philosophy and politics in plato's crito

Philosophy and Politics in Plato's CritoAuthor(s): J. Peter EubenReviewed work(s):Source: Political Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (May, 1978), pp. 149-172Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191041 .Accessed: 30/04/2012 13:43

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CONSIDERING THE CRITO

1. PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS IN PLATO'S CRITO

J. PETER EUBEN University of California, Santa Cruz

H !URING THE 1960s, interest in Plato's Apology and Crito centered on the question of the limits and grounds of political obligation. Civil disobedients invoked the Socrates of the Apology as a pre- cursor of and authority for their acts. I His respectful but firm refusal to give up philosophy at the behest of an Athenian court seemed exemplary: here was a man caught between conflicting commitments, a citizen who valued personal integrity and truth; an intellectual valida- ting his thought and life by the courage of his death. On trial for his life, Socrates rejects in advance any offer of acquittal or probation on condi- tion that he cease doing philosophy, that is, going among his fellow citizens to see whether they know what they think they know or truly understand the bases of their life and actions. To such an offer he would have to say, as he does in the Apology: "Men of Athens, I hold you in the highest regard and affection, but I will be persuaded by [obey] the god rather than you. As long as I have breath and strength I will not give up philosophy or stop exhorting you and pointing out the truth to everyone of you whom I meet."2

But as critics of civil disobedience were quick to emphasize, another Platonic dialogue, the Crito, closely linked by time, theme, and reference to the Apology, apparently speaks in a different voice and with different import. In the Apology Socrates is contentious and rebellious. But in the Crito, he is reverent and submissive, referring to himself as a child and slave (doulos) of the laws, willing to suffer injustice if unable to persuade them of their errors of judgment and decision (50de, 5 lbc). One might argue that Socrates' acceptance of the unjust decision and his punishf?ient is consistent with or even entailed by civildisobedience. But POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 6 No. 2, May 1978 ?1978 Sage Publications, Inc.

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the grounds he offers for that acceptance are disconcerting; to us as to his fellow citizens,3 in their own terms and in relation to the Apology. If not a contradiction, there is at least a surface inconsistency between the two dialogues.

My purpose in this essay is twofold. I want, first, to probe that inconsistency through an analysis of the Crito and in terms of the relation of philosophy and Socrates to politics and Crito. I chose this theme rather than that of obedience or disobedience to the law because it seems to me more inclusive and therefore more revealing of the depth of Socrates' dilemma. I chose the Crito because in it the surface inconsistency clearly emerges as a tension that marks much of Plato's thought. In other words, by transposing the initial inconsistency between the Apology and Crito on obedience to the law into one of Socrates' relation to his old friend Crito and of philosophy to politics, a logical inconsistency becomes a political, philosophic, and dramatic conflict of poignant intensity. One consequence of this approach is to make problematic Socrates' relevance as either a civil disobedient or critic of civil disobedience. But if we take Socrates as an exemplar, we better be clear what is exemplary about him.

Second, I want to critically examine two interpretations of the Crito which, in different ways, attempt to resolve the inconsistency between it and the Apology. Both readings-the philosophic and the literary- seem to me incomplete and thus misleading. They achieve consistency at the expense of Socrates' true dilemma. Since the persuasiveness of my own reading depends in part on showing the insufficiences of these other two, I turn to them first.

I

Recent philosophical readings of the Crito tend to regard the "con- tingent" circumstances of Socrates' life (such as his attitude toward death and exile, his age and friendship with Crito), his times (such as the political crisis and corruption in Athens following the Peloponnesian War), and his particular mode of expression (such as the "high flown oratory" in his conversation with the laws) as distractions from treating his argument as one intended to convince "any rational man at any time and in any place."4 Thus Socrates' words are formulated in proposi- tional form in order to show either how his proposition in the Crito is in fact consistent with his statements in the Apology, or how it can be

Euben / PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS [151]

made so by reformulating the arguments he almost makes, or intended to make, or really should have made in the Crito.5

The first approach is that of A.D. Woozley who denies that Socrates' refusal to accept a discharge conditional on his giving up philosophy in the Apology and his argument in the Crito that a court order must not be evaded or disobeyed even when unjust, is anything more than a seem- ing discrepancy. Woozley argues that (1) in default of other evidence, we must assume that Socrates (as presented by Plato) speaks sincerely in both dialogues; (2) he cannot be knowingly inconsistent; and (3) it is implausible to suppose that there was an inconsistency of which Soc- rates, of all people, was unaware.6 Given these assumptions, he goes on to suggest that there is indeed no inconsistency since "what in the Apology Socrates is prepared to do against the court is not the same as what in the Crito he is not prepared to do against the court" (307). In the former dialoque, Socrates is only prepared to disobey one possible judgment banning him from continued philosophizing, and his disobedience will be open, not concealed or clandestine.7 He will simply go on pursuing truth as he always has.

In the Crito, the disobedience to a lawful command which he will not accept because it will injure the law is Crito's suggestion of escape. All disobedience to lawful commands is of this kind except attempting to convince the state that the law or command is wrong. "But this per- mitted exception to the rule of obedience is precisely what he had pro- posed to follow in the Apology.... The one course other than obedience to the law and its commands which Socrates' argument in the Crito permits is the one course which he had said in the Apology he would, if banned from philosophy, take. Once we see that it is not the doctrine of the Crito that a man must always, and no matter what, obey the laws of his state, the supposed conflict between that dialogue and the Apology disappears" (307-308).

As valuable as Woozley's analysis is, his overall argument is incomplete for at least three reasons. First, his assumption that Socrates need not mention philosophizing as an exception to unconditional obedience to the state and its laws because philosophy is persuading the state and this is the exception allowed for in the Crito, is itself not wholly persuasive. For it is not clear that this is the sole function of philosophy, nor is how one persuades "the state," of who "the state" is, or how such philosophic "persuasion" differs from rhetoric.8 (As the Apology indicates, Socrates has spent his life distinguishing himself from the sophists-with notably little success.) Second, Woozley


assumes that Socrates speaks in an honest and straightforward manner, neither dissimulating nor pretending.9 But then what is one to make of Socratic irony or use of myth? (Several commentators regard the dialogue with the laws as a myth.)10 Can one say that a moral teacher and political educator always speaks straightforwardly? Or is he or she concerned with the kind of audience and the circumstances of conversation? If the goal is self-knowledge-that is, an understanding accom- panied by inner change-then what is appropriate to say to one person at one time may not be what should be said to anyone at any time. For what brings clarity to one person may merely compound another's confusion; where direct statements may meet resistance and incompre- hension indirect ones may penetrate and illuminate. " I To say what one "knows" directly to one who does not know is likely to lead to misunder- standing and is, from one point of view, deception. This is especially so where such knowledge is original as well as personally and politically unsettling. It is true that this conception of teaching is open to abuse and that the insistence that it is Socrates' can be overstated. It may even be questionable whether such education is political, if politicaleducation is regarded as taking place among equals rather than in relations analo- gous to those of parent and child. Nevertheless, these issues are a central problem in Socrates' life and thought, and in the Crito. Finally, Wooz- ley rejects Socrates' contention that a man ought always to obey the law because the consequences of disobedience are, or would be, socially destructive. He argues that a single act of disobedience would be negli- gible "unless his example triggered off wider disobedience." But that is exactly what Socrates anticipates. By treating what Socrates says literally and largely bypassing the question of audience, Woozley does not take his own proviso seriously enough to link it with Socrates' prophecy in the Apology, that "a far more severe punishment than you have inflicted on me will surely overtake you as soon as I am dead. You have done this thinking that you will be relieved from having to give an account of your lives. But I say that the result will be very different. There will be more men who will call you to account, whom I have held back, though you did not recognize it. And they will be harsher to you and I have been" (Church, n.d., 46). What is at stake in Socrates' trial and his decision in the Crito is the fate of the relations between the philosopher and his fellow citizens, between philosophy and politics. Any proclaimed consistency which ignores this dimension of the dialogues and the Socratic vocation is too easily achieved.

