Crito facts for kids
Crito (/ˈkraɪtoʊ/ KRY-toh or /ˈkriːtoʊ/ KREE-toh; Ancient Greek: Κρίτων [krítɔːn]) is a dialogue that was written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It depicts a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito of Alopece regarding justice (δικαιοσύνη), injustice (ἀδικία), and the appropriate response to injustice after Socrates's imprisonment, which is chronicled in the Apology.
In Crito, Socrates believes injustice may not be answered with injustice, personifies the Laws of Athens to prove this, and refuses Crito's offer to finance his escape from prison. The dialogue contains an ancient statement of the social contract theory of government. In contemporary discussions, the meaning of Crito is debated to determine whether it is a plea for unconditional obedience to the laws of a society. The text is one of the few Platonic dialogues that appear to be unaffected by Plato's opinions on the matter; it is dated to have been written around the same time as the Apology.
Contents
Background
Crito, which may be based on a historical event, is thought to have been published in 399 BCE. Since his trial in Apology, Socrates had been imprisoned for four weeks and will be executed in a matter of days. Historians are not aware of the exact location of Socrates' cell but according to archaeologists, the ancient Athenian prison is about 100 meters (330 ft) southwest of the Heliaia court, just outside the site of the agora.
Plato's representation of Socrates is intimate but because it is a literary work, the historical validity of what was said and how much of Plato's interpretation of Socrates aligns with his real beliefs is uncertain.
Socrates and Crito are the only characters in the story. Crito was a rich Athenian who like Socrates was from deme of Alopece. Once Socrates was charged with corrupting the youth and impiety, Crito unsuccessfully vouched to pay his bail. To spare him the prison sentence after Socrates was sentenced to death, Crito was ready to pledge to the court that Socrates would not flee, a plea that was ultimately rejected. Through both the trial and the execution, Crito was present.
In other dialogues, Crito is portrayed as a conventional Athenian who could not understand Socrates' philosophy despite his attempts to do so.
Unlike many of Plato's potential works, Crito is widely considered to be a genuine dialogue. In recent research, Holger Thesleff doubted its authenticity. Some have said Crito is part of Plato's middle dialogues, which are characterized by a Socrates who dismantled opposing arguments by asking questions and then pointing out the flaws in the opposition's theory. However, consensus places it in his early bibliography, which is characterized by a Socrates who speaks as an expert on the subject.
According to Mario Montuori and Giovanni Reale, Crito was written closer in time to the Laws than to the Apology, whose date is controversial. The piece was written after Socrates' execution in 399 BCE.
According to Xenophon, Plato's friends drafted escape plans. The extent the theoretical plan aligned with the historical ones is unknown. Some historians of philosophy assume the Socratic figure depicted in Crito is similar to the historical figure. William K. C. Guthrie considers the social contract to be true to Socrates' philosophical interests.
Summary
Crito's arguments
In the early morning, before visitors may arrive to meet with prisoners, Crito arrives at Socrates' cell and bribes the guard for entry. Once inside, he sits beside Socrates until he wakes up. Upon waking, Socrates remarks that Crito arrived early. Crito expresses concern at Socrates' relaxed attitude to his upcoming execution. Socrates responds that he is almost 70 years old and that to be scared of death would be inappropriate.
Crito has come to see Socrates because he has learned his execution will take place the next day, and wishes to rescue his friend. Crito planned to bribe all of the guards who are part of the execution and assures Socrates he has enough money to see the plan through and that he has additional friends who are also willing to pay. After being rescued from prison, Socrates would be taken to a home in Thessaly, where Crito and his friends would be pleased to house and feed him.
