On Non-Existence
E359021
On Non-Existence is a lost sophistic treatise, attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias, that famously argues in paradoxical fashion that nothing exists, that if anything did exist it would be unknowable, and that if it were knowable it could not be communicated.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| On Non-Being | 1 |
| On Non-Existence canonical | 1 |
Statements (44)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
ancient Greek work
ⓘ
lost philosophical treatise ⓘ sophistic treatise ⓘ |
| aimsAt |
demonstrating the power of rhetoric
ⓘ
undermining common assumptions about being ⓘ |
| argumentStyle |
eristic
ⓘ
paradoxical ⓘ rhetorical ⓘ |
| associatedWithCity | Leontini ⓘ |
| attributedDate | classical period of ancient Greece ⓘ |
| authorAttributedTo |
Gorgias
ⓘ
Gorgias ⓘ
surface form:
Gorgias of Leontini
|
| circulation | ancient Greek intellectual circles ⓘ |
| contrastsWith | Parmenidean ontology ⓘ |
| culturalContext | classical Greek sophistic movement ⓘ |
| genre | philosophical prose ⓘ |
| historicalPeriod | 5th century BCE ⓘ |
| influenceOn |
ancient skepticism
ⓘ
later discussions of nihilism ⓘ |
| knownThrough |
later doxographical accounts
ⓘ
secondary reports ⓘ testimonia in ancient authors ⓘ |
| logicalForm | trilemma about being, knowing, and saying ⓘ |
| mainClaim |
if anything did exist it would be unknowable
ⓘ
if anything were knowable it could not be communicated ⓘ nothing exists ⓘ |
| originalLanguage | Ancient Greek ⓘ |
| philosophicalIssue |
communication
ⓘ
existence ⓘ knowledge ⓘ |
| philosophicalPositionType |
radical skepticism about existence
ⓘ
skepticism about communication ⓘ skepticism about knowledge ⓘ |
| philosophicalTradition |
Sophism
ⓘ
ancient Greek philosophy ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
Gorgias
ⓘ
Parmenides ⓘ Sophists ⓘ |
| subjectMatter |
epistemology
ⓘ
metaphysics ⓘ philosophy of language ⓘ skepticism ⓘ |
| textualState | survives only in fragments and reports ⓘ |
| workStatus | lost ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: On Non-Existence Description of subject: On Non-Existence is a lost sophistic treatise, attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias, that famously argues in paradoxical fashion that nothing exists, that if anything did exist it would be unknowable, and that if it were knowable it could not be communicated.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
On Non-Being