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A Sharp Eye For Kinds: Collection And Division In Plato's Late Dialogues, Devin Henry
A Sharp Eye For Kinds: Collection And Division In Plato's Late Dialogues, Devin Henry
Devin Henry
This paper focuses on two methodological questions that arise from Plato’s account of collection and division. First, what place does the method of collection and division occupy in Plato’s account of philosophical inquiry? Second, do collection and division in fact constitute a formal “method” (as most scholars assume) or are they simply informal techniques that the philosopher has in her toolkit for accomplishing different philosophical tasks? I argue that Plato sees collection and division as useful tools for achieving two distinct goals – generating real definitions and discovering the basic natural kinds of a given domain of knowledge – both …