Crito by Plato

Debangana Chatterjee
Plato (428-348 BCE) & the Context
✔ Crito
• Set in 399 BCE
• One of the early dialogues by Plato concerning the legacy of Socrates
• Plato dramatizes a dialogue between his teacher Socrates and Socrates’ friend Crito who has hatched an
escape plan for Socrates from Athens to Thessaly
• Focuses on the nature of political obligation as a philosophical concern
• This dialogue (escape plan) comes after Apology focusing on Socrates’ trial and is followed by Phaedo
focusing on his death.

 Background

Socrates is convicted for impiety and corrupting the Athenian youth. About 500 Athenians as part of the
trial jury sentences him to death. Socrates chooses death over exile.

After the trial Socrates is in jail awaiting his death. He spent a month in prison waiting for the ship to
arrive from Delos after finishing a religious mission. .2

As the ship is about to arrive from Delos, Crito, a wealthy friend of Socrates, meets Socrates in the prison
cell at dawn with the hope that he would be able to convince Socrates to escape
✔ Questions to Ponder?

• Is Socrates guilty or innocent?

• Can an escape from law be justified?
• What does that say about the relationship between the
state and the citizens?
• Is there a breaking point for obligation towards the state?
• What kind of obligation is it?
1. Moral Obligation
2. Legal Obligation
3. Obligation towards justice 3
✔ Crito’s Argument

• Obligation to friends
1. It makes his friends look bad
2. Maligns their as well as Socrates’ reputation

• Obligation towards the opinion of many

• Obligation as father towards raising and educating his sons (p. 3)
• Appealing to Socrates’ righteousness (Do the right thing by not
following bad laws) (p. 3)
1. Do not let the evil to triumph
2. It is cowardly to accept death 4
 ✔ Socrates’ Rebuttal (1 & 2)
• Socrates weighs all of Crito’s arguments about reputation and opinion against the question of justice.
• Only truly good opinions should be valued. Good opinions come from the wise, while the worthless ones
comes from the ignorant. Value the opinion of a the one whose opinion truly matters. (p. 4)
• E.g.- When sick, whose opinion are you going to take? A doctor or a wanderer?
• “…whether we must follow the opinion of the many and fear it or instead the opinion of the one person, if
there is someone who has knowledge, whom we must defer to and fear more than all the others together? If
we do not heed his opinion we will corrupt and harm that part of us which becomes better with justice and is
destroyed by injustice.” (p. 4)
• Socrates argues for obligation towards soul instead of the body (Moral argument)
• Behaving unjustly will be playing in the hands of the evil as he will give them what they want— which is to
harm his own soul
• “is life worth living with a wretched and corrupt body?” & “it's not living that should be our priority, but5
living well.”– living a life of justice
• Injustices cannot be retaliated with more injustices
✔ Socrates’ Rebuttal (3)
• Socrates is unwilling to set an example of injustice for his sons— after all, what education
would it be, when they will be away from the benefits of the state of Athens?
• Providing for the children cannot simply mean being alive
• Socrates is certain that with friends like Crito, his sons’ well-being will be well taken care of
in his absence
• Now that Socrates has neutralised Crito’s insistence on escape, he emphasises upon why he
should continue remaining in Athens and meet his fate.

• Socrates’ Arguments have two prongs:

Justice is all that matters 6

Escaping (evading law) is unjust

 ✔ Socrates’ Rebuttal: Why is he obligated? (4)
 Socrates presents his reasons for obedience by impersonating as law
 Even when Socrates is treated unjustly, he cannot behave unjustly in return.

So: “…there's a lot more a person could say, especially an orator, on

Precedence of lawless behalf of this law we're destroying, which establishes the verdicts that
behaviours/ Destruction of Law
have been decided as sovereign.”
LAW: "Socrates, did we agree on this, we and you, to honor the
decisions that the city makes?“
LAW: “Did we not, to begin with, give birth to you?”
LAW: “What about the laws concerning the upbringing and education of
children, by which you too were raised?”
LAW: Justice between you and your father, or your master
Gratitude Consent to obey if you happened to have one, was not based on equality, so that you could
towards Athens Athenian laws
as a benefactor & institutions
not do whatever you had suffered in return, neither speak back when
crossed nor strike back when struck nor many other such things.
LAW: Soc was LAW: “at your trial you could have proposed exile, if you had
given a fair chance wished, and what you're now trying to do to the city without her consent,
7

to present his case you could have done then with her consent.”
during the trial
 ✔ Critical Arguments

 Socrates’ assumption of obligation towards the state outweighing the

obligation towards people surrounding him can be challenged; especially, if
there are unjust laws or absence of ‘fairness’ in the due process.
 With what kind of a contract with the state are we obligated?
 Beyond the initial consent to it, if the state turns more towards forceful compliance of the citizens through
laws, are the citizens still obligated?

 Does not allowing oneself to abide by the unjust laws brings more injury to
the political society?
8
✔ Putting things in Perspective