Reason #1 for Socrates to Escape: If he doesn't, people will think badly of his friends, who could have saved him.

Socrates' Response:

"S: My good Crito, why should we care so much for what the majority think?…

C: … one must always 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.

S: Would that the majority could inflict the greatest evils, for they would then be capable of the greatest good, and that would be fine, but now they cannot do either." (47)

Why not?

"C: … are you anticipating that I and your other friends would have trouble with the informers if you escape from here …? If you have any such fear, forget it. We would be justified in running this risk to save you …

S: I do have these things in mind …

C: Have no such fear. It is not much money that some people require to save you and get you out of here …" (47)

"C: … I do not think what you are doing is right ... you are betraying your sons by going away and leaving them … You thus show no concern for what their fate may be. …" (48)

Socrates' Response: S argues he is setting a good example for them by doing the right thing.

The Moral Issue: "S: … we must examine next whether it is right for me to try to get out of here when the Athenians have not acquitted me. If it is seen to be right, we will try to do so; if it is not, we will abandon the idea." (50-1)

Just Agreements: "S: Then I state the next point, or rather I ask you: when one has come to an agreement that is just with someone, should one fulfill it or cheat on it?

C: One should fulfill it." (52)

The issue thus becomes whether Socrates would be violating such an agreement if he escaped.

The Laws' Argument: "S: … 'Tell me, Socrates, what are you intending to do? Do you not by this action you are attempting intend to destroy us, the laws, and indeed the whole city …? Or do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force but are nullified and set at naught by private individuals?' …" (52)

A Response? "S: … Shall we say in answer, 'The city wronged me, and its decision was not right.' Shall we say that, or what?

C: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, that is our answer."

Why Socrates thinks that response fails: "S: Then what if the laws said: 'Was that the agreement between us, Socrates, or was it to respect the judgments that the city came to? … Did we not, first, bring you to birth, and was it not through us that your father married your mother and begat you? … Were those assigned to that subject not right to instruct your father to educate you in the arts and in physical culture? … and after you were born and nurtured and educated, could you, in the first place, deny that you are our offspring and servant …? Do you think you have this right to retaliation against your country and its laws? That if we undertake to destroy you and think it right to do so, you can undertake to destroy us, as far as you can, in return? … It is impious to bring violence to bear against your mother or father, it is much more so to use it against your country.' What shall we say in reply, Crito, that the laws speak the truth or not?

C: I think they do." (53)

The Consequences of Leaving: "S: '… if you go to one of the nearby cities -- Thebes or Megara, both are well governed …; all who care for their city will look on you with suspicion, as a destroyer of the laws. … what will you say? The same as you did here, that virtue and justice are man's most precious possession, along with lawful behavior and the laws? … Will there be no one to say that you … were so greedy for life that you transgressed the most important laws? …" (55)

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Social Contract Theories: Socrates here seems to endorse the idea that there is an implicit social contract between a citizen and the state such that the citizen is obliged to obey the dictates of the state even when he or she would rather not.

This idea of a social contract has been one that many philosophers have endorsed.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) made even more out of the notion of a social contract than Socrates does. For Hobbes, the whole of morality and law arises out of a (hypothetical) social contract.

The State of Nature: Hobbes imagines what he calls the state of nature, a condition in which there are no laws and no government.

Everyone is free in the state of nature, but, everyone is also motivated by self-interest, it turns out to be a very unpleasant place.

'the struggle of all against all'.

Life there is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Governments are thus created as part of a social contract that gets us out of the state of nature. Only then does morality enter the picture according to Hobbes.

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Returning to the Crito, we need to consider how plausible Socrates' position is.

The Problem of Civil Disobedience -- Under what conditions may we justly break the contract?

Martin Luther King Jr. on Civil Disobedience (from "Letter from Birmingham Jail") "… there are two types of laws: just and unjust. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all."

"when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity … There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience."

[Philosophy 1200]