·Isocrates' program of rhetorical education stressed the ability to use language to address
practical problems, and he referred to his teachings as more of a philosophy than a
school of rhetoric.
·He emphasized that students needed three things to learn: a natural aptitude which was
inborn, knowledge training granted by teachers and textbooks, and applied practices
designed by educators.
·Isocrates’s model of education grounded in rhetoric guided educators for centuries to
follow.
· Cicero holds that this was the school in which all the eloquence of Greece was
perfected, and that alumni from Isocrates's academy are among the greatest
statesmen, historians, writers, and orators of the day.
·Isocrates was the first of a series of great teachers who equated rhetoric and education.
Rhetoric in Isocrates’ eyes:
·The way that Isocrates described the functions of rhetoric: “With this faculty we both contend
against others on matters which are open to dispute and seek light for ourselves on things which
are unknown.”
·For Isocrates, rhetoric was an epistemic, or knowledge discovering, tool which guides
thought, action, and demonstrates wisdom.
·Isocrates also professes that rhetoric is philosophic in that it teaches morals and politics.
·Isocrates also believed that rhetoric had a role to play in the study of history. He made the
study of history an art, not a science as Aristotle would have it.
Bibliography
Golden, James L., Goodwin F. Berquist, and William E. Coleman. The Rhetoric of Western
Thought. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1976, 5th ed 1993.
"Iso'crates." A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Iso'crates. Ed. William
Smith.N.p.,n.d.Web.11Feb.2014.
<http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry
=isocrates-bio-1>.
Murphy, B. Keith. "ISOCRATES." Isocrates. Salem Press, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.keithmurphy.info/399/Isoc.htm>.
"Isocrates." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 02 Sept. 2014. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isocrates>.
Image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isocrates_pushkin.jpg
＊Controversial, another saying is, “Relatively late in his life, Isocrates married the
daughter of Hippias, a sophist.”