A second philosophic approach to the Crito and the inconsistency between it and the Apology is that offered by Gregory Vlastos. I2 Vlastos


is concerned with the political implications of the fact that so many commentators take Socrates' injunction to obey the laws in the Crito as his last word on the question of obedience to political authority. So he begins by insisting that there is an inconsistency between the two dialogues in order to reformulate and distill a politically sensible, logi- cally consistent, doctrine of political obligation from them. This requires substantial surgery on what Vlastos regards as the rhetorical excesses of the Crito. Only then will it be possible to establish a line of reasoning implicit in the law's "harangue," which in a different setting would have been laid out in the familiar Socratic style. As he notes, the Crito is unique among Socratic dialogues. Instead of Socrates' usual dialectical approach to a problem-defining terms, facing up to obscuri- ties and perplexities, considering counterexamples-one finds "diction running to hyperbole," "thought flown about by gusts of feeling," and a unique act of self-abnegation, whereby Socrates yields the floor to a "majestic surrogate, the personified 'laws and community' of Athens" with their venerated commonplaces (519).13

Given these initial conditions and purposes Vlastos proceeds to ex- plicate, assess, and reformulate what he regards as the two related arguments of the Crito-the argument from beneficence and the argument from agreement.

In general, Vlastos agrees with the contention of the laws (50E, 5 1 A-C) that those who have rendered us substantial, even unique, benefits in the past have put us under an obligation which entitled them to special forbearance (520). But how much forbearance? Could Socrates have meant that there are no limits within which a beneficiary owes grateful compliance to his benefactor? Clearly he could not. Suppose that Socrates was ordered by his lawful government to convey to the captain of a warship the notorious decision by Athens to destroy the entire male population of Mytilene. Not only might he not be obligated to carry out the order, but we might want to argue that he is obligated not to precisely in terms of the beneficence argument. (In the Apology Socrates cites his own disobedience to an unlawful decree of the Thirty.) For he would be showing his gratitude not by transmitting the order, but by refusing to be a party to such infamy, thus showing the world that Athens raised men such as Socrates. "Gratitude," Vlastos concludes, "could not be a reason for yielding everywhere to the demands of a beneficient fatherland; in given circumstances it would itself be a reason for resisting her demands" (522).

Nor is Vlastos prepared to accept, without qualification, the second reason Socrates offers for obeying the laws-that he has entered into a


tacit nonverbal contract with them. Vlastos accepts the notion that there are actions that generate tacit nonverbal obligations equivalent to those resulting from agreements or compacts. Such tacit agreements can generate obligations of "unquestionable validity even in circumstances where it is highly questionable that we had a free choice in taking the relevant action" (523). What he will not accept is the "false and quite gratuitous assumption" that Socrates has an obligation to the laws because he has the option of remaining or leaving Athens such that his remaining constitutes a free choice and a statement of preference for his native city. For given what Socrates would have to give up by leaving-his civic rights (and those of his children), the unique free speech Athens allowed, the opportunity to meet and argue with the leading minds of Greece-it is not clear in what sense we may talk of "choice." Nor is it clear that "choosing" to remain implies a preference for the laws of Athens, since one can have many reasons for remaining where one is that are in part independent of whether one prefers the laws of one's state.

Vlastos regards these assumptions as gratuitous, for he thinks Socra- tes has stronger arguments which he does not spell out but of which he has "an intuitive sense." The first of these regards an action as self- obligating if "because by means of it the agent draws upon a pool of benefits which is secured by the cooperation of the beneficiaries and is distributed justly among them" (527). When Socrates refers to the great benefits he has received from having been reared and having lived within the Athenian legal order, he implies that that order is itselfjust. And this suggests that agreements generate moral obligations only if, and because, they are in accord with justice; that he is obligated to the laws of Athens because he made a just agreement with them and they are just.'4 Thus shorn of its excess and unnecessary assumptions Socrates appears to argue that Athens is a legal order which produces great benefits for its citizens and that obedience to the laws are the dues every citizen pays to this collective enterprise. In exercising his rights as a citizen (which Socrates did), in a state like Athens "he gives his fellows to understand that he agrees to carry his individual share of the aggre- gate burden and undertakes in all fairness to do his part as he expects them to do theirs. Thus disobedience to the law is a default on this undertaking, not keeping a promise, welshing on a commitment that is no less real for being tacit" (528).

The second stronger argument, though not actually present in the Crito, is present in other dialogues (such as Book I of the Republic), where Socrates recognizes collisions beween duties and thus has within "his line of vision" the modern distinction between what one has an

Euben / PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS (1551

obligation to do and what,on balance, one is obligated to do. Applying this substantive distinction to Socrates' rationale of political obligation in the Crito and his statement of dutiful disobedience in the Apology, Vlastos argues (as Woozley did) that, because the circumstances are so different, there is no inconsistency. The disobedient action contem- plated in the Crito involves a fraudulent evasion and subversion of the law, not an open defiance of it. Socrates could never undertake such a course of action, for it would trivialize his life and teachings and lend substance to the charges of his accusers. But neither can he give up philosophy, which he regards as the greatest benefaction to the state, a duty to the god, and the essence of his moral identity (532-533). So in both dialogues Socrates must do what he does (even if the grounds he offers must be reformulated). To flee or stop doing philosophy would have meant moral suicide. Thus Socrates is right to argue that he ought to obey the law in his circumstances and also right for saying no to the abstract question-should every citizen of any state and in any circumstances obey the law.

Vlastos is less concerned with a detailed analysis of the Apology and Crito than with (1) arguing against those who invoke Socrates as a para- digm of unconditional obedience to political authority and (2) using the inconsistency between the two dialogues as an occasion to generate a theory of political obligation useful to modern political actors. It is not that the Apology, and Crito are incidental to these purposes, but rather that they are treated in their terms. Granting the legitimacy of the enterprise and the cogency of much of what emerges, there are two kinds of questions that remain.

The first involves the matter of whether Vlastos' argument is also Socrates' argument; whether his reformulated consistency does not obscure the depth of the initial inconsistency thereby making Socra- tes too comfortably relevant, too much like Kant and Rawls. Certainly Vlastos does not explain why Socrates says what he says in the manner or sequence he does. Why, for instance, does Socrates give such promi- nence to the laws to the neglect of other reasons for remaining in Ath- ens? (Certainly Crito suggests them.) What is the status of the laws with whom Socrates converses? Does Socrates regard the Athenian legal order as just or is it his invented laws which solicit his agreement and respect? What effect does Socrates' unique vocation have on his relation to his fellow citizens? Is he a beneficiary and participant like others, an equal doing his share to sustain the common enterprise? Nor is it obvi- ous that the "high flown" oratory, "gusts of feeling," hyperbole, and act of self-abnegation can be treated as incidental accompaniments to an implicit argument. There is a danger that Vlastos' surgery will maim the patient and make him unrecognizable.


