Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s Statesman

At the beginning of his Metaphysics, Aristotle attributed several strange-sounding theses to Plato. Generations of Plato scholars have assumed that these could not be found in the dialogues. In heated arguments, they have debated the significance of these claims, some arguing that they constituted an ‘unwritten teaching’ and others maintaining that Aristotle was mistaken in attributing them to Plato. In his previous book-length study on Plato’s late ontology, Kenneth Sayre demonstrated that, despite differences in terminology, these claims correspond to themes developed by Plato in the Parmenides and the Philebus. In this study, he shows how this correspondence can be extended to key, but previously obscure, passages in the Statesman. He also examines the interpretative consequences for other sections of that dialogue, particularly those concerned with the practice of dialectical inquiry.

• First book length study of metaphysics in Plato’s Statesman • First systematic listing of synonyms for Indefinite Dyad in Greek Commentators on Aris • Most thorough analysis ever of section of measurement at mid-point of Statesman

Part I. Method: 1. Becoming better dialecticians; 2. Collection in the Phaedras and the Sophist; 3. Division in the Phaedras and the Sophist; 4. Collection yields to illustrative paradigms; 5. The Weaver Paradigm; 6. The Final Definition; Part II. Metaphysics: 7. Excess and deficiency in general; 8. The great and the small in Plato’s dialogues; 9. The generation of everything good and fair; 10. Accuracy in the art of dialectic; 11. Division according to forms; 12. The metaphysics of division.