Names and Methods

In the diptych Sophist-Statesman, Plato’s interest in the potential of language both to disclose and to deceive goes hand in hand with the employment of the so-called Method of Collection and Division. This book deals with this mutual interdependence, which has never been comprehensively analyzed in scholarly literature so far. By focusing on language, we gain a deeper insight into the quite puzzling way in which Plato wants his interlocutors to inquire into the sophist and statesman. The Sophist and Statesman pursue one single project, which is to provide an answer to Socrates, who, in the prologue of the Sophist, asks whether the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher are just as many as the corresponding names are.