Kairos (The Opportune Moment)
The decisive right moment — saying or doing the fitting thing at exactly the time it will land.
Kairos is the Greek feel for the opportune, critical moment and for fitting one's action to the circumstances, as opposed to abstract or timeless correctness. It was a watchword of the Sophists — Gorgias and Protagoras (5th c. BCE) — for whom persuasion meant matching the right words to the right occasion, and it is equally central in the Hippocratic medical writings, where the physician must seize the critical moment to act. It later shaped rhetoric, ethics, and even early Christian theology of the appointed time.
How it traveled
- De InventioneFormiae · -84explains
- On the Sublime— · 50explains
- In Hippocratis De victu acutorumRome · 175explains
- Antiquitates RomanaeRomeexplains
- Strategemata—applies
- Historical LibrarySyracuse (Sicily)explains
- Suidae lexicon—explains
- Scholia in Iliadem—explains
- De optima secta ad Thrasybulum—explains
- Peri SophistonAthensexplains
- OrationesPrusaexplains
- Strategicus—applies
- De Vita PythagoricaApameaexplains
- Ars Rhetorica—explains
- Odysseus [attributed]Athensexplains
- Excerpta Polyaeni—applies
- De Demosthenis dictioneRomeexplains
- Περὶ ἰδεῶν λόγου—explains
- Orationes 34Smyrnaexplains
- Scholia in Pindarum Pythian Odes—explains
- Lives of the SophistsAthensexplains
- Fragmenta MoraliaAthensexplains
- Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος [Sp.]—explains
- Epistulae—explains
- DialexeisTyreexplains
- Ars Rhetorica [attributed]Smyrnaexplains
- EpistulaeAntiochexplains
- Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶνLaodicea on the Lycusexplains
- De BellisConstantinople (Istanbul)applies
- De methodo medendiRomeapplies
Key passages(20)
In Hippocratis De victu acutorum · Galen
De optima secta ad Thrasybulum · Pseudo-Galen
Ludus Septem Sapientum · Ausonius, Decimus Magnus
De Compositione Verborum · Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Historia Ecclesiastica · Evagrius, Scholasticus
Adversus Eunomianos (Orat. 27) · Gregory of Nazianzus
Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος [Sp.] · Pseudo-Hermogenes
Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος [Sp.] · Pseudo-Hermogenes