A second set of questions concerns the particular things Vlastos asserts about the Crito and Socrates. For one thing, it is not simply civic rights and the opportunity to converse with leading philosophers that Socrates would give up by choosing exile, but the very opportunity to do political philosophy at all-to have reasoning taken seriously in practical life. Moreover, it is misleading to speak of reasons for remaining in Athens independent of the laws, given that Greek law was not merely a series of constraints but a formative educative force, embody- ing a particular ideal of culture and citizenship. Furthermore, Socrates seems to suggest that he owes obedience to the laws not only because they are just, but because they are his: that patriotism as well as justice are the proper grounds of obligation. When these grounds fail to coin- cide, the philosopher-citizen is forced to reexamine both his philosophic vocation and his citizenship.

Given these and previous objections, the efforts of Vlastos and Woozley to make Socrates' arguments in the Apology and Crito consistent exacts too high a price. It is purchased at the expense of what seems to me the most inclusive issue posed by the dialogues. They explain the inconsistency by explaining it away.

II

While the philosophic interpretation of the Crito puts the dramatic setting aside,'5 the literary interpretation of both the dialogue and the inconsistency place it at the center. Here the difficulty lies in treating the Crito as a literary text to the virtual exclusion of philosophic and political content. If the philosophic reading of the Crito is too abstract and contextless, the literary approach is too contextual, or rather con- strues context in too narrowly literary terms.

An example of this approach is a recent essay by Gary Young.'6 Stressing the importance of the different dramatic settings of the Crito and Apology, he regards Socrates as addressing "two different audi- ences with two presumably different purposes in mind" (3). Thus, there is no real inconsistency between the two dialogues; indeed, the issue is overemphasized. For Socrates does not literally mean the unconditional call for obedience he addresses to Crito. As evidence, Young notes that Crito is one of the many whose views Socrates regards as irrelevant to the question at hand-should he or should he not fleejail and Athens. As one of the many, he will not be able to understand Socrates' principles. "Insofar as such principles are decisive for Socrates' decision not to flee Athens, Crito will be unable to understand the reasons for that de-


cision. And if Socrates wishes to persuade Crito that it is not dikaion for Socrates to flee Athens, he will not be able to rely upon Socratic prirl- ciples as a means of persuasion: the Socratic principles, at least by themselves, will leave Crito unmoved" (6). For though Crito is Socrates' old friend, he is incapable of applying these principles himself (7). They are not his own; he does not act on them or even remember them when facing the prospect of Socrates' death, except where explicitly reminded of them by Socrates. But because Crito is a dear friend, Socrates is anxious to ease his sorrow, as best he can, given Crito's inability to accept Socrates' belief, that it is better to suffer injustice (injury, harm) than to commit it.

Once we recognize that Socrates' aim is not to justify or explain to Crito why he refuses to flee, but to "move" Crito to accept his decision (9), the unique qualities of the dialogue that puzzled Woozley and annoyed Vlastos became intelligible. The un-Socratic rhetoric, the absence of dialectic, and the self-abnegation are all designed to convince Crito. Indeed, the whole dialogue with the laws, where Socrates assumes Crito's position and the laws become Socratic, is intended to deal with Crito's initial considerations in ways that will be regarded as powerful by Crito.''

Young's approach is a useful corrective to any literal reading of the Crito. He regards the dialogue as a human encounter as well as an argument and tries to draw out the implications of the former for the nature and status of the latter. In so doing, he adds richness and complexity to what is happening and being said in the dialogue.

But for all its merits, Young claims too much for the dramatic context and does too little with it. He claims too much when he argues that Socrates "misrepresents his beliefs" because of the character of Crito. He does too little with it insofar as he omits aspects of the dramatic context which complicate his initial claim. Let me explore each in turn.

Initially, Young's claim is modest enough and quite similar to those of Woozley and Vlastos; Socrates "does not believe" that "every citizen (including myself) should obey every command of the city" (4, 1). But the reason he gives for this statement is the nature and a character of the audience, Crito. The problem is that Young does not offer a detailed analysis of which beliefs Socrates misrepresents and which he does not, nor what misrepresentation is. Lacking this, his modest claim becomes a more encompassing one: that the dramatic setting and the character of Crito so dictate what Socrates can say and how he can say it that he simply does not believe what he says to Crito, or has the laws say to Crito (or what Plato has Socrates have the laws say to Crito).'8

This claim in turn rests on at least three assumptions: (I) that though Crito is Socrates' friend, he is also one of the many whose views and


opinions Socrates dismisses as irrelevant; (2) that Crito is therefore separated from Socrates by an unbridgeable gulf; and (3) that what Socrates says to Crito does not embody either Socrates' general beliefs or his specific view about proper obedience to authority. Though there is evidence in the dialogue to support these assumptions and the claims based on them, not all the evidence does so.

It is not quite true that Socrates does not care for the many and regards their views as irrelevant. 19 He does not care for them as a multitude (pollon), existing in the swollen polis of Athens. He certainly does not accept them and their views as the final arbiter of what is right and truc. But he does care deeply about what his fellow citizens think and how they live their lives. That is what distinguishes him from the sophists who, as noncitizens of the polis in which they teach, pretend to care for men but really despise them.

Socrates does care for the views of his fellow citizens and for their view of him. That is the reason why he speaks and acts as he does, going into the marketplace in the name of philosophy to discuss issues that arise in the context of daily life and in everyday language. He is anxious about the fate of Athens, philosophy, and the future relations between them. It is no doubt true that Socrates' orchestration of his trial and punisment to which Crito refers (45e) is a heroic testing of his life and teaching.20 But, as with Achilles (to whom he refers in both the Crito and Apology), this test includes a concern for what others will think and say of him (and of philosophy). Though the multitude is not a final judge, Socrates is aware that no one is the author and producer of his own life story.

Thus, because there is a political and moral purpose to Socates' teaching, because he regards philosophy as political in aim and intended achievement, his relation to the many and to the matter of reputation is ambivalent. To ignore this fact is to underestimate the tragedy of Socrates' condemnation and the separation of philosophy and politics it portends. It is to miss the dilemma that underlies the inconsistency between the two dialogues and to leave too uncomplicated his relation with Crito. Socrates is not an Athenian like any other; but he is an Ath- enian. As such, he shares with Crito a common past and citizenship unshareable with other philosophers.2' Young underemphasizes this bond and so overemphasizes the gulf that separates Crito from Socra- tes. He comes perilously close to treating whatever Crito says as symp- tomatic of philosophical ineptitude and therefore unworthy of serious consideration by Socrates. And insofar as he identifies Crito with the citizen-multitude of Athens, his treatment of Crito is also the denigra- tion of the claims of citizenship and the polis on philosophers and philo-


sophy. This makes it impossible to recognize the separation of philosophy and politics as a mutual tragedy the way Socrates does.22

Finally, Young's assumption that Socrates does not believe what he says because he is talking to Crito is too narrow a construction of audience. Leaving aside the complicating fact that Plato is writing for an audience of readers, there is evidence in the Crito that the dialogue between Socrates and the laws is a dialogue between Socrates and himself; that he too is part of the audience, testing and trying himself before himself, reexamining his decision and thereby rediscovering an identity which is never fully or completely known. Because the dialogue with the laws is an internal one as well, it cannot simply be true that Socrates does not mean what he says or that he speaks only for Crito's benefit.

