Plato’s Crito is the second part of the three-part account of the trial and execution of Socrates. A friend of Socrates named Crito visits him in prison and attempts to persuade him to bribe his jailors (or let his friends do it for him) and escape from Athens. He tries to tell Socrates that history will judge his friends for not doing all they could to save him; that he is capitulating to his enemies; that his children will be left orphans. But Socrates rejects a relativistic morality, argues against each one of these, and determines not to escape.
That’s the “plot” in a nutshell. I don’t have much to say about it at this point. I still feel like I don’t know how to read these things well. I’m listening to a lecture series on them as an aside, and the teacher makes an interesting comment: You can only really read these for the first time on your second or third time through them. The point is very similar to something we talked about in hermeneutics class: we come to understand the small units of a text (like sentences and paragraphs) in light of the text as a whole; we come to understand the text as a whole by focusing on the sentences and paragraphs. They inform and help interpret each other. Needless to say, I have a long way to go with Plato and hermeneutics in general. I know I won’t get it all on this protoreading.
However, I did want to quote one small part and make one or two tiny observations. In this quote, Socrates is speaking, but he is doing so from the perspective of the laws of Athens:
… be advised by us your guardians, and do not think more of your children or of your life or of anything else than you think of what is right, so that when you enter the next world you may have all this to plead in your defense before the authorities there. It seems clear that if you do this thing [i.e. escape from Athens], neither you nor any of your friends will be the better for it or be more upright or have a cleaner conscience here in this world, nor will it be better for you when you reach the next. (54b)
One, I think it’s interesting that Socrates recognizes and makes his conscience the primary reason for why he chooses not to escape. It reminds me of what I’ve read about Martin Luther’s stand at the beginning of the Reformation.
And two, this quote deals with the motivations Socrates gives for not violating his conscience. The first one is an expectation of some kind of judgment in the afterlife. Again, I know I don’t really understand the Greek cosmology here or who is doing the judging. But I’m interested in this expectation and how it agrees with what Christianity teaches. The letter to the Hebrews says, ‘For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ (Heb 10:31)
The second motivation also bears some similarity to ideas in Christianity. It is a desire to do good to others. Socrates sees how his actions will impact his friends, and he determines to do nothing that will not benefit them—nothing that will not help them to be more upright. This is similar to Paul’s discussion of Christian liberty in 1 Corinthians 8-9. He encourages believers strong in faith to do nothing that will put the faith of others in danger.
Okay, so that was the first reading. Those comments probably don’t have much to do with the essential character of Plato’s dialogue. At this point I guess I’m just trying to make associations with things I already know and have been exposed to… some kind of weird free association. Hopefully it will at least help me to remember some of this.
