I was going through some old papers of mine and stumbled across some notes I made a few years ago while reading Plato’s Euthyphro and Crito. I’d encountered both of these texts in an intro to philosophy class and the former again in an ethics class, but in both cases the focus was limited to ethics and the Euthyphro dilemma. What interested me about these old notes is I was attempting a more political interpretation of these texts. I’m not sure how much I agree with my reading today, or if it is very accurate, but it was interesting enough for me to want tidy up and post here. Part 1 on the Euthyphro is here. Below is is Part 2 on the Crito:
The dramatic context of the Crito is this: Socrates, imprisoned after being condemned to death, wakes to find his friend Crito in his cell watching him sleep. Crito informs Socrates that the ship from Delos is likely to arrive that day, and thus Socrates will be executed. Socrates doesn’t believe Crito, as he has had a dream that suggested he will die in 3 days. Crito is planning to help Socrates escape his death.
Crito gives a monologue where he gives three reasons for why Socrates should attempt an escape:
- “to give up your life when you can save it” is not just (45c). This is a direct appeal to justice.
- “you are betraying your sons,” (45c). An appeal to duties of the family, which here have come into conflict with duties to the state (to obey the law).
- Socrates is being “cowardly” and “unmanly” by refusing to save himself (45e-46a). His actions are not only “evil” but “shameful.”
(An aside: It might seem strange that Socrates begins this dialogue with an appeal to a prophetic dream, yet later states that “I am the kind of man who listens to nothing within me but the argument that on reflection sounds best to me,” (46b). We could explain away this inconsistency, if we wish, by reminding ourselves that Socrates views argument, knowledge, and truth as pertaining to the world of Being—ideal forms, the true forms of which material things are just imperfect imitations. Prophecy pertains to the future, and hence to the world of becoming. Thus it is not necessarily inconsistent for Socrates to appeal to prophecy to come to correct opinions about the world of becoming.)
To address Crito’s plea, Socrates takes up the question of the opinion of the majority. When should we listen to it? When should we ignore it? He begins by splitting the opinions of the majority into two:
- Good opinions = opinions of wise men
- Bad opinions = opinions of foolish men
We now have two majorities, that of wise men and that of foolish men. However, “wise men” quickly becomes “the wise man” or the expert, of which there is one for each undertaking. The expert is now contrasted with the foolish, unknowing masses.
The upshot of all of this: We should not trust the majority on matters of justice, we should only trust “what he will say who understands justice,” (48a). (As a side note, I’m very suspicious of how Socrates got to this conclusion, particularly the jump from wise men to the wise man).
Socrates begins with a principle: one must not do wrong or harm, even in return to wrong or harm done. He views this principle as absolute. There is no compromise.
He adds another principle: one should fulfill just agreements.
After these principles, Socrates ventriloquizes the law and the state in a rather melodramatic way that is worth quoting at length (Socrates is talking to himself here as the law incarnate): “Tell me, Socrates, what are you intending to do? Do you not by this action you are attempting [escaping into exile] intend to destroy us, the laws, and indeed the whole city, as far as you are concerned? Or do you think it is possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force but are nullified and set at naught by private individuals,” (50a-b, emphasis mine). Socrates is explicitly making the claim that the existence of a city depends on its laws having force, particularly force over the private individual. (This is striking: what sort of thing must a law be such that it exerts force on all private individuals, yet can be “destroyed” by a single individual?) The only argument Socrates has against the law is that it has wronged him.
“The law” claims that the city is responsible for Socrates’s own existence: “Did we not, first, bring you to birth, and was it not through us that your father married your mother and begat you?” (50d). The state, here, is more fundamental than the family. Thus, the laws exist in the same sort of relationship that a child and a parent do. And just as a child cannot retaliate against a parent’s punishment, a private individual cannot retaliate against the state. Thus, Socrates cannot “destroy” the law just because it wants to destroy him. “It is impious to bring violence to bear against your mother or father; it is much more so to use it against your country,” (51c). Socrates seems to posit here a continuity of the state and the family that he and Euthyphro were previously unable to establish.
Over and above the paternal/maternal character of the law and the state, Socrates, as a citizen, had the opportunity to leave Athens. Staying means he tacitly accepts the laws. And if there is an unjust action proposed by the courts, Socrates has the opportunity to persuade the law to do otherwise.
Reading the Euthyphro and the Crito side by side with an eye to the question of the relation between the family and the state seems to reveal Socrates to be taking a hypocritical attitude. In Euthyphro he is astonished that Euthyphro would take the side of the law and the state over his own family and interests as a private citizen. Yet, when it comes to his own situation in the Crito, Socrates shirks his duties as a father and his interest as a private citizen, asserting that following those interests would destroy the state and the law.
FAT WORM OF ERROR 