Crito

This is a dialogue about Crito, a friend of Socrates, coming to him in prison to convince him to flee (which they have arranged that he can do) and avoid being executed. Socrates refuses on moral grounds. Here are some of my notes.

"Crito: 'But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they can do the greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion.'

Socrates: 'I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many could do the greatest evil; for then they also would be able to do the greatest good--and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is the result of chance.'"

I feel great empathy for Socrates and his disillusionment with groupthink and democracy in general. I watch the proceedings of courtroom juries and politics in America and see the same extreme dysfunction. It's sad--we've come so far but fall so short. On the flip side, I hear undertones of what I have found to be the converse truth: the greatest good is actually done on the individual level. My life has born much better fruit when I focused on what positive things I individually could do rather than worrying about politics/religion/other big things.

"And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man were destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?"

He says it so precisely: the higher principles, whatever you want to call it (spirituality/morality/ethics/the social contract) must be of a higher nature than the body, the physical.

And then we come to Socrates' main argument for following the sentencing of the state. Because the state governs marriage, birth, and education, the state has an unequal relationship with Socrates--it is greater than he--and he should listen to it and obey it and not think himself greater than it.

I wish Crito argued back here. If he had I feel this dialogue would have been better. There are two main arguments I would like to have seen. The first is that Socrates himself established earlier that we should trust the opinion of experts more than that of the majority. But "the state" that Socrates is referring to is governed by the majority. Which is better, the opinion of experts or that of the majority? It appears to me to be a clear contradiction.

The second argument I would make would be that simply granting marriage certificates and birth certificates does not make the state legitimately the provider of those things. Marriage and birth are universal concepts and if a different state were here, or no state at all, people would still marry (or something akin to it) and still give birth. The state did not help me come into being (or have any authority over me) any more than me sticking a label on an item means that I caused that thing to come into being (or have any authority over it). And with education, this is only a financial transaction between taxpayers and their state. Partaking in such a transaction should in no way commit me to that state.

I am looking forward to learning about Antisthenes (pupil of Socrates) and Diogenes (pupil of Antisthenes). They established cynicism, which is a philosophical school I relate to greatly. It's not what you think. Cynicism is a mistrust of conventional worldly establishments that are contrary to nature. Perhaps the chiefest of these would be government and money, but it would also include many taboos and status symbols. Cynics practiced asceticism (self-denial) and living in accordance with nature. So far I don't know where Socrates and Antisthenes would agree or disagree, but Socrates' arguments in Crito really makes me curious to find out at some point.

I privately wonder if perhaps his real reasons for not wanting to flee Athens were more prosaic, although I would certainly give him the benefit of the doubt if I were able to argue with him, and let him try to show me this was not so. I believe there certainly can be a time when it is good and right that a man should accept death, and perhaps that was this time for Socrates.

I will say that although I disagree with Socrates' conclusions, I do admire several things about this dialogue. First, that Socrates is clearly a principled individual. He seeks to discover what is the right way to live and to do that at any cost (again, taking what he says at face-value). I also admire the stoic way he faces the end. To me the last line is beautiful.

"Leave me then, Crito, to fulfill the will of God, and to follow whither he leads."