EEB III Ixelles S7PH4ENA 27/9/2017

Platos Apology and Crito: Contradictory or

Complementary?

The Problem:

In the Apology Socrates openly defies Athenian law by saying to the

assembled citizens that if they were to let him go on the condition
that he stop philosophizing, he would not obey their order:

Gentlemen of the jury, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will

obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am
able, I shall not cease to practise philosophy. (39d, italics added)

He provides two arguments for his refusal:

a) a higher duty (obey the God rather than you)

b) the benefit of his philosophical activity to the city:

Be sure that this is what the god orders me to do, and I think there is
no greater blessing for the city than my service to the god. (30a,
italics added)

Remember, when Socrates speaks of the God we can substitute his

reason or his rational faculty.

In the Critias, on the other hand, Socrates seems to make an

argument that it is necessary to obey the laws of Athens on principle,
even if they appear to make an unjust decision. Hence it would be
unjust for him to escape from prison.

On behalf of the laws of Athens, Socrates argues that

(1) he has entered into an agreement with the laws of the city to obey
them,
(2) he owes allegiance to the laws because they brought him into the
world and brought him up,
(3) the relationship between Socrates and the laws is not
symmetrical he cant do to the laws what they can do to him,
(4) in fact, the homeland is owed the highest respect and obedience,
even more so than parents and ancestors,
(5) Socrates has entered the agreement with the laws of the city
implicitly by not leaving the city even though he could have
The premises for Socratess argument are that
EEB III Ixelles S7PH4ENA 27/9/2017

(a) Injustice must not be repaid with injustice and harm must
not be repaid with harm
(b) Just agreements must always be kept

Question: Do the laws show convincingly that their agreement with

Socrates is just? What is their (partly implicit) argument?

A possible solution:

At one point, the laws say to Socrates that he must not be daunted or
withdraw or abandon [his] position, but at war and in the courts and
everywhere [he] must do what the city and the homeland orders, or
convince her by appealing to what is naturally just. (51b, italics
added)

We could interpret Socrates to be doing precisely this in the Apology:

to try to convince the city of Athens to let him live his life practicing
philosophy because that is what is naturally just.

The question of course immediately poses itself: What is natural

justice or natural law and how is it different from the law of the
city?

The next question: What is natural law or natural justice?

In the language of legal philosophy, law that is made by humans and

are based simply on human agreement or tradition is called positive
law.

Prior to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the view of most philosophers

seems to have been that all law is positive law, i.e. that all law is
ultimately based on arbitrary human agreements and are subject to
change if the human that agreed to them change their minds.

Generally, law (Greek: nomos) was seen as being different from one
place to the next and one society to the next, whereas nature (Greek:
physis) was understood to be that which is everywhere the same, for
instance the growth of plants, the behavior of (untamed) animals,
and the behavior of the elements (water, fire, air, earth).

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the first to ask if there is a natural
law, a law (nomos) that is valid by nature (physis) and hence is
everywhere the same. Are there universal principles of justice?