In the 5th century BCE a group of learned men, called Sophists, could be found going from city to city offering to teach wisdom, rhetoric and almost any other branch of knowledge in return for fees. Not everyone was happy with the new learning these philosophers brought with them.
In the comic poet Aristophanes' play The Clouds the Sophists, and the philosopher Socrates, are pilloried for the new-fangled education they are expounding in Athens. Socrates and his companions occupy a school called the Thinkery where they examine why gnats buzz (they fart, apparently) and other areas of research. Most importantly, they know how to use philosophy to make a bad argument sound good and a good argument sound bad. A father who sends his son to learn this ability becomes so enraged by the results that he burns the Thinkery to the ground.
This conservative reaction to philosophy would be repeatedly seen as waves of new philosophies developed that bucked the trend of traditional Greek thinking. New ways of thinking led to new ways of living. Here are some of the philosophers who rebelled against the norm.
