Sophists and Socrates. Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias and Thrasymachus. Dialectics
Around the middle of the 5th century BC, conditions arose in Greece for a cultural revolution that, over the course of several decades, affected all spheres of public and political life and produced a radical change in the way of thinking of a significant part of the civilian population, as well as in the direction of philosophical studies. The main reason for the cataclysm that occurred was the development of Greek political life. In the period that began after the Persian Wars, the center of gravity of the political and cultural life of Hellas shifted from the territory of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean Sea to continental Greece, the importance of Athens, the largest city in Attica, a region in the southeast of the Balkan Peninsula, increased, which is why this period of the history of the Ancient World is often called “Attic”. The hundreds of Greek poleis (city-states) that existed by this time had had different structures for a long time, occupied different positions in the hierarchy of military and economic alliances, and constantly competed with each other in many different spheres of activity. Numerous economic and political contradictions were compounded by ethnic contradictions – between the Dorian, Achaean and Ionian cities. With the establishment of the political hegemony of Athens, the interests of numerous Greek city-states for the first time in the history of Greece acquired a common direction – due to the growth of civil self-awareness and the relevance of substantiating their own political identity. The development of all these contradictions resulted in a sharp complication of the internal situation in Greek cities, the activation of all political and human life in general.