How Did Aristotle Contribute To Plato's Crito
Virtue and the Laws: The Parent Analogy in Plato's Crito.
Sandrine Berges
Instructor in Philosophy
Department of International Relations
Bilkent University
Bilkent
06533 Ankara
Turkey
Berges@bilkent.edu.tr
Virtue and the Laws: The Parent Analogy in Plato's Crito.
1. Introduction.
One noticeable omission in the otherwise ever flourishing literature on Plato's Crito (and one might say on the early Platonic dialogues in general) is the recognition that Plato is presenting a problem from a virtue ethical angle. This is no doubt due to the fact that Aristotle, rather than Plato is regarded as the originator of Virtue Ethics as a branch of philosophy.1 Plato's own contribution to the discipline is more …show more content…
often than not bypassed.2 This has unfortunate consequences not only for Platonic scholarship, but also for the study of Virtue Ethics. What the latter loses by not considering the Crito as a central text is an opportunity to expand into the domain of political philosophy.3
One question the virtue politician has to answer is this: 'what should the virtuous agent's attitude to the laws be, considering that she believes morality cannot be law-like?' If the Crito is considered as a text in Virtue Ethics, we should expect it to shed light on this issue as the question it deals with is 'under what circumstances should one / Socrates obey the law?'
In this paper I shall argue that the Crito offers a deep and subtle answer to the question: 'why should a virtuous agent obey the law?' and that this answer is couched in terms of the law/parent analogy presented by the Personified Laws of Athens at 50c-51c. This answers is controversial in that it refutes two schools of thought: one is that the Crito lends itself to an authoritarian interpretation, we must obey the law no matter what4 (this is clearly not compatible with a virtue ethical reading) and the second is that the Crito presents the laws' claims as authoritarian but does not recommend that we should obey the law at all, and claims instead that Socrates obeys as a protest, or for entirely personal reasons.5 I shall argue in the first part of the paper, that the first set of interpretations are wrong. In the second part, I shall defend my own interpretation against the second set.
The question Plato is asking in the Crito is not 'under what circumstances should one obey the laws?' but 'under what circumstances should a virtuous agent obey the laws?'6 That this is the case can be deduced from Socrates' approach to the question as a question about what is "just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable, good and bad" (47c). This is in fact a reiteration of what he says in other dialogues, namely, that morality must be virtue-centred, that any talk about what one should or shouldn't do ought to take into consideration the vices and virtues at play, and how the ones can be avoided and the others pursued. Secondly, Socrates makes it very clear in the dialogue that what he is concerned with first and foremost is his psychic health, and that he will refrain from committing unjust acts because they endanger his soul (47d-48a). Thus morality for Socrates in the Crito must be character based. It follows that we are quite justified in interpreting the perspective of the argument of the Crito as a virtue ethical one.
That the Crito discusses political obedience from a virtue ethical perspective presents a philosophical problem hitherto unexplored in studies of the dialogue. Socrates, as a propounder of the claim that morality must be virtue centred, and therefore character based, cannot agree that morality is law-like.7 Hence he cannot accept legal pronouncements as morally binding per se. The duty to obey cannot be derived from a universal duty to abide by agreements, or to respect the authority of one's superiors. From a virtue ethical perspective, moral judgments must be determined by the particular features of the situations they address. When Euthythro asks Socrates whether he is justified in taking his father to court, Socrates is not impressed with Euthythro's claims to universality. He asks Euthythro to reflect on the particular nature of his accusation, and the relationships between the accused, the victim, and the accuser.8 However, the law does not deal in particulars. One is required to obey whatever the circumstances, and a legal system which makes exceptions loses its authority, as the Personified Laws of Athens point out to Socrates at 50 b: "Can you deny that by this act you are contemplating you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the laws, and the whole state as well?" It follows prima facie that a virtuous agent may not be able to make a virtuous judgment as to whether he or she should obey the law.
Two considerations must be brought to clarify the problematic outlined above.