We are left then with the inconsistency more or less intact. Neither the philosophical nor the literary readings of the Crito has proved completely satisfactory in stating the substance of the inconsistency or the stakes in its possible resolution. In what follows, I offer an alternative interpretation of the Crito in order to pose the inconsistency in its most inclusive terms; as a tension between philosophy, philosophers, and Socrates on the one side, and politics, citizens, and Crito on the other. In so doing, I will try to be appropriately attentive to both the argument and dramatic context of the dialogue and thereby account for its unique tone. Finally, by presenting what I regard as Socrates' awareness of the tragic consequences of opposing philosophy and politics, I can return to consideration of his exemplary status.

III

There are two dialogues in the Crito, one between Crito and Socrates, the other between Socrates and the personified laws of Athens. Though the first is more concrete than the second, both deal with aspects of a single theme-the relation of philosophy and politics. Each dialogue asks whether philosophers and nonphilosophers can coexist in friendship and mutual respect; each explores the degree to which common citizenship can mute intellectual inequality. The conclusions of both dialogues and the Crito as a whole seem to me inconclusive. Socrates both moves away from Crito and the polis and reaches out toward them; he enlarges the gulf that divides them while painfully constructing a partial bridge in which they might come together. Let me show how and why this is the case by dealing with each of the Crito's dialogues in turn.

In the beginning of the Crito, Crito is impatient with his friend and with philosophy. Both are impractical and powerless, as Socrates' im-


pending death demonstrates. Neither can be trusted to operate successfully in the real world, to judge rightly and act decisively. For Crito this is a time for action, not talk. For what is at stake is not an argument but a life, friendship, families-particular real things and relationships in the world. Crito knows about such things and cares deeply for them:23 especially for his friend Socrates.24

Socrates must respond not only to Crito's arguments but also to his impatience with argument.25 He must deal with his friend's practicality, depth of caring, and moral confusion. And he must do so without for- cing Crito into false agreements or bad faith. Finally, he needs to keep Crito from disobeying the laws and buying justice where justice by law has, in Crito's opinion, failed.26 If he can successfully meet these chal- lenges and restore Crito to obedience, his action becomes a testament to his own good citizenship.

Socrates confronts the challenge through argument and philosophical rhetoric. His argument casts doubt on the primacy of Crito's considerations and the general assumptions that inform them. His philosophical rhetoric (in the dialogue with the laws), with its appeal to emotion, religious feeling, love of country, and gratitude for the gift of life and nurture, redresses the gap of understanding between them, assuages Crito's potential misology, and answers his prudential maxims by emphasizing what it is they share as Athenians and friends.

To Crito's emphasis on reputation and the opinion of the many Socrates opposes the one who knows ("if we can find him"; Church, 56) about questions of justice and injustice, the base and the honorable, good and evil. It is this man not the multitude who must be followed. To Crito's concern for the power of the many to kill a man,27 Socrates offers a distinction between living and living well, that is, honorably, justly, and righteously. The multitude can indeed kill someone, but they cannot do the greatest good or harm to him, i.e., make him wise or fool- ish. To ignore the many and live justly and righteously requires never committing injustice no matter what the practical circumstances or provocation. For Socrates, these considerations, not those of expense, reputation, family, and friends, are the necessary premises for deciding whether it is right for him to flee Athens. (Or rather it is only by living rightly that we will care for these things in the right way.) He is anxious that Crito agree with them and him; for he does not want to act against Crito's conviction or without his approval and consent.

But it is not clear whether or with what depth Crito does agree. As the argument of the first dialogue proceeds, Socrates tests Crito and the impact of his own past teachings on this man of the world. To Crito's


initial barrage of criticism (which starts at 45b and culminates at 49d) Socrates warns: "if your anxiety [eagerness] to save me be right, it is most valuable; but if not, the greater it is the harder it will be to cope with [to bear]" (Church, 54-55). The warning is sharpened and broadened later on when, having reached the conclusion that it is never right to repay injustice with injustice, Socrates warns Crito to be "careful that you do not concede more than you mean. For I know that only a few men hold, or ever will hold this opinion. And so those who hold it and those who do not, have no common ground of argument; they can of necessity only look with contempt on each other's beliefs" (or "despise each other's principles and basis of decision").28 Crito's agreement to this is followed immediately by Socrates' questions whether a man ought to carry out his just agreements and if in escaping without the polis' consent he does not injure those whom he least ought to injure by violating a just agreement. Crito does not understand the quesiton and to help him, Socrates begins his dialoge with the laws.

Crito's initial assertiveness and sureness has receded. From 47a, he has become increasingly passive and perplexed, giving short declarative responses,29 or expressing confusion ("What should we do?" "I do not understand the question") to Socrates' questioning. What is crucial in dialogue as a whole and in Crito's perplexity and disorientation is the relation of philosophical principles and reasoning to the world of practice and politics. Reasoning and reflection lead to conclusions which seem at odds with what is sensible. Thus at 48d, Crito responds, "I agree with what you say, Socrates, but I wish you would consider what we ought to do" (Kalos men moi dokeis legein o Socrates; hora de ti dromen). Crito finds it difficult to deny what Socrates says, but equally hard to accept what he says as a guide to action. For him there is an incongruity and incoherence between the setting and substance of their past discourse and present imperatives.30 The connection between reasoning and the political-practical world seems to him problematic. It cannot be for Socrates. If philosophy can be disregarded in this, the greatest trial of his life, then philosophic discourse is mere child's play, a phantasm and entertainment to be dismissed when circumstances change and serious things are at stake.

Crito is confused. On one level he recognizes the force of their old agreements. Moreover, he loves Socrates and cannot ignore what Socrates says. But he does not understand him. For on another level, he does regard philosophy as largely irrelevant to the real world. He must be reminded over and over again of the principles to which he has assented many times in the past. Indeed, there is something ritualistic


about the roles each man assumes when the conversation becomes philosophic, as if both are reverting to form; Socrates saying yet again what he has said so often before, Crito replying in his usual way. Crito has not made Socrates' principles his own and draws back from them at the slightest opportunity.3' This suggests that Crito is a witness for both Socrates' lack of success as a moral and political educator and the fragile prospects for his mission after his death. For though Socrates silences Crito now (as he no doubt has in the past and does at the end of the dialogue), there is something futile about his whole enterprise. For ulti- mately he is not convincing; each encounter requires going over the same ground, winning the battle anew. The testing of Crito then is also a testing of Socrates. The failure of either implicates the other. Thus what Crito says and does not say is more than a testament to his ignorance and incapacity. It reflects back the capacity of the philosophy to find voice and place in the everyday world.32 Indeed, it raises the most funda- mental question of all-is it just to do philosophy?

