Equus

Equus Reason and Logic The play Equus, by Peter Shaffer, revolves around a conflict between a boy driven by his passions, Alan Strang and an older psychiatrist sick of his rational world, Martin Dysart. Plato is a great philosopher and perhaps the most well known rationalist of all time. His ideas of epistemology and metaphysics are surrounded by his believe that the world is best knowable by human reason and had Plato been given the chance to talk with Alan and Dysart, he would have been disappointed in both. Plato would have been angry with Alan because of the lack of reason and logic in his life and Dysart because of his resistance to knowledge of the world of forms, Plato’s theory about what is really real. Everything wrong with Alan Strang stemmed from the fact that he allowed his passions to rule his every waking moment. In his book, Republic, Plato states, “It will be the business of reason to rule with wisdom and forethought on behalf of the entire soul; while the spirited element ought to act as its subordinate and ally” (104). Plato spends a fair amount of time in Republic setting out how the dysart, plato, alan, reason, world, passion, life, about, soul, light, without, rule, plato’s, knowledge, good, been, shaffer, say, equus, dark, cave, alan’s, worship, way, trying, strang, should, real, passions, men, logic, known, find, brought, because