First a virtue ethics perspective is not incompatible with rules of thumb, which help those who are not fully virtuous.9 If this were not the case, one would wonder at the needs for laws in the Republic. There Plato makes it clear that the laws are needed to compel non-virtuous agents to lead a life which will help them become as virtuous as they are capable of being. This is similar in spirit to Aristotle's discussion of laws in the last book of the Nichomachean Ethics. Secondly, the role of laws may be perceived, even from a virtue ethics perspective, as guaranteeing the conditions necessary for citizens to live virtuous lives, e.g. peace, education. This claim seems to motivate one of the Personified Laws' arguments in the Crito, i.e. that Socrates owes his education, and his opportunity to live the philosophical life to the Athenian laws (50d-e). However, both considerations are relevant only if the laws in question are not incompatible with virtue and if they do indeed facilitate, rather than hinder, the virtuous life of citizens. Although this may be the case in the cities described by Plato and Aristotle, there is no evidence that the Athenian laws do have this
property.
In accordance with the above considerations, I will argue that the Crito answers the question "why should a virtuous agent obey the law?" by suggesting the following very general principle:
VGP A virtuous agent will obey the laws, provided they do not demand that she act in a way incompatible with remaining a virtuous agent, if their purpose is to guarantee the conditions needed for flourishing, in the same manner that a parent's claims to obedience is justified by the need to educate the children's character.
This principle helps explain why Socrates decided to obey the laws and die, while he made it clear that under different circumstances he would or did disobey them. It tells us under what circumstances he would disobey: had the laws ordered him to give up philosophy he would have disobeyed; and did disobey: when he was a member to the council and voted against the trial of the ten commanders, and again when the government of the Thirty ordered him to bring Leon of Salamis for trial.10 But it also tells us under why Socrates felt obliged to obey when the laws of Athens condemned him to die: because the laws of Athens promote and protect the flourishing of the Athenian citizens.
The structure of this paper is as follows. First I shall address a substantial objection to my argument, namely that Socrates obeys the laws because he believes he owes them unconditional obedience. In other words, the argument of the Crito is not a virtue ethical one, but it is authoritarian. I will reply that Socrates does not believe he should obey the laws no matter what. I will argue that aside from the inconsistencies such an interpretation would raise between Crito and Apology, it would also run counter to an important argument in the Crito, i.e. that one must never act unjustly. Secondly I will show that the Laws present themselves through the parent analogy at 50c, not as absolute masters, but as the guarantors of flourishing and the virtues. I will argue that it is for this reason that Socrates will not risk destroying them. I will situate this in the Virtue Ethics tradition by comparing the parent analogy with some of Aristotle's arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics, and at the same time show that we owe the relevant argument to Plato, not Aristotle.
2. Unconditional Obedience.
To interpret the Crito as putting forward an authoritarian argument is to accept that Socrates agreed wholeheartedly with the Personified Laws' demand for unconditional obedience at 50c: "Did you undertake to abide by whatever judgments the state pronounced?" According to Bostock11, and to some extent Vlastos12, Socrates believes that it is just to obey the laws even when what they order is effectively unjust. It seems to them that we can only interpret Socrates' refusal to escape from his death sentence and his apparent agreement with the Laws of Athens' various claims at 54, if we suppose that he believed he owed the laws obedience, no matter what. This interpretation is highly dubious, at least in part because it leads to inconsistency between the Crito and the Apology, where Socrates twice defies the laws and threatens disobedience. Some writers on the Crito have inferred from this that Socrates cannot in fact be agreeing with the Laws' claims to obedience no matter what.13 It seems to me that there are strong reasons to agree with the non-authoritarian interpretations over and above these inconsistencies. Socrates makes claims, before the Laws' speech even begins, from which it follows that he will only obey in certain circumstances. I will show how these claims should compel a non-authoritarian reading of the dialogue.
At least one14 of Socrates' claims in the Crito is incompatible with his believing that he owes the laws obedience no matter what. It is his equation of justice with psychic health. I will explain how this claim entails that the Socrates of the Crito is not authoritarian, and consider an objection to my argument.
At 47e, Socrates states that just actions are those actions which promote psychic health:
What about the part of us which is mutilated by wrong actions and benefited by right ones? Is life worth living with this part ruined? Or do we believe that this part of us, whatever it may be, in which right and wrong operate, is of less importance than the body?
This concept of psychic health is recurrent throughout the early and middle dialogues (see Protagoras 313a-c, Gorgias 464a, 480a-b, Republic 444c-e), where it serves to build an account of virtue. In the Republic, for example, Plato writes that justice and injustice
are in the soul what the healthful and the diseaseful are in the body; there is no difference. […]
Virtue then would be a kind of health and beauty and good condition of the soul, and vice would be disease, ugliness and weakness. (444c-e).
The concept of psychic health is