I argue that the arguments presented in Socrates’ dialogue with the personified Laws of the Crito are arguments Socrates endorses and relies upon when deciding to remain in prison. They do not, however, entail blind obedience to every court verdict, nor do they provide necessary and sufficient conditions for resolving every dilemma of civil disobedience. Indeed, lacking definitional knowledge of justice, we should not expect Socrates to be able to offer such conditions. Instead, the Laws present an argument that is (...) sufficient for resolving Socrates’ specific dilemma, showing us how Socrates can deliberate and act despite his lack of knowledge. (shrink)

En el Critón de Platón se recurre a un interesante argumento utilitarista para justificar la obligación política de los ciudadanos. El argumento sostiene que la violación de las leyes lleva a la destrucción de cualquier sistema jurídico y acarrea resultados perjudiciales para los miembros de la comunidad. En este trabajo realizaremos un análisis crítico del argumento bajo los postulados de tres corrientes utilitaristas: el utilitarismo de acto, la generalización utilitarista y el utilitarismo de regla. Veremos cómo esta clase de argumentación (...) presenta algunos inconvenientes a la hora de justificar la obediencia al derecho. Una vez realizado este estudio se propondrá otra interpretación complementaria sobre el significado del pasaje, en la que se destacará su costado retórico forense y la idea de la autoridad del derecho. (shrink)

Speeches and persuasion dominate Plato’s Crito. This paper, paying particular attention to the final passage in the dialogue, shows that the focus on speeches, persuasion and allusions to many other elements of rhetoric is an integral part of Plato’s severe criticism of democracy, one of the main points of the Crito. Speeches allow members of a democracy – represented in our dialogue by Crito – firstly to break the law for self-interested reasons while considering themselves still to be law-abiding citizens, (...) and secondly to feel that they are in a tolerant society preferring logos/persuasive speech above bia/compulsion. Socrates counters Crito’s speeches with speeches of his own, not only to defeat him at his own game, but also to make him aware how dangerous the game is. Real knowledge is preferable to speeches, but a democracy without speeches and rhetoric is doomed. (shrink)

I propose an alternative interpretation of the Crito. The arguments that are typically taken to be Socrates’ primary arguments against escape are actually supplementary arguments that rely on what I call the Superiority Thesis, the thesis that the state and its citizens are members of a moral hierarchy where those below are tied by bonds of obligation to those above. I provide evidence that Socrates holds this thesis, demonstrate how it resolves a number of apparent difficulties and show why my (...) interpretation is preferable to competing interpretations. (shrink)

The claim that the citizen's duty is to “persuade or obey” the laws, expressed by the personified Laws of Athens in Plato's Crito, continues to receive intense scholarly attention. In this article, we provide a general review of the debates over this doctrine, and how the various positions taken may or may not fit with the rest of what we know about Socratic philosophy. We ultimately argue that the problems scholars have found in attributing the doctrine to Socrates derive from (...) an anachronistic and erroneous understanding of Socrates as a kind of libertarian. (shrink)