Plato’s Sophist and Statesman stand out from many other Platonic dialogues by at least two features. First, they do not raise a ti esti question about a single virtue or feature of something, but raise the questions what sophist, statesman, and philosopher are, how they differ from each other, and what worth each should be accorded. Second, a visitor from Elea, rather than Socrates, seeks to address these questions and does so by employing what is commonly referred to as the method of collection and division. Some scholars have argued that this so-called method is value neutral and therefore unable to address the question how philosophy differs from sophistry and statesmanship according to worth. This article contends that the procedures of collection and division does not preclude the visitor from taking considerations of worth into account, but rather helps establish an objective basis for settling the main questions of the dialogue.

柏拉图的哲学家和政治家至少在两个方面比许多其他柏拉图式的对话脱颖而出。首先，他们不提起提起诉讼问题是关于某事物的单一美德或特征，但提出了一个问题，即什么是诡辩家，政治家和哲学家，它们之间有何不同以及应该赋予它们什么价值。第二，来自Elea的访客而不是Socrates试图解决这些问题，并通过采用通常称为收集和划分的方法来解决这些问题。一些学者认为，这种所谓的方法是价值中立的，因此无法解决哲学根据价值而不同于诡辩和政治家的问题。本文认为，收集和分割程序并不能阻止访问者考虑到价值，而是有助于建立解决对话主要问题的客观基础。