Crito

4 Pages 972 Words

1.) The Crito was written by Plato, who recounted the conversation held between Crito and Socrates just before his death. Socrates was charged with the corruption of the youth and was given a choice of exile or death. He chose death, and Crito was not at all happy about his decision. Crito felt that Socrates had been wronged by the government and should escape into exile. Socrates disagreed, saying that responding to evil with evil is wrong. If Socrates escaped, he would be doing harm to society as a whole. By escaping it could be seen as him trying to destroy the laws and in turn, the whole city by his actions, undermining the law. Socrates feels that “You must either persuade it [the laws] or obey its orders, and endure in silence whatever it instructs you to endure… (p.51)” In other words, Socrates feels that it is wrong to protest the laws of the city because it disrupts the society, making them think that it’s okay to disobey laws and to protest and be violent against them, ultimately ruining the structural society.
By escaping into exile, Socrates would be going against his own philosophy. Going into exile means that he would be fighting evil with evil and that he is not doing his part as a citizen. However, most importantly, Socrates feels that life is not worth living if the moral part of us is corrupted and that going into exile is doing moral harm. Socrates also knows that he made the decision to remain in Athens which means that he thinks the laws are just and right. If he felt they weren’t, he could have left and gone elsewhere at any time. However, he did not; therefore he made a social contract to obey the laws through his citizenship, and to accept his sentence of death that he himself chose. If Socrates thought exile was the right thing to do, he would’ve chosen that as his sentence instead. He did have a choice in the beginning, and there’s no turning back now. If he went into exile now an...