Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos

Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos

In this culmination of a lifetime's study, Joseph Cropsey examines the crucial relationship between Plato's conception of the nature of the universe and his moral and political thought. Cropsey interprets seven of Plato's dialogues— Theaetetus , Euthyphro , Sophist , Statesman , Apology , Crito , and Phaedo —in light of their dramatic consecutiveness and thus as a conceptual and dramatic whole. The cosmos depicted by Plato in these dialogues, Cropsey argues, is often unreasonable, and populated by human beings unaided by gods and dealt with equivocally by nature. Masterfully leading the reader through the seven scenes of the drama, Cropsey shows how they are, to an astonishing degree, concerned with the resources available to help us survive in such a world. This is a world—and a Plato—quite at odds with most other portraits. Much more than a summary of Plato's thinking, this book is an eloquent, sometimes amusing, often moving guide to the paradoxes and insights of Plato's philosophy. Joseph Cropsey (1919-2012) was a distinguished service professor emeritus in the department of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught since 1958. He previously was on the faculty of the City College of New York and the New School for Social Research. His scholarly work examined classical political thinkers such as Socrates and Plato, as well as the foundations of modern liberalism in Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith. He also collaborated with Leo Strauss, co-editing the inflential overview of Western political thought History of Political Philosophy .