Crito

Throughout Crito, there is much discussion of wrongdoing and harm. These issues are pertinent to the dialogue both because of Socrates’s trial and death sentence and because of the question of whether Socrates would be doing harm by escaping. When it comes to the idea of harm, there is always the harmer (the entity who does wrong) and the harmed (the entity to whom wrong is done). Socrates argues, “Neither to do wrong nor to return a wrong is ever correct, nor is doing harm in return for harm done” (49d). Doing harm is bad even when the harmer has been harmed. However, these entities (harmer and harmed) are not always of the same type—in Crito there are individuals, such as Socrates and the jurors who convicted him, and there are institutions, such as the laws of Athens and the city itself. Socrates shows how Crito conflates individual and institutional harm when he tries to convince Socrates to escape.

Crito attempts to differentiate between individuals and non-individuals when he starts the dialogue by discussing reputation. He tells Socrates, “One must also pay attention to the opinion of the majority. Your present situation makes clear that the majority can inflict not the least but pretty well the greatest evils if one is slandered among them” (44d). Crito means that in the Athenian system of direct democracy, a collection of people can have an enormous impact on the life of one—in this case, the majority of the jurors in Socrates’s trial voted to convict him and sentence him to death. But, as Socrates argues, the jurors do this as individuals within the purview of the institution of Athenian law.

Although the law is an institution, Socrates makes it more approachable by personifying it and treating it as an individual for the purposes of a hypothetical discussion between the laws and himself. This allows Socrates to interact with the laws dynamically, learning from them. The laws also clearly differentiate between the harm done by or to institutions and that done by or to individuals. They ask Socrates, “Do you not by this action you are attempting intend to destroy us, the laws, and indeed the whole city” (50a)? By escaping execution, Socrates will harm the institutions of the city even though the laws are not what has harmed Socrates. The laws say, “You depart, if you depart, after being wronged not by us, the laws, but by men” (54b). If Socrates escapes prison and avoids execution, he will return this wrongdoing not to his harmer but to an innocent entity—the institution of Athenian law. By conflating individuals and institutions, Crito encourages Socrates to inflict harm not upon the ones who did him wrong but on an entity not at fault for his sentence.

Justice and virtue are important philosophical concepts across Plato’s corpus and within Crito. Socrates makes each of his arguments with reference to justice or virtue. In a dialogue set at the end of his life, Socrates argues that life for its own sake is not a reason to escape prison because justice is a vital part of a worthwhile life. At the conclusion of his discussion with Crito about reputation, Socrates asks, “Is life worth living for us with that part of us corrupted that unjust action harms and just action benefits? (47e). Crito answers, “not at all” (48a). The part of the self that unjust action harms and just action benefits is some philosophical part of being human that participates in the idea of justice. For life without this part to be not worth living, justice must be a vital and integral part of the only kind of life Socrates would want to lead.

Socrates calls the kind of life worth living the “good life.” He says, “The good life, the beautiful life, and the just life are the same” (48b). He associates justice with goodness and beauty, which are also important concepts throughout Plato’s corpus. By making these associations, Socrates, who does not explicitly define his concept of justice within Crito, shows that justice is a matter of order, refinement, and positivity. Justice’s opposite, injustice, is always bad. Socrates asks Crito whether “wrongdoing or injustice is in every way harmful and shameful to the wrongdoer” (49b). Crito confirms that this is the case. Socrates also associates injustice with shame, giving an emotional charge to the concepts of injustice and justice.

Although virtue does not appear in Crito as often as justice, it is of similar importance within Socrates’s conception of a worthwhile life. The laws of Athens (in Socrates’s personification) point out that “[v]irtue and justice are man’s most precious possession, along with lawful behavior and the laws” (53c), ideas that Socrates is well known to affirm. Here the laws combine the concepts of virtue and justice into a single possession for humankind, showing how closely the two concepts are linked. The laws later refer to Socrates’s habit of discussing justice and virtue together. They say that if Socrates were to go to Thessaly, then “[a]s for those conversations of yours about justice and the rest of virtue, where will they be?” (54a). Here again, justice and virtue are closely related, both in that they are important points of conversation or philosophy to Socrates and in that justice seems to be an element of virtue.