In this study, Sayre discusses key, but previously obscure, passages in the Statesman.

Kenneth M. Sayre is Professor of Philosophy emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of twenty books, with primary specialty in Plato.

Part I. Method: 1. Becoming better dialecticians; 2. Collection in the Phaedras and the Sophist; 3. Division in the Phaedras and the Sophist; 4. Collection yields to illustrative paradigms; 5. The Weaver Paradigm; 6. The Final Definition; Part II. Metaphysics: 7. Excess and deficiency in general; 8. The great and the small in Plato's dialogues; 9. The generation of everything good and fair; 10. Accuracy in the art of dialectic; 11. Division according to forms; 12. The metaphysics of division.