Crito asserts that if Socrates is executed, Crito will suffer a personal misfortune through the loss of a great friend. Crito also says if Socrates is executed, his sons will be deprived of the privileges to which the sons of a philosopher would be entitled—a proper education and living conditions. He also points out that when one takes on the responsibility of having children, it is immoral to abandon that duty. Additionally, if Socrates did not go with them, it will reflect poorly upon Crito and his friends because people would believe they were too miserly to save Socrates. Crito also claims that it is important that they consider the thoughts of the majority as they "can inflict … the greatest evils if one is slandered among them". Finally, Crito argues that Socrates should not worry about the potential punishments that he and his conspirators could face as they feel that the risk is worth taking.
Socrates' arguments
After hearing Crito's arguments, Socrates asks to be allowed to respond with a discussion of related, open-ended issues, to which Crito may not respond. As Socrates continues with his arguments, Crito only affirms Socrates' words. Socrates first says the opinions of the educated should be taken into consideration and that the opinions of those with subjective biases or beliefs may be disregarded. Likewise, the popularity of an opinion does not make it valid. Socrates uses the analogy of an athlete listening to his physician rather than his supporters because the physician's knowledge makes his opinion more valuable. According to Socrates, damage to the soul in the form of injustice makes life worthless for a philosopher in the same way life for a person who has injured himself out of incompetence is pointless. A person's goal should be to live a virtuous and just life rather than a long one, thus escape from the prison would rely on a discussion on justice.
Socrates disregards Crito's fears of a damaged reputation and his children's futures, which are irrelevant to him. He compares such motivations to a person who sentences someone to death and then regrets the action. Socrates then says Crito and his friends should know better because they have shared the same principles for a long time and that abandoning them at their age would be childish. To wrong the state, even in reaction to an injustice, would be an injustice.
Laws and justice
Socrates then points out the question would then be whether he should harm someone or ignore a just obligation. To solve this question, he creates a personification of the Laws of Athens and speaks through its point of view, which is to defend the state and its decision against Socrates.
According to Socrates, the Laws would argue a state cannot exist without respect for its rules. They would criticize Socrates for believing he and every other citizen had the right to ignore court judgments because chaos could ensue. Thus, Socrates could refute this particular instance as an unjust decision of the law, while maintaining that the law itself is just and should be obeyed. Socrates could justify his disobeying this legal ruling as just on these grounds. This argument, which mirrors Martin Luther King’s argument on unjust laws, is perhaps the best answer to the form of social contract theory that Socrates puts forward. However, Crito is never allowed to make this argument because Socrates cuts him off.
According to the Laws, if Socrates had accepted Crito's offer, he would have exposed his accomplices to the risk of fleeing or losing their assets. As a fugitive in a well-established state, Socrates would be suspicious of good citizens because he would be suspected of violating the laws in his place of exile. He would have to be content with a region like Thessaly, which was chaotic and disorganized, and where he could only entertain crowds with the story of his unjust escape. As a philosopher who had become unfaithful to his principles, he would be discredited and would have to give up his previous life content and his sense of life would only be through food.
In conclusion, if Socrates accepts his execution, he will be wronged by men rather than the law, remaining just. If he takes Crito's advice and escapes, Socrates would wrong the laws and betray his lifelong pursuit of justice. After completing the imaginary plea of the Laws, Socrates claims he was chained to the laws as a dancer is to flute music and asks Crito to rebuff him if he wishes. Crito has no objections. Before Crito leaves, Socrates refers to the divine guidance he hopes to be helped by.
Philosophical implications
Crito emphasizes reason, which it says should be the sole criterion for understanding ethics. Unlike Plato's other works, Socrates took a more objective stance on epistemology, being optimistic about the knowledge coming from experts in a subject.
The ethical and political implications of the Laws are barely discussed in Crito, in which the Laws are personified to explain the way Socrates should have behaved.
Social contract
The personification of the Laws is contrary to Plato's tendency to criticize the Athenian state and institutions. The state's demand for loyalty was a social contract theory in which citizens have a mutual agreement with the state and understand what being a citizen of the state entails. A person only became a citizen after undertaking a test called dokimasia (δοκιμασία); citizenship was not conferred at birth. The test is mentioned in Crito.
