Publication Details

Abstract

A passionate discussion between Roger D. Masters and Anton  Hermann Chroust concerning the case of Aristotle’s missing dialogues, namely The Stateman and The Sophist (commonly attributed to Plato), started in the second half of the 20 th century on the pages of the scientific journal Political Theory. Masters offered two assumptions on the authorship of the dialogues which gave rise to the whole polemic: A) the author of the fourth to sixth books of Aristotle’s Politics is Theofrastos; B) Plato’s Stateman and Sophist are works of the young Aristotle. The aim of this paper is to confront Masters’ and Chroust’s arguments with the arguments from Aristotle’s Politics and Plato’s dialogues. On the basis of the textual evidence we will try to determine which of the two authors offers stronger arguments.