Comparing Plato's Crito And Apology

The issue at hand is the consistency of the relationship between citizens and the law. It is in the common sense that laws should be upheld and citizens should obey them to maintain social order. However, in the instances that laws are unjust, obedience to them could result in harms to innocent citizens, the case which is brought up in Plato's works Crito and Apology, where Socrates was wrongfully accused of corrupting the youths of Athens and had to suffer the death sentence. Therefore, it is important to analyze the appropriate extend to which the 'rule of law' should be upheld in the cases that laws are unjust. This essay will analyze both extremes of the argument, those who insist on obeying the unjust rules and those who choose to disobey.
Through these analyses, I derive the claim that the rule of law should be maintained only with the condition that the goal of the state remains to be Eudaimonia for people, and that citizens should be able to change unjust laws without being subjected to obeying them.
First comes the need to present Socrates’ argument for obedience to unjust laws in Crito, which is on the basis that citizens are under a contract with the law. In this dialogue, Crito visits Socrates in his prison cell and presented him a plan to escape, an offer which Socrates refused because that equates to breaching this contract. Socrates personifies Law into a person, who claims that the she does a favor for Socrates by providing him "birth, upbringing, and education, and a share in all the benefits … [of] citizens", and in exchange she asks Socrates to obey all of her legal principles at all time. Thus, he believes that by simply living in a state and receiving the bare minimum from it, one is inherently under the agreement to obey its laws, whether those laws be just or unjust.
This strict adherence to the law has its benefit in maintaining the stability of the state by establishing consistency and order. In his jail cell, Socrates asked Crito whether a city can still exist stably “if the legal judgements rendered within it possess no force, but are nullified or invalidated by individuals?” Thus, he saw the necessity in obeying his unjust sentence in order to uphold the rule of law of the state. Aristotle agrees to this argument in Rhetoric, where he argued for the advantages of the rule law over that of the ruler, stating its benefit of history in various legal decisions since it is made based on past cases and experiences. As a result, the rule of Law provides a necessary framework for continuity, justice, and equal treatment among citizens.
Another reason for strict obedience under the law is the principle of citizenship, in which obedience shows respect for one’s fellow citizens. “If we leave here without the city's permission, are we mistreating people whom we should least mistreat?” Socrates asked of Crito regarding the escape. On the principle of fairness, breaking the law means disrespecting one’s fellow citizens, who have been declared on the principle of citizenships to be of equals. Therefore, the agreement of citizens to a contract with law also ensures peace and social harmony among the masses, an important aspect of the virtuous state. Aristotle had stated that “a city with a body of disfranchised citizens who are numerous and poor must necessarily be a city which is full of enemies”, so the contract with law offers a buffer to any potential rivalry among citizens, with the condition that the citizens actually follow it.
Due to its importance in the creation and maintenance of states, the principle of the rule of law, introduced by Plato, had become a universal political tradition extending until our modern time. In On the Rule of Law, Brian Z. Tamanaha argues for the essentiality of the rule of law in the creation of all successful states and legal systems, stating:
This apparent unanimity in support of the rule of law is a feat unparalleled in history, no other single political ideal has ever achieved global endorsement. Never mind, for the moment, an understandable skepticism with respect to the sincerity of some of these avowed commitments. The fact remains that government officials worldwide advocate the rule of law and, equally significantly, that none make a point of defiantly rejecting the rule of law.
He further supports this argument through the examples of the insistence on the establishment of the rule of law from global superpowers like China and the US, and the emphasis on the same principle by supranational organizations like IMF or the World Bank. It is thus safe to assume that the benefit of the rule of law on the state is undeniable.
Additionally, Plato also attempted to argue for the benefits of obedience on the individuals, stating that one shouldn't return injustice to anyone even if they are treated unjustly, because one should always strive to do things that are good and just. Using the values of character and citizenship, this argument argues for the benefit of obedience to the law for the good of the soul, but whether the personal benefit outweighs the cost is debatable, especially when a citizen's life is jeopardized. In her blog 'Socrates' Avoidable Demise', Sara Al Mulla asks "What scale would show escaping prison and wrongful execution as equals in graveness?", which raises again the question of the appropriate limit of obedience. Socrates the philosopher had his cause to die for, but the ordinary citizens have their life as their most valuable property, and to lose their lives with no significant impact is not a good motivator to obey an unjust law. This claim on personal morality is where the argument for obedience to unjust law reaches its limit, since the benefit of such actions are more often for the collective good at the expense of the individual. On the flip side, it is important to acknowledge the danger of putting absolute sovereignty in law.
In Politics, Aristotle not only stresses the importance of law but also warns against the assignment of law as the absolute sovereign, since it could end up creating oligarchy or democracy, which in his respective interpretations are less virtuous forms of government. This is due to the facts that these unvirtuous regimes have the wrong political goals in mind. Oligarchy divides up people and devalue them based on wealth and as a result creates a wealth-based society, while democracy puts law at the risk of tyranny of the
masses.
Ultimately, Aristotle argues that correct laws have to be born from good constitutions, ideally from that of a virtuous regime.
More importantly, it is necessary to establish the essential criteria to which the rule of law should or should not be upheld.
When will laws become so unjust that they shouldn’t be obeyed at all? To this I argue that it is when the existence of the laws has missed the purpose of tending for the goodness of citizens, and instead exist to exploit the people in order to serve the small benefit of only a fraction of society. Plato and Aristotle build their virtuous states on the goal of bringing a good life to people, surround the principle of ‘Eudaimonia’, a virtuous happiness and existence for citizens. In Virtue & Reason in Plato and Aristotle, A. W. Price interprets this principle to be that having Eudaimonia as the “ultimate and abstract goal of [all] deliberate human actions”. Thus, on this line of interpretation, any legitimate law should exist under the condition that it is intended to create a good life for those under it. This does not mean that the law will bring good benefits to every single member of society, but should focus on the collective
good.
When the law is blatantly not intended for good the whole population, the people earn the right to disobey and revolt. The ideal example is seen in the movement of anti-colonialism revolutions in the past few centuries. For example, during the colonial period of France in Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam), French colonists used the colony for pure economic exploitation. The wealth harvested only benefited the French colonists and a small number of Vietnamese elite who are French puppets, used to mask the true conditions of the majority of natives. Meanwhile, Vietnamese peasants were constantly mistreated under harsh working conditions and left malnourished on French-owned share-cropping farms . The reason why colonial laws like those in Vietnam and many other European-controlled colonies do not deserve to be followed is that their end is completely against the goodness of the inhabitance and only exist to serve a selfish agenda that benefit only the conquering state. Thus, the consequent revolution of Vietnam in 1945 was completely justifiable for Vietnamese nationals. Only with sovereignty that the newly independent state of Vietnam was able to seek its own virtuous regime and constitution.
Outside the blatant example of colonialism, the problem of unjust laws need keener eyes to examine in our modern political culture. In conclusion, this essay has established the importance of the rule of law and the idea of a contract between citizens and the law. The reasons for that are the principle of citizenship, which stress a respect for the law of the land and to respect to the fairness among all citizens, and the stability and continuity of the state and its laws. It could further be argued that obeying the law is a just act and is beneficial to the soul of each citizen themselves. More importantly, the essay also establishes the condition for the maintenance of the contract between the law and people, stressing on the classical philosophical concept of Eudaimonia. Across time and geographic differences, it is through the principle of the virtuous existence that laws could bring justice and gain legitimacy,