Legalism
One of the most controversial issues raised by Crito is Socrates' legalist representation of the laws as a human being. It presents a view of society in which citizens who are incapable of changing laws by convincing lawmakers have to abide by the laws to remain "just". Those who do not want to live under such laws are to emigrate if they desire an ethical life. Although Socrates ultimately rejects the idea of expulsion, he believes it to be ethical because the court had suggested it and because the ruling was unjust. It followed, however, from the overall context of Platonic ethics in the sense that it prioritizes the avoidance of injustice.
Lawfulness and ethical autonomy
Multiple researchers have claimed that there is a purposeful rhetorical incongruity between the Apology and Crito from Plato's representation of Socrates' dialogues. In the Apology, Socrates explained that he would not obey a hypothetical court verdict that forced him to renounce public philosophizing on pain of death, for such a demand would be an injustice to him.
Michael Roth claimed that there was no inconsistency, and that the real in Crito and the hypothetical in the Apology were two fundamentally different systems to be held to different standards. According to another solution, Socrates' argument in the Apology was of a purely theoretical nature, since a prohibition of philosophy had no legal basis and no situation was conceivable in which the court could have actually imposed such a penalty on Socrates, unless the defendant had proposed this himself.
Italian historians of philosophy Mario Montuori and Giovanni Reale used chronological distance to explain this difference: that The Apology and the Crito were written at different times and for different reasons. In the Apology — which was the younger work — Plato essentially reported what Socrates had said without much embellishment, but when writing Crito, he had given his thoughts on the matter through the mask of Socrates.
On the other hand, if Socrates' punishment could not occur, professor of morality Necip Fikri Alican argued that Socrates could not simply just be using meaningless thought experiments. Philosophy professor James Stephens simply believed the problem has no solution.
The (missing) soul
The soul is oddly missing throughout the Crito. This is despite the fact that Francis Cornford referred to the Platonic doctrine of the soul as one of the "twin pillars of Platonism," with the other being the theory of Forms. There seems to have been a deep uncertainty regarding the soul in the Crito. Socrates in the Crito alludes to the soul when he mentions the part of us that has justice or injustice inside it, but he does not even name it as the soul (47e–48a). This has puzzled scholars for centuries. Scholars have tended to suppose that Plato, at this early point in his career, simply has not yet worked out all the features of the soul: is it a self-mover, the principle of life? Is it the bearer of moral properties? Is it a mind? Erwin Rohde argued that Plato simply did not yet know what the soul was. David Claus conducted a thorough survey of all mentions of and references to the soul in pre-Platonic Greek literature (such as the sophists, natural philosophers, tragedians, comedians, and medical writers) and concluded that Plato was the first to combine all the features of the soul into one concept, but that this conception of the soul did not take place in Plato's mind until the Laws; the absence of the soul from the Crito reflects the inchoate status of the soul at this point in Plato's intellectual development. Campbell agrees that Plato was the first, but he argues that Plato's psychology was developed earlier, such that readers of earlier dialogues such as the Phaedo can observe the casual oscillation between different roles that the soul plays; he maintains that the soul is a thinker and a mover at the same time because it moves things by means of its thoughts.
Texts and translations
- Greek text at Perseus
- Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus. Greek with translation by Harold N. Fowler. Loeb Classical Library 36. Harvard Univ. Press (originally published 1914).
- Fowler translation at Perseus
- Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo. Greek with translation by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Loeb Classical Library 36. Harvard Univ. Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780674996878 HUP listing
- Plato. Opera, volume I. Oxford Classical Texts. ISBN: 978-0198145691
- Plato. Complete Works. Hackett, 1997. ISBN: 978-0872203495
- The Last Days of Socrates, translation of Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo. Hugh Tredennick, 1954. ISBN: 978-0140440379. Made into a BBC radio play in 1986.
See also
In Spanish: Critón (diálogo) para niños
