ABSTRACT
In this chapter I argue that Plato’s Statesman shows why the use of examples forms a crucial part of dialectical inquiry. For the dialogue makes clear that examples are tools eminently suited to train the abilities of collecting and of separating things central to dialectic. It further indicates that they help facilitate our understanding of “greater matters,” such as statesmanship and philosophy, because examples, when duly recognized as examples, help us realize what such matters have in common with what is less significant but more familiar, while at the same time highlighting the radical difference between them.