If I am right about the nature of Crito's confusion, then the dialogue with the laws is not only or even primarily addressed to Crito's specific lack of understanding, but to his general perplexity about the relevance and usefulness of philosophical reasoning. Since this is also Socrates' concern, the dialogue with the laws cannot simply be an answer to Crito or for Crito's exclusive benefit.33 It is also an attempt by Socrates to define his relation to things of the world; to his friend Crito and the considerations he puts forward, to the many, to politics and Athens, even to philosophy as a worldly activity. In this respect, the dialogue with laws is an internal dialogue-Socrates invents the personified laws -from which Crito is necessarily excluded. Prompted by his friend who is at best a partial participant, Socrates undertakes a final review of his position. He tries himself before himself, or rather before the idealized philosophical laws of Athens which warrant his respect and acquiescence.

The dialogue with the laws is simultaneously an exploration of what Socrates shares and does not share with Crito. As an internal dialogue, Socrates turns his back to Crito, moving away from his friend toward the personified laws of Athens. He becomes progressively aloof and self- sufficient, widening the gap between the two as death approaches as if "beyond the reach of Crito's friendship,"34 aware that he alone is his own true friend. But as a dialogue with even the idealized laws of Athens, a city that has fathered them both, Socrates attempts to find a bridge over the chasm of mutual contempt that separates philosophers from nonphilosophers. By singing a paean to Athens, Socrates reminds himself and Crito that they share a common past, birth, nurture, education, and citizenship. As the spring of their friendship and the basis of an equality

Euben / PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS [1631

between them, this commonality lessens the inequality of nonunder- standing and the separation of philosophy and practice. And insofar as Crito is one of the many as well as a friend, this commonality is basic to the way philosophy must appear and speak to citizens.

Thus the dialogue with the laws has several aspects. Most specifically, it is impelled by Crito's confusion over whether Socrates' escape without the consent of the laws would break ajust agreement and injure those he least ought to injure. But it also addresses Crito's more general confusion about the relevance of philosophic reasoning to political practice. Socrates' similar concern unfolds into a more abstract consideration of the relation of philosophy to citizenship. This leads him to search for the roots and origins of his vocation in the Athenian polis. He concludes that the laws of Athens are father to the practice of philosophy every bit as much as they are father to the man, Socrates.35 When the laws call Socrates their slave and child they suggest that as infants men are virtual nonpersons and that they become who they are physically, intellec- tually, emotionally, and morally as a result of the nurture and education received from the city in which they are citizens. This is not a matter of contract but of growing up and into recognizable persons within a specific culture. Thus, when one chooses a vocation, action, or friend, one already is somebody. No one, not even Socrates, is sui generis.36 Though Socrates gives new content to older Athenian ideals-such as living well, justice, citizenship, friendship, piety, courage, and the unity of intelli- gence and action-they are Athenian ideals, implicit in what has been said and done before. His critical standards (including what it means to criticize on the basis of standards) are derived from what he criticizes. This fact and Socrates' recognition of it has a number of consequences.

First of all, it makes criticism appear paradoxical. For if what one chooses to criticize, the fact that one chooses to criticize at all, and the idiom of one's criticism, owes much to what one is criticizing, i.e., what has nurtured and educated you, then at least part of what is criticized is simultaneously affirmed. (The paradox works the other way as well; since Socrates is Athens' son, to condemn him is also a kind of self- condemnation.) Whether one conceives of a tradition as speaking in a single voice, or in many voices any one of which may become the basis for judgment of another, all political criticism which fails to recognize this paradox repeats the ignorance of Aeschylus' Clytemenstra who proclaims her murder of her husband an end to violence and a beginning of order while unknowingly perpetuating the cycle of revenge that was the curse of the House of Atreus. (Of course she is doing something which is hers and for which she is responsible, curse or no curse.) In these terms a claim that a past agreement is unjust can be made intelligible


only because of a prior "agreement" about what constitutes an agreement and making a claim.37

Second, it imposes on Socrates an obligation to repay his debt to Athens by giving it the best things he can, as it gave him and all citizens the best things it could. Such repayment is only possible among those who share common citizenship and law. And this requires that Socrates assume responsibility for a world he did not make even when he wishes it to be other than it is.

Finally, by emphasizing the political source and origin of his philosophic vocation, Socrates becomes part of a tradition of public speech and political leadership that is distinctively Athenian. It is true that he is highly critical of that tradition (as the Gorgias makes clear) and that he refuses to participate in the deliberations of the Assembly. Yet he assumes the mantle of exemplary political action even while relocating the proper arena for such activity. Lacking what only later became a definition of philosophy as a distinctive mode of life opposed to politics, Socrates was, in part, understood by himself and others as belong- ing to the tradition of Athenian statesmen-educators from Solon to Pericles.

These are a few of the considerations that lead Socrates to reject the proposal to leave Athens and practice philosophy elsewhere. It is only among his fellow citizens and within the laws they share that philosophy has any prospect of having a voice in the world. If Werner Jaeger and H.D.F. Kilto are right in their description of Greek law as (1) a moral creative force designed to inculcate justice as much as to secure it; (2) a living influence to be felt, experienced, and manifest in conduct; and (3) distinctive to a particular polis, then Socrates has no choice but to philo- sophize within the common life embodied in the laws.38 Outside them and tradition, the philosopher is unable to derive critical standards intelligible to his fellow citizens and effective in political and moral education. He would be consigned to futility, flattery, or silence.39 Thus by running away from Athens Socrates would be disguising his appearance not merely with peasant garments but with pretense. To accept exile would be to give up citizenship and thus philosophy.

It is then as a citizen of Athens that Socrates examines the lives of others. And since all citizens share a common life, the examination of one's own life is also an examination of the life of the city. Only in this way and in this context is it possible for philosophy and politics to be reconciled without compromise; giving philosophy a new subject matter, the polis, and making the highest norms and laws of political action the chief problem of philosophy.40

While this is true, it is also one-sided. For Socrates is notjust a citizen. Nor does he owe everything to Athens. The polis and laws gave him all


the good things they could, but they could not give him everything. (His daimon owes nothing to the polis.) Nor are the laws of Athens to which he offers such unconditional obedience simply the laws of contemporary Athens. Rather they are idealizations of an abstract archaic law.41 It is to this idea of law and of Athens that Socrates offers his obedience. And by making this law holy and the embodiment of wisdom, tradition, and the will of the gods, he implicitly condemns any legal practices that depart from it.

Thus in the very process of being a good citizen of Athens, Socrates shows the corruptness of the city. In so doing, he threatens the polis to which he owes so much. For his death will obscure the debt of philosophy to Athens (which is perhaps why he states that debt so extremely by calling himself a slave to the laws). In the Apology (38c, 39cd) he warns his condemners that the polis will be blamed for killing him and despising wisdom. "And now I wish to prophesy to you, 0 ye who have condemned me; for I am now at the time when men most do prophesy, the time just before death. And I say unto you, ye men who have slain me, that a punishment will come upon you immediately after my death far more grievous than the punishment of death which you have meted out to me.42 That punishment will be a swarm of young men who, without the restraint of the daimon and Socrates, will be harsher than he has ever been. Regarding him rather than the laws of the polis as the father of their vocation, these future philosophers will revile and hate the polis because of their love for him. And the polis will respond in kind.43 Socrates does not seek this, even though his conviction and death are the vehicle for its occurrence. He warns his fellow citizens and the city against estranging philosophy as he warns his fellow-philosophers here and in the Crito against contempt for politics. Yet his warnings are bound to go unheeded. Declaring his love of the city and eulogizing its laws, Socrates is nevertheless a patricide, spawning those who will despise both. Proclaiming his loyalty to Athens, his philosophic stan- dard of justice nevertheless dissipates loyalty by confounding the distinction between friends and enemies, fellow citizens and strangers. Anxious to prevent the separation of thought and action, he drives a wedge between them. It is no wonder that the Crito is about the old and the new, parents and children, beginnings and endings, friendship and solitude, philosophy and politics, birth and death.

