The Interpretation of Plato's Crito

Abstract

Socrates gives as his leading premise in the Crito that one should do nothing wrong (obaCg bet &6Itxiv, 49b8). (He says, indeed, that he has lived his whole life in obedience to this premise, 49a-b.) He then proceeds to argue that it would be wrong for him to try to escape from gaol, thus evading the death penalty he had been sentenced to. But a central problem in interpreting the dialogue is that the arguments he offers for this conclusion appear to be designed to establish a very much stronger conclusion: it would always be wrong for any citizen of Athens to disobey any law of Athens. Such a conclusion is in itself distinctly unappealing, and apparently not consistent with the leading premise, for presumably a law might be an unjust law commanding the doing of what is wrong. Moreover, in the Apology Socrates apparently reports one such case and envisages another. At 32c-d he says that he did not obey an order from the Thirty Tyrants because what was ordered was wrong (&6.x6v xt, 32d5); and at 29c-d he says that he would not obey a court order to cease philosophising, evidently on the same ground (though he does not here use the word 6Lxov, or a synonym). Here, then, it seems to be admitted that a law, or anyway a legally authoritative order,1 may command one to do wrong, and that if so it should not be obeyed. This sets our problem: is it possible so to interpret the Crito that it does not enjoin obedience to any and every law? I propose and criticise three lines of interpretation which attempt to avoid this 'authoritarian' reading of the dialogue. They differ from one another most notably