Together with the Sophist, Plato’s Statesman is often taken to introduce and develop a new scientific form of theoretical inquiry, represented by the Eleatic visitor. This paper draws on recent scholarship on the Sophist and evaluates the reliability of this scientific approach when applied to political matters in the Statesman. It analyzes how the Eleatic visitor identifies and tries to mend two central mistakes in his own initial definition of the statesman and argues that the visitor’s treatment of three related topics – eugenics, tyranny and law – makes his line of reasoning inconsistent. Relying on Plato’s dramatic use of similar forms of argumentation elsewhere, it suggests that the Statesman is not designed to defend the political significance of the visitor’s new form of scientific philosophy, but that its purpose instead is to test and to critically examine the consequences of this line of inquiry.

加上智者，柏拉图的政治家往往是采取引进和发展理论探索一个新的科学的形式，通过爱利亚客人表示。本文借鉴了最近关于Sophist的学术成果，并评估了这种科学方法在政治家中应用于政治问题的可靠性。它分析了这位来访者如何在其对政治家的最初定义中发现并试图纠正两个主要错误，并认为来访者对三个相关主题（优生学，暴政和法律）的处理使他的推理思路不一致。依靠柏拉图在其他地方戏剧性地使用类似形式的论证，这表明政治家 它的目的不是捍卫访客的新型科学哲学形式的政治意义，而是其目的是测试并严格审查这种询问方式的后果。