Abstract
The strange and challenging stretch of dialectic with which Plato’s Sophist begins and ends has confused and frustrated readers for generations, and despite receiving a fair amount of attention, there is no consensus regarding even basic issues concerning this method. Here I offer a new account of bifurcatory division as neither joke nor naïve method, but instead a valuable, propaedeutic method that Plato offers to us readers as a means of embarking upon the kind of mental gymnastics that will stretch us properly in preparation for further, more challenging dialectical work. Considering several interpretive issues, I argue that bifurcatory division is a process of collective inquiry into the common through which an account, both definitional and taxonomical, is discovered. Depending on the level of understanding exhibited by the inquirers, this account may or may not allow for noetic understanding of the object in the deepest sense.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Eric Sanday, Cristina Ionescu, Michael Wiitala, and the anonymous readers for Elenchos for feedback on earlier drafts. I owe numerous points to them throughout.
Appendixes: Divisions
1. The Angler (218e–221c; cf. Smith 2020, 6)
2. The First Sophist (221c3–223b6)
3. The Second, Third, and Fourth Sophists (223b9–224e11)
4. The Fifth Sophist (224e6–226a6)
5. The Sixth Sophist (231b3–8)
6. Web-like, Symmetrical Division of Making (265b–266b1)
7. The Seventh Sophist (264c1–268d5, drawing upon distinctions from 232a1–236d9)
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