For these and other reasons, Socrates refuses exile. To the degree that what he has become derives from his being an Athenian, his fleeing would be superfluous, since he will carry part of his native city with him wherever he goes. Given what he owes to Athens, it would be impious to flee in defiance of the laws. Given the philosopher's need for location among fellow citizens, it would be self-defeating for him to leave. In the


Apology he rejects the punishment of exile on the grounds that he is not so irrational "as not to know that if you, who are my fellow citizens, could not endure my conversation and my words, but found them too irksome and disagreeable, so that you are now seeking to be rid of them, others will not be willing to endure them.... A fine life I should lead if I went away at my time of life, wandering from city to city and always being driven out" (37c-d, Fowler translation). For Socrates, being uprooted from Athens is a more certain evil than death.44

The archaic quality of the laws takes the question of exile out of the narrowly political terms in which it was understood in late fifth and early fourth century Athens. It points back to an older ancestral religion in which exile-expulsion from the tribe-was a terrible punishment. For by depriving a man of the assistance of his kinsmen, gods, and ancestors, exile made him a stranger in the world. The outcast, together with his descendents, was burdened with a curse until the end of time. A man who died in exile was a soul without a tomb or dwelling place, wandering without repose, a malevolent spirit haunting his people forever.45 Part of Socrates' fear of exile is the prospect that he and his philosophical descendents, will stalk the world as the malevolent spirits of old.

In one way Socrates is already a political exile and partial stranger among his own people and in his own city. In the Apology (17d) he speaks of himself as a foreigner to the law courts and their manner of speaking. And in the Crito he withdraws from his friend and fellow citizen into what seems an impenetrable solitude. But not quite. For in the latter dialogue, the laws, purged of baseness, have become his friend and interlocutor. They, unlike the Athenians, recognize that he has been punished unjustly, and thus implicitly share his sense of justice. As we have seen, these "idealized" laws are abstracted from the decisions of men and from the city. It is with them that he converses and has made an agreement. They are worthy of Socrates' love, service, and obedience. These laws do not condemn philosophy or philosophers, but are themselves philosophical. Through question and answer, they show Socrates that to abandon philosophy and flee Athens trivializes his life and work. (As indicated by the use of the same word homologia and homologein, legal commitment and dialectical necessity are here united.)46 In the city ruled by these laws, philosophy and Socrates can be reconciled with politics and Athens. Here he can be at peace with himself and his fellow citizens for there will be no inconsistency between doing philiosophy and obeying the laws of the polis.

But these laws are invented by Socrates. This leaves the status of his reconciliation with Crito uncertain, the philosopher's relation, the polis,


and citizenship ambiguous, and the inconsistency unresolved. The mutual need is clear; the prospect for satisfaction is not.

IV

In previous sections, I set out what seemed to me at issue in the inconsistency between Socrates' commitment to philosophy in the Apology and his equally firm commitment to the laws of Athens in the Crito. I argued against those interpreters who quickly resolve the inconsistency or deny its reality, insisting instead that the inconsistency was persistent and real, as much existential as logical in character. But I also claimed that its reality had less to do with the question of civil disobedience than with the relations beween philosophy and politics. I indicated why I thought this way of posing the problem more fully captured what Socra- tes perceived to be at stake in the inconsistency and its possible resolution. But to subsume the question of obedience or disobedience to law under the issue of the philosopher's relation to politics may appear to narrow unnecessarily Socrates' exemplary relevance for us. As Robert J. McLaughlin puts it: "One might have thought, along with today's disobedients, that Socrates was dealing with a deeper problem [than that of philosophy and politics] having to do with the nature and binding force of law as such." He finds it inconceivable that Socrates should ground his attitude toward obedience in his vocation as a philosopher. "Unless we are willing to allow that the purpose of law is the cultivation of a society of robots, we have to make room for the critical examination by citizens like Socrates of any and every conduct enjoined or forbidden by law."47 I would not for a moment deny the importance of this concern particularly in a modern "liberal" nation-state. But Socrates was not living in such a state; nor was he a philosopher in the sense or in the way most contemporary philosophers conceive of philosophy. McLaugh- lin's views, like many analyses of the Crito and Apology, are in danger of being ahistorical in the sense of assuming that Socrates' arguments are intended to "convince any rational man at any time and in any place." There is some evidence to support this imputation. Certainly Socrates presents his principle of justice in universal terms. But even universal knowledge and the search for it is mediated by a particular tradition, taking place among a people with location in time. To ignore this is to ignore the importance of citizenship for Socrates, of politics for the Greeks, and thus the nature of Socratic philosophy. It leads to substi- tuting our sense of politics and philosophy for his and theirs. We would be like someone who, listening to one-half of a phone conversation re-

[1681 POLITICAL THEORY / MAY 1978

mained unaware it was only a half and not directly addressed to them. Ignorant of audience and taking the part for the whole, they would be unable to join the conversation in appropriate ways. Such ahistoricism is particularly dangerous for the Apology and Crito where the political world implodes into the dramatic setting with particular force. Implicit in the dialogues and central to the inconsistency is Socrates' perception of Athens' incapacity to provide moral guidance for the conduct of daily life. Exhausted by the Peloponnesian War and disillusioned with the Periclean vision of political greatness, his native city is no longer able to sustain the disciplined purpose that marked the democratic polis of the previous century. It is this "failure of nerve" that Socrates and Plato seek to understand and to transform by rooting political belief and action in foundations immune to the corrosive scepticism of the sophists, the extravagance of an Alcibiades, and the terrors of the Corcyrean Revolu- tion as portrayed by Thucydides.

I do not mean that Socrates has no relevance for a discussion of civil disobedience, but that such relevance must be established circumspect- ly, given Greek conceptions of law, politics, morality, patriotism, and citizenship. Certainly Socrates led no political movement as did Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Nor can one picture Socrates at Walden Pond. Yet like Gandhi, King, and Thoreau, Socrates' actions as portrayed in the Apology and / or Crito are deemed exemplary. What sort of exemplar is he?

By his death, Socrates removes his teaching-that it is better to suffer than to commit injustice and that one should never injure another no matter what the circumstances from the realm of opinion. His most powerful attempt to persuade the polis was also his last. For by his exemplary death, he sought to differentiate his opinion from all others and validate its claims to truth. Hannah Arendt has suggested that such teaching by example is "the only form of 'persuasion' that philosophical truth is capable of without perversion or distortion; by the same token, philosophical truth can become 'practical' and inspire action without violating the rules of the political realm only when it manages to become manifest in the guise of an example."48 If Arendt is right, then Socrates sought by his example to appropriately unite intellect, reasoning, and philosophy with patriotism, practice, and politics.

NOTES

1. See Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice edited by Hugo Bedau (New York, Pegasus, 1969), 15, 66, 75-80, 182, 196, 217. Socrates is quoted by both sides. See for


instance Wyzanski's essay (in Bedau, pp. 194-200); L. H. Van Dusen, Jr., "Civil Dis- obedience: Destroyer of Democracy," American Bar Association Journal, LV, 123, and Sidney Hook, The Paradoxes of Freedom (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1962), pp. 118ff.

