Isocrates biography examples
More on Isocrates from Perseus Project
Born, BC; died (suicide by starvation) BC (upset over Philip's victory) Isocrates was educated by Gorgias, Tisias, and Socrates, among others! He began his career as a logographer, writing speeches for others to deliver in the law courts. He later regreted having done that to such a great degree that he denied ever having done so. We have, however, fragments of the cases. In he opened a school (?) in Chios; in in Athens. He publicized his new profession with .
Isocrates had political ambitions, but did not have the requisite ability at public speaking. his voice was weak (could not "carry" the venue) and he suffered from communication apprehension. So, by noting how crucial to success were his limitations and believing in his intellectual strengths as important--if they could be set to work--he started a school to train citizens. Isocrates was an influential teacher, perhaps the most so in the ancient history of rhetoric. His students included many notable citizen statesmen and decorated leaders. Isocrates' school had entrance requirements (few others did in those days--other than the requisite tuition). He also charged a regular tuition fee--which was unique in that it was fixed/ standardized.
A hallmark of his approach was that he regularized the Athenian call for five aspects of educational intelligence: . Isocrates' curriculum required/assumed basic competencies in science and math, then taught writing, debate, classical prose and poetry (literature), philosophy, math, and history.
Isocrates was the father of liberal education as we know it. For Isocrates, and this is another crucial contribution, effective speech making was taken as a sign of good training, not as the goal itself. Notice how this, at the same time, upholds a noble intellectual and social tradition, yet further grates against Plato's call for idealism. At its best, speaking does not stand as a goal--the show is not the issue--yet, it merely repre
Isocrates on Rhetoric
The ideas of the famous Athenian orator Isocrates( B.C.) exemplified the dedication to rhetoric as a practical skill that Plato rejected as utterly wrong. Isocrates was born to a rich family and studied with sophists and thinkers including Socrates. Since he lacked the voice to address large gatherings, Isocrates composed speeches for other men to deliver and sought to influence public opinion and political leaders at Athens and abroad by publishing speeches of his own in writing. He regarded educationas the preparation for a useful life doing good in matters of public importance. He sought to develop an educational middle ground between the theoretical study of abstract ideas and purely crass training in rhetorical techniques for influencing others to one's own personal advantage. In this way he stood between the ideals of Plato and the promises of unscrupulous ic was the skill that Isocrates sought to develop, but that development, he insisted, could come only with natural talent and the practical experience of worldly affairs that trained oratorsto understand public issues and the psychology of the people whom they had to persuade for the common good. Isocrates saw rhetoric therefore not as a device for cynical self-aggrandizement but as a powerful toolof persuasion for human betterment, if it was wielded by properly gifted and trained men with developed consciences. Women were of course excluded from participation because they could not take part in politics. The Isocratean emphasis on rhetoric and its application in the real world of politics won many more adherents among men in Greek and, later, Roman culture than did the Platonic vision of the philosophical life, and it would have great influence when revived in Renaissance Europe, two thousand years later.Encyclopædia Britannica/Isocrates
His character should be viewed in both its main aspects—the political and the literary.
With regard to the first, two questions have to be asked: (1) How far were the political views of Isocrates peculiar to himself, and different from those of the clearest minds contemporary with him? (2) How far were those views falsified by the event?
1. The whole tone of Greek thought in that age had taken a bent towards monarchy in some form. This tendency may be traced alike in the practical common sense of Xenophon and in the lofty idealism of Plato. There could be no better instance of it than a well-known passage in the Politics of Aristotle. He is speaking of the gifts which meet in the Greek race—a race warlike, like the Europeans, but more subtle—keen, like the Asiatics, but braver. Here, he says, is a race which “might rule all men, if it were brought under a single government.” It is unnecessary to suppose a special allusion to Alexander; but it is probable that Aristotle had in his mind a possible union of the Greek cities under a strong constitutional monarchy. His advice to Alexander (as reported by Plutarch) was to treat the Greeks in the spirit of a leader (ἡγεμονικῶς) and the barbarians in the spirit of a master (δεσποτικῶς). Aristotle conceived the central power as political and permanent; Isocrates conceived it as, in the first place, military, having for its immediate aim the conduct of an expedition against Asia. The general views of Isocrates as to the largest good possible for the Greek race were thus in accord with the prevailing tendency of the best Greek thought in that age.
2. The vision of the Greek race “brought under one polity” was not, indeed, fulfilled in the sense of Aristotle or of Isocrates. But the invasion of Asia by Alexander, as captain-general of Greece, became the event which actually opened new and larger destinies to the Greek race. The old political life of th