In his work, Isocrates the rhetorician gives vent to an exalted praise of his own intellectual and literary individuality ; but the latter ought to be put in relation with the singular position which he declares holding in the different spheres to which he belongs : in his school of rhetoric, at the heart of which he stands ; in the Athenian intellectual field, where he claims to hold a position half-way between judicial sycophancy and useless sophism ; in the Athenian City, where he presents himself as a " peaceful " citizen - apragmôn - totally aloof from political life ; in the Greek world, finally, where his ambition is to play a central role - which he already does, on a pedagogical level, in his group of disciples from all around Greece. It was at the junction of those different universes that the singular voice of Isocrates emerged.
Champ intellectuel athénien et stratégies de distinction dans la première moitié du IVe siècle : de Socrate à Isocrate