Introduction

Abstract

Greek philosophy traditionally begins with Thales of Miletus in the sixth century B.C., but the first philosophers are not known to have been interested in ethics. Ethical problems first became prominent among the sophists, a class of professional teachers of ‘wisdom’, who flourished in the fifth century. We possess only fragments of their writings, but there is enough to show that Protagoras of Abdera (c. 485–415), Hippias of Elis (somewhat younger than Protagoras), and Antiphon of Athens (active about 420) discussed ethical problems, and where so little remains we are grateful for two anonymous texts, the Anonymous Iamblichi, i.e. a writer whose works were later used by Iamblichus (c. 410?), and the Dissoi Logoi (some time after 400), a roughly written summary of sophistic teachings, and for a fragment of the dramatist and politician Critias of Athens (c. 460–403). Gorgias of Leontini (c. 483–375) did not claim to teach ethics, but his speeches Helena and Palamedes contain some views on moral psychology. We may fairly assume, too, that some of the arguments put into the mouths of individual sophists by Plato are fair accounts of their views.