Being, Cosmos, and Community in Plato

• In Event: Friendship and Action in Conversation with the Ancient Greeks

Abstract

Having grounded Socrates’s commitment to the reality of justice in the ascent to being and the forms in the Phaedo and the Republic, Plato in later dialogues explores the decent into the almost paradoxical world of being-in-becoming. The source of order in the human polis—the being in becoming—is participation in the order of the cosmos, that is, the true order of the polis is an eikon of the true order of the cosmos, itself an eikon of eternal being. Since the order of the cosmos is intrinsically constituted by persuasion, intelligence, and love—community of being—the order of the true polis is likewise constituted by community in Plato’s sense.

Author

• Thomas J. McPartland, Kentucky State University