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...

This little-known late writing of Hobbes reveals an unexplored dimension of his famous doctrine of sovereignty. The essay was first published posthumously in 1681, and from 1840 to 1971 only a generally unreliable edition has been in print. This edition provides the first dependable and easily accessible text of Hobbes's Dialogue. In the Dialogue, Hobbes sets forth his mature reflections of the relation between reason and law, reflections more "liberal" than those found in Leviathan and his other well-known writings. Hobbes proposes a separation of the functions of...

Carl Schmitt was the most famous and controversial defender of political theology in the twentieth century. But in his best-known work, "The Concept of the Political," issued in 1927, 1932, and 1933, political considerations led him to conceal the dependence of his political theory on his faith in divine revelation. In 1932 Leo Strauss published a critical review of "Concept" that initiated an extremely subtle exchange between Schmitt and Strauss regarding Schmitt's critique of liberalism. Although Schmitt never answered Strauss publicly, in the third edition of his book he changed a number...

This volume provides an unequaled introduction to the thought of chief contributors to the Western tradition of political philosophy from classical Greek antiquity to the twentieth century. Written by specialists on the various philosophers, this third edition has been expanded significantly to include both new and revised essays.

My original research on the present subject was done a number of years ago as I was preparing a doctoral dissertation at Colum bia University. I wish to thank Prosessor Joseph Dorfman for the help he so unstintingly offered at that time. Only my reluctance to implicate him in the shortcomings of this book prevents me from acknowledging the full measure of my obligation to Professor Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago. His influence upon this study is not to be reckoned in terms of his concurrence with its substance, as to which I cannot testify, or in terms of the credit that this study...