ABSTRACT
Gorgias’ On Not Being is the Charybdis of Presocratic philosophy. If taken at face value, it undermines the foundations of philosophy and life itself, by arguing, first, that there isn’t anything; second, that even if there were something, it could not be known; third, that even if something could be known, no one could inform anyone else of it. Yet there is at least one thing, a treatise, that contains demonstrations for various conclusions, written in order to inform us, thus undercutting all three claims. How are we to construe a text charitably whose arguments are so obviously self-refuting in this way?
