Plato 9.3 Socrates Imprisoned
In the sequel to Plato’s Apology of Socrates, the dialogue Crito, we meet Socrates in prison.[9] Executions in Athens occur soon after a trial and condemnation. But Socrates’ execution was delayed for several weeks while the sacred galley was on a mission to celebrate the religious festival of Delphinia on the island of Delos. No executions could be performed until the ship returned. The voyage, which usually took a fortnight, this time took a month because of contrary winds.
Every day Socrates has visits from his friends. On the fourth of Thargelion, the eleventh (lunar) month of the Athenian year (counting from the summer solstice), Socrates’ age mate and friend Crito comes early to the prison to visit him. Crito is full of apprehension while Socrates is sleeping like a baby. Socrates awakens and Crito reports that the galley has been sited at Cape Sunium; it will soon arrive back in the port of Piraeus.
Crito comes with a plan. Being a man of means, he has bribed the guards of the prison. He has made arrangements to spirit Socrates out of the prison and to safety in a neutral city. The execution is now imminent; they must act tonight. If Crito does not rescue Socrates, he will be thought a worthless friend.
Socrates asks why Crito should care what people think. The wise will not condemn Crito. Crito replies that people can do great harm by their opinions. “Would that the people could, Crito,” answers Socrates, “do the greatest evils, so that they would be able also to do the greatest goods, which would be wonderful. But in fact they can do neither. For they cannot make anyone either wise or foolish; they merely act on impulse.”[10] And so begins a debate between Crito and Socrates about what they should do.
Crito makes a passionate appeal to Socrates to consider what will happen to his wife and children if he is executed. Crito and other friends, including Simmias and Cebes, have already made the financial and logistical arrangements, and they are prepared to do even more to save Socrates from a fate he does not deserve. Socrates should not take the easy way out, but should thwart his enemies and escape their grasp, and live to raise his family and guide his friends.
“Dear Crito,” Socrates replies, “your zeal is commendable, if it’s on the right track. But if not, the greater your enthusiasm, the worse your recommendation. So let’s consider whether to do this thing or not. I, you see, am not just now but always and forever committed to following none other of my ideas than the principle that seems to me to be most reasonable. I’m not able to abandon now, in my present circumstances, those very principles which I espoused formerly, but they seem pretty much the same to me as always, and I revere and honor them as I used to. And unless we can find some better ones at present, know that I won’t give in to you, not even if the power of the people is greater than at present to scare us like children with goblins, sending imprisonments and deaths and confiscations against us.”[11]
Crito appeals to Socrates as a friend and companion to save himself from an unjust execution. Socrates, by contrast, view the question at hand as a moral issue. The question is not what is advantageous to Socrates and to his family and friends, and what people will think of them, but what is morally right or wrong.
He reminds Crito of the principles they have both shared about how and why to act. Socrates is the one who is being threatened now; he needs someone with a clear head to make wise decisions. Should we abandon our moral principles when the going gets rough, or should we abide by them? And whose opinions should we follow, those of the Many or those of the wise? Surely those of the wise.
And should we care about just surviving, or about living well? And can a person live well if his body is corrupted by disease? No. Can a person live well if the best part of him, his soul, is corrupted by vice and wickedness? No.
“Therefore, on the basis of these agreements,” Socrates concludes, “we must examine whether it’s just for me to escape from here without the consent of the Athenian people or not. And if it seems just, we’ll make the attempt; if not, we’ll refuse. The questions you mention about spending money and what people think and the raising of children, these are really the worries, Crito, of those who would casually put someone to death and revive him again without a second thought, namely the Many.
“But since the argument demands it, we for our part must take into account nothing but what we just now talked about: whether we shall be doing right in paying money and giving thanks to those who help me break out of here, and whether we ourselves will be doing right in arranging and participating in the escape — or whether in truth we’ll be doing wrong in this action. And if it becomes clear that we’re committing injustice, it will not be right to weigh in the balance whether we’ll die if we stay and behave ourselves, or whether we’ll suffer any other fate whatsoever, against the cost of committing injustice.”[12]
Socrates takes a discussion about how to save his life and his family and turns it into a discussion about right and wrong, good and evil.
“Do we say,” Socrates continues, “that we must not do wrong intentionally in any situation, or that one must do wrong in some situations, but not in others? Isn’t it the case that injustice is in no way good or right, as we have often agreed in past discussions? Or have all those earlier agreements been wiped out in the previous few days?” Crito accepts their past agreements.
“So one mustn’t do wrong under any circumstances?”
“No.”
“Nor must one who has been wronged commit a wrong in return, as the many believe, given that one must not do wrong under any circumstances?”
“Evidently not.”
“Then should one do harm or not?”
“One should not.”
“Then if one suffers harm, to do harm in return, is that just, as the many say, or not?”
“Not at all.”
“Presumably to harm people is no different from doing injustice toward them.”
“Correct.”
“Consequently one should never return harm for harm or do wrong to any man, no matter what one suffers from him.”[13]
One important question remains: who would Socrates be hurting if he escaped from prison. Is he not himself a victim of injustice by receiving a wrongful sentence from the court? Crito is quick to assent to seeing Socrates as a victim.[14] But Socrates is trying to get Crito to comprehend a notion of justice beyond unreflective retaliation. Imagine, he says, that the Laws of Athens confronting us about our escape plan. They would appeal to Socrates like the chorus of Greek play: “Tell me, Socrates,” they would say, “what are you thinking? Are you aiming by this plot you are undertaking to do anything other than to overthrow us the Laws and the whole city to the best of your ability? Do you think that any city, whose verdicts have no force but are invalidated and trampled on willy-nilly by individuals, can stand without being overturned?”
The personified Laws point out that by them Socrates’ father married his mother, by them he was brought up, nurtured, educated, and protected. If he did not, when he grew up, approve of them, he could have freely departed for another city. If he had a problem with the laws, he could have worked to change them. He also had the chance in court to plead his cause, to try to persuade the court of his honesty. He received a fair trial, having been allotted just as much time as the prosecution had, to make his own case. He could have proposed exile as an alternative punishment, but he did not. Now if he should flee prison he would be setting a precedent of obeying the laws only when it was to his own personal advantage to do so, and flouting them when it was not. He would, in effect, be an outlaw deserving of whatever punishment the city meted out to him.[15]
Socrates accordingly assumes a kind of social contract theory of government, which allows the citizen room to choose his city and its associated government but not to defy the government he has committed himself to.
We see Socrates treating the Laws of Athens respectfully and even reverently as a source of order, justice, and social well-being. To be sure, he views his condemnation as a mistake. The cards were stacked against him because of prejudice that had been built up against him. But he received as much opportunity to defend himself as his accusers had to accuse him. To escape from prison would be to rebel against the laws that had protected and nurtured him and his family and friends. He would not subvert the laws or by his actions promote civil disobedience and anarchy.
“As things seem to me now,” Socrates says to Crito, “know that if you have anything to say on the other side, you will be speaking in vain. If, however, you think you can do something more, speak.”
“I have nothing to say, Socrates.”
“Then let it be, Crito, and let’s go through with [the execution], since that is where the god is leading us.”[16]
[9].At Crito 52c there is an allusion to the trial as explicated in the Apology 36d-38b.
[10].Plato Crito 44b-d.
[11].Plato Crito 46a-c.
[12].Plato Crito 47d-48d.
[13].Plato Crito 49a-c.
[14].Plato Crito 50c.
[15].Plato Crito 50a-52d.
[16].Plato Crito 54d-e.