2. Plato's Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, translated by F. J. Church (Indianapolis and New York, Library of Liberal Arts, n.d.), 35-56. I will rely primarily on the Church translation, but where useful, supplement it with that of Hugh Tredennick (inThe Col- lected Dialogues of Plato, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairms Bollingen, Series LXXI [New York, Pantheon Books, 1961]), Henry North Fowler's (in the Loeb Classical Library), and my own emandations and interpolations.

3. See Arthur W. H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility (London, Oxford University Press, 1960), 264.

4. Rex Martin, "Socrates and Disobedience to Law," Review of Metaphysics, XXIV (September 1970), 22 (cf. Francis C. Wade, S. J. 'In Defense of Socrates," Review of Metaphysics [December 1971], 311-325). Jeffrie G. Murphy ("Violence and the Socratic Theory of Legal Fidelity" in Violence and Aggression in the History of Ideas, Weiner and Fisher [eds.] Rutgers University Press, (1974) claims to be indifferent to criticism that he has imposed an anachronistic conceptual framework on the Crito which is not applicable to the historical context in which Socrates lives. In justification he quotes P. F. Strawson's Individuals: "No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has rethought their thought in his own contemporary terms" (my emphasis). But the issue is precisely what is "theirs" and what is not.

5. There is aother kind of philosophical reading of the Crito which regards what Socrates says only to "philosophers" (as opposed to someone like Crito) as unproblematic. See for instance Marvin Fox, "The Trials of Socrates: An Interpretation of the First tetral- ogy," in Archiv Fur Philosophie, Vol. 6, 226-261.

6. A. D. Woozley, 'Socrates on Disobeying the Law," in The Philosophy of Socra- tes, edited by Gregory Vlastos (Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1971), 299-318.

7. Cf. N. A. Greenberg, "Socrates' Choice in the Crito" (Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 70, 1965), 61, "To be sure, obedience to the law is not put forward here (Crito, 50 a-b), as only or simply a sacred principle. It is the survival and well being of the state that is the primary goal.. . One need not obey a law which is not conducive to that goal."

8. Similar criticism are made by Gary Young in his "Socrates and Obedience," Phronesis, pp. 1-29 at p. 26, note 19. Young goes too far when he denies that philosophy involves persuasion.

9. Woozley recognizes but does not explore or account for the unusual form of the Crito.

10. For instance, John Burnet (in Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito, edited with notes by John Burnet (London, Oxford University Press: 1924, pp. 199-200). 'The personification of the Laws ... allows Socrates to invest the declaration of his principles with a certain emotion. It thus fulfills the same function as the myths of the more elaborate dialoges."

11. See Hanna Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Univer- sity of California Press, 1972). I would have thought the shift Socrates makes in the Crito from arguing directly with his friend to indirectly arguing with him through a dialogue with the laws a perfect example of this. See the discussion by J. Dybokowski (Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. 13, 1974, pp. 519-535) of the significance of this shift in making Crito less dependent on the beliefs of the many.

12. Gregory Vlastos, 'Socrates on Political Obedience," in The Yale Review, Sum- mer, 1974, pp. 517-534.


13. For a different interpretation of the tone of the Crito see R. E. Allen, "Law and Justice in Plato's Circle," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 69, 1972, pp. 557-567.

14. Hanna Pitkin argues in a similar vein: "Socrates' past consent is not so much compelling in its own right as it is a way of expressing and reinforcing his present judgment that there is nothing basically wrong with the system, no justification for resistance," "Obligation and Consent II," American Political Science Review, March 1966, p. 42.

15. Vlastos makes it clear that he recognizes but is not concerned with irony in the Crito.

16. Young, "Socrates and Obedience." 17. Ibid., p. 12. See Frederick Rosen's "Obligation and Friendship in Plato's Crito," in

Political Theory, Vol. I, Number 3, August 1973, pp. 307-316. Rosen agrees that, "As a whole the three speeches (of the nomoi) are persuasive, not merely because of the logic of the argument, but because they seem particularly designed to appeal to Crito" (p. 312). His subsequent argument in support of this seems to me right. Notice that Rosen is also impressed by the logic of the argument in a way Young was not.

18. Greenberg also analyzes the dramatic context but rejects the thesis that "the arguments before the jurors and Crito are so facetious that they could not have been seriously intended," (1965, p. 47). Young's stronger claim is the converse of Woozley's acceptance of Socrates' sincerity. On these matters see Robert J. McLaughlin "Socrates on Political Disobedience: A Reply to Gary Young" Phronesis, Vol. 21, Number 3, 1976, pp. 185-197.

19. I am purposely expanding the notion of caring what people think to caring for them, and broadening the question of what the many think of him to what the many think. At 44c, Socrates asks Crito whether they should care so much about what most people think, "oi gar epieikestatoi on pollon doxas melei." (Melei is from melo which means an object of thought, care, or anxiety-something to worry about.) But for Socrates what people think is not something different from what they are and do. To not care what the many think is not to care for the many. Of course this does not settle how much or in what way Socrates might care for the many; but it does keep the question open in a way Young's notion does not.

20. For instance, by Greenberg (1965), who sees the trial and death of Socrates as an heroic encounter with his fellow citizens. He shows how Socrates escalates what is at stake at the trial by accepting the stylistic requirement of the challenge and adding his own stipulations so that the issuers of the challenge cannot possibly win. The Athenians are made to assume responsibility they had not foreseen and become committed beyond their expectations. They are now the victims. Socrates wins whether he is acquitted or whether he fails (since what he fails is his own challenge rather than theirs). Greenberg concludes that Socrates chooses death not in obedience to the law, or because he despises dtath, but as a payment of a debt of honor.

21. There is a tendency to overemphasize the originality of the Socratic 'doctrine" and thus widen the gap between him and his fellow citizens in the interest of closing it between him and other philosophers. An Athenian who had heard Pericles' Funeral Oration (as presented by Thucydides) would have some respect for the doctrine that living well is more noble than mere living, though he would not of course be familiar with Socrates' version of it. See also E. R. Dodds's argument that the Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge is not novel (in The Greeks and the Irrational, Boston, Beacon Press, 1957, ch. 1), and Adkins, 1960, throughout.

22. See Ann Congleton 'Two Kinds of Lawlessness: Plato's Crito," Political Theory, Vol. 2, Number 4, November 1974, P. 445 and throughout.

23. So he is portrayed in the Euthydemus and Phaedo. Socrates addresses his last words to Crito. and it is Crito who closes his eyes and mouth (Phaedo, 118a).


24. In the Phaedo (1 15d-e) Socrates refers to Crito's having offered to stand bail for him during the period between his trial and death. In many of his acts Crito's friendship is two-edged, which has led Richard Herder in Plato's Kriton (Berlin, 1934) to argue that Crito is the foe in the friend, much as Socrates is to Athens.

25. In a provocative essay, "Socrates' Debt to Asclepius," (Classical Journal, Vol. 66, 1975, pp. 294-297) Richard Minadeo suggests that Socrates is offering thanks to the god for restoring the ruptured dialogue which if he left unmended would have made misology Socrates' legacy.

