Names and Methods
The Language of Dialectic in Plato's Sophist and Statesman
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 8. June 2026
Book
Hardback
242 pages
978-3-7965-5452-0 (ISBN)
Description
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 the 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.
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Person
Anna Pavani is Wissenschatftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Department of Classics of the University of Cologne. Before that, she was DFG-Walter Benjamin Fellow at Ruhr University Bochum and Visiting Research Fellow at Brown University (RI-USA). She earned her a.r.t.e.s. Eumanities PhD at a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne. In Cologne, she had served as a teaching assistant, lecturer, and assistant researcher at the Chair of Ancient Philosophy as well as at the Thomas Institute. She has published a number of articles in ancient philosophy on knowing and naming.