The Statesman by Plato also known by its Latin title,
Politicus , is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. The text depicts a conversation among Socrates, the mathematician Theodorus, another person named Socrates (referred to as ‘Socrates the Younger’), and an unnamed philosopher from Elea referred to as ‘the Stranger’ (ξένος,
xénos). It is ostensibly an attempt to arrive at a definition of ‘statesman, ‘ as opposed to ‘sophist’ or ‘philosopher’ and is presented as following the action of the
Sophist.
The
Sophist had begun with the question of whether the sophist, statesman, and philosopher were one or three, leading the Eleatic Stranger to argue that they were three but that this could only be ascertained through full accounts of each (
Sophist 217b). But though Plato has his characters give accounts of the sophist and statesman in their respective dialogues, it is most likely that he never wrote a dialogue about the philosopher.
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