Dialectic and διαíρεσις in the platonic Sophist

Abstract

The examination carried out in the Sophist begins with the request of Socrates to learn from the stranger of Elea how to judge and how to call the sophist, the politician and the philosopher, if they should be considered as a single figure, as two or three different ones, to distinguish as many figures as names are attributed to them. What Socrates asks of the foreigner, then, is, at least in a general sense, a definition of the sophist, the politician and the philosopher with the illustration of their respective competences.