[정암학당 교양강좌] 2025년 5월, [플라톤 초기 대화편들과의 대화(3)] 이기백, '플라톤의 '크리톤'' 2부

Summary

The lecture examines whether Socrates would be justified in escaping from prison, as Crito urges him to do in Plato’s Crito. The lecturer first sets out the principles of justice used to assess the escape, then considers how the dialogue’s arguments relate to Socrates’ conduct in Plato’s Apology and to later interpretations of civil disobedience.

Principles for judging the proposed escape

The lecturer groups the principles discussed in the dialogue into three broad rules:

• Do not commit injustice or harm others. The lecture treats doing harm as closely connected to acting unjustly. It also notes that wrongdoing harms the wrongdoer by damaging or corrupting the person who commits it.
• Do not retaliate by committing injustice or inflicting harm. Being treated unjustly does not make it permissible to respond with injustice.
• Keep agreements, provided they are just. A just agreement should be honored.

Crito appears confident that one must not commit injustice, but less certain about the rule against retaliation. The lecturer suggests that Crito may still be influenced by traditional ideas of justice that allow retaliation against someone who has done wrong.

The dialogue then asks whether escaping would violate these principles. The lecturer reads the Laws’ speech as applying them to Socrates’ situation: an escape would harm the laws and city, amount to retaliation for the verdict, and break an agreement Socrates had made by choosing to remain in Athens.

The argument made by the personified Laws

In the latter part of Crito, Socrates has the Laws and the city speak as though they were people. Their arguments include:

• If individuals overturn court decisions whenever they dislike them, the authority of the courts—and ultimately the city—will be undermined.
• Escaping in response to an allegedly unjust verdict would be retaliation, not a just response.
• Socrates has lived in Athens for many years, had opportunities to leave or try to persuade the city, and nevertheless stayed. The Laws present this as an agreement to live under them.
• Citizens should either obey the city’s commands or persuade the city about what is just.

The lecturer emphasizes that the Laws’ comparisons of the city to a parent and citizens to children, or of the city to a master and citizens to slaves, are controversial. They can sound like a demand for unconditional obedience, but the dialogue also refers to agreement, persuasion, and justice.

Is “even a bad law is a law” Socrates’ position?

The lecturer cautions against treating the familiar claim “even a bad law is a law” as a direct statement by Socrates. The Crito does contain a strong argument for obeying the Laws, but Socrates does not explicitly use that slogan. Nor does the dialogue clearly establish that he considered Athens’ laws themselves unjust: the verdict may be unfair without the laws as a whole being bad.

The Apology, however, presents apparent counterexamples to unconditional obedience:

• Socrates says he would not stop philosophizing even if the court released him on the condition that he do so, because he regards philosophizing as a divine command.
• He recounts refusing an order from the Thirty Tyrants to arrest Leon because he considered the order unjust.

These passages make it difficult to read Socrates as a simple legal positivist who obeys every law or official command regardless of justice.

Interpretations considered

The lecturer reviews several scholarly approaches to the apparent tension between the Crito and the Apology:

• Weiss: The Laws’ speech is a rhetorical or “noble” argument designed to persuade Crito, rather than Socrates’ own considered view. The lecturer objects that the dialogue’s first and second halves are connected: the Laws’ arguments apply the earlier principles of justice to the question of escape. The lecturer also questions whether Crito is so incapable of following philosophical discussion that Socrates must abandon argument for mere rhetoric.
• Kraut: The instruction to obey or persuade may leave some scope for challenging the law. The lecturer considers whether “persuade” means seeking to change a law before disobeying it, or whether it allows someone to refuse and then attempt to persuade. The different ordering of “obey” and “persuade” in the text may matter. The lecture also raises a practical difficulty: in ancient Athens, unlike in modern systems with constitutional review, a court might simply punish someone who disobeyed.
• Brickhouse and Smith: As presented in the lecture, their interpretation leans toward a legal-positivist reading: citizens should obey even unjust commands. They treat the language of citizens as children or slaves as metaphorical, and regard the Leon episode as involving an illegitimate regime rather than a lawful command. The lecturer questions whether these points fully account for Socrates’ apparent willingness to refuse unjust orders.
• A view attributed to Kwon Chang and Gallop: Socrates refuses commands that would make him commit injustice but obeys commands that require him to suffer injustice. The lecturer argues that this distinction is too simple. Socrates’ refusal to stop philosophizing would expose him to punishment and disadvantage, yet he would still refuse. Also, obeying a command to suffer a disadvantage might itself conflict with a higher duty, depending on the circumstances.

The lecturer’s proposed reconciliation

The lecturer argues that Socrates should be understood neither as an unconditional legal positivist nor as someone who rejects every unjust law. Instead, Socrates distinguishes among commands and situations:

• When commands conflict, one should obey the higher authority. In the Apology, Socrates treats the divine command to philosophize as higher than a court’s order to stop.
• In the Crito, the issue is primarily the relationship between the citizen and the city after Socrates has chosen to accept the trial’s outcome. The divine command is not presented as an opposing command in this situation.
• Therefore, the Crito’s defense of obedience need not mean that every unjust law or ruling must always be obeyed. Socrates may regard some forms of disobedience as justified and others as unjustified.

Why the lecturer rejects escape as the right choice

The lecture ends by asking whether Socrates should have escaped despite the arguments against it. It notes that modern accounts of civil disobedience often require actions to be public, conscientious, nonviolent, and accompanied by a willingness to accept legal consequences. A secret escape would not meet important parts of that standard: it would evade punishment rather than openly challenge the decision and accept its consequences.

The lecturer therefore concludes that Socrates’ choice to remain in prison and accept the sentence was more appropriate. The conclusion is not that every law must be obeyed in every circumstance, but that Socrates’ escape would have been an unjust response in this particular case.

Speakers and sources

• Speaker: Lee Ki-baek, the lecturer
• Primary texts: Plato’s Crito and Apology
• Dialogue figures and voices: Socrates, Crito, and the personified Laws and city of Athens
• Scholarly interpretations: Weiss; Kraut; Brickhouse and Smith; and scholars identified in the subtitles as Kwon Chang and Gallop
• Modern theory referenced: John Rawls and modern criteria for civil disobedience