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

Abstract

This text examines the 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.