26. Drew A. Hyland, "Why Plato Wrote Dialogues," Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. I, 1968. But, cf. Adkins' contention (230ff. and 260ff.) that when the vital interests of the city are not threatened there is nothing in the conventional moral standards to prevent the agathos polites from attempting to thwart the laws of the city in a particular case on behalf of the family and friends.

27. Crito understands destruction in physical terms, which is why Socrates chooses an analogy with a trainer to begin his argument.

28. Church, p. 59, and Fowler, p. 173 (49d). 29. There is a certain symmetry to the dialogue. It begins and ends with Crito's silence.

Socrates silences Crito to save him from bad faith and to emphasize the wordless philia which unites them despite the gap of understanding (see footnote 40 below).

30. See the illuminating remarks of Greenberg on this point (1965, p. 50). 31. See Crito's response at 51c. 32. Other dialogues, such as the Gorgias and Republic can be read in a similar way. It

matters, of course, what "failure" is and whether, as Hobbes would "say it is a question of matter or the method."

33. But it is this in part. Dybikowski (1974, p. 521) rightly argues that the fiction of the personified laws unites Socrates and Crito agains Crito's earlier claims which derived from his attachment to the multitude. The laws direct their claims to Socrates who enlists Crito to accept or reject them for him. The laws thereby "compels Crito to stand imagina- tively in Socrates' place and by viewing his offer in this light to distance himself from many of the external considerations which weighed heavily with him in making it."

34. Rosen, 1973, p. 309. 35. "Parents love their children as parts of themselves, while children love their

parents as the authors of their being," Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, 1161 b20. 36. See the discussion of these points in Hanna Pitkin's Wittgenstein and Justice

(Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1972, pp. 199 and 334). 37. This argument relates to two changes often leveled at Socrates' views in the Crito

-that he ignores private rights and the need for an "independent assessment" of the laws' character to justify his commitment to them (see Dybkowski, 1974, p. 532 and McLaugh- lin, 1976, p. 188). But if the very idea of private rights as well as the demand for them is a "product" of the polis, it is not clear what it means to claim a right against Athens. Nor is it clear what an "independent" assessment means or where it;would come from.

38. See Werner Jaeger (in Paideia, Vol. I, New York, Oxford University Press, 1945, p. 100) and H.D.F. Kitto (in The Greeks, Baltimore, Pelican Books, 1957, p. 94).

39. See Socrates remarks in The Republic, 495c. As we have seen, the theme of silence runs throughout the Crito, At the conclusion of the dialogues Socrates, turning to his "dear friend Crito," yet immune to anything Crito might say, invokes the dervishes of Cybele. In their frenzied passion they can hear only the music of the flutes, as he can hear no words other than those spoken by the laws. Only silence is possible and Crito is left with no choice but to conclude "ouk echo legein"-I have nothing to say. Burnet explains that the Corbantic enthusiasm to which Socrates refers (oi corybantiontes) has to do with the homeopathic treatment of nervous and hysterical patients by wild pipe and drum music.


"The patients were thus excited to the pitch of exhaustion, which was followed by a sleep from which they awoke purged and cured" (1924, p. 211). It would take a more detailed treatment of the Phaedo to work out the implications of this reference. R. Guardini in his The Death of Socrates (Cleveland and New York, Meridian, 1962; pp. 89-90) interprets this reference differently.

40. See Max Pohlenz, Freedom in Greek Life and Thought, Cordrecht, Holland, D. Reidel Publishing, 1966, p. 57, and Werner Jaeger, Aristotle, New York, Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1962, Appendix II.

41. Foustel De Coulange, The Ancient City (New York, Doubleday, 1956), thinks Socrates' conception of law here is ancient, even archaic, while Burnet regards the phrase td koinon tas poleos (the laws, the commonwealth) as the beginning of "the idea that the State as such was a juristic personality or corporation" (1924, 200). Both seem right to me, for whlat Socrates appears to be doing is making the ancient laws transcendant.

42. With emandations from Fowler, p. 135-137; I think Socrates refers here to both his own students and the sophists. Eric Havelock, in an essay "Why Was Socrates Tried?" (Phoenix Supplement I; Studies in Honor of Gilbert Norwood, 1952, pp. 95-108), gives a useful historical context for my argument. He concludes that Socrates' share in the moral revolution amounted to a kind of leadership, since Socrates was a native Athenian whose attacks came from within. But he also notes that it was precisely being "within" that pre- vented Socrates from being detached from tradition as were the sophists.

43. Socrates confronts a dilemma: on the one hand he is his teaching; what he says is validated by what he does and how he lives his life. But on the other hand, he stands in the way of what he is trying to say and do. People do not want to hear what he says but hear him; they do not see him as a philosopher but as a healer and magician. Moreover, they find in him what they see in themselves; that is their way of connecting him, of making him human.

44. "To cut men off from their living center, from the networks with which they natur- ally belong; or to force them to sit over the rivers of some remote Babylon and to prostitute their creative faculties for the benefit of strangers, is to degrade, dehumanize, and destroy them" (Isaiah Berlin, "Herder and the Enlightenment," in Wasserman (ed.) Aspects of the Eighteenth Century).

45. See De Coulanges, 1956, p. 17. This is a constant theme of Greek drama. 46. See F. Bornkamm's " OpuoXoi a-zur-Geschichte eines Politschen Begriffs" in

Hermes 1936, pp. 377-393. 47. McLaughlin, 1976, pp. 185-186, 1945; he does not seem to recognize how much he

gives away in saying "citizens like Socrates." 48. Between Past and Future, New York, Viking Press, 1968, pp. 247-248; she con-

cludes by saying; "This is the only chance for an ethical principle to be verified as well as validated." It is not the only way as long as it is done once. For the example gives status to moral argument such that death need not be repeated as the ultimate verification and validation of eaoh subsequent moral position.

J. Peter Euben is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where his primary teaching and research interests center on classical political theory, philosophy of social science, and technology and politics. His two most recent efforts will appearsoon: one, "Creatures of a Day; Thought and Action in Thycydides," is included in an anthology, Theory and Praxis: New Perspectives; the other, "Equality in the Greek Polis" is part of On Liberalism: Dissenting Essays in Contemporary Political Theory.

Article Contentsp.149p.150p.151p.152p.153p.154p.155p.156p.157p.158p.159p.160p.161p.162p.163p.164p.165p.166p.167p.168p.169p.170p.171p.172

Issue Table of ContentsPolitical Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (May, 1978), pp. 147-272Front MatterFrom the Editor [pp.147-148]Considering the CritoPhilosophy and Politics in Plato's Crito [pp.149-172]Illegal Actions, Universal Maxims, and the Duty to Obey the Law: The Case for Civil Authority in the Crito [pp.173-189]

On the Very Possibility of a Classless Society: Rawls, Macpherson, and Revisionist Liberalism [pp.191-208]Class, Classlessness, and the Critique of Rawls: A Reply to Nielsen [pp.209-211]Crime, Death and Loyalty in English Liberalism [pp.213-232]A Reformulation of the Harm Principle [pp.233-246]CommunicationsOn Masters, "The Case of Aristotle's Missing Dialogues" [pp.247-248]On the Exchange between Schrag and Cohen, "The Child's Status in the Democratic State" [pp.249-251]

Books in Reviewuntitled [pp.253-256]untitled [pp.257-258]untitled [pp.259-262]untitled [pp.263-266]untitled [pp.267-270]

Announcements [pp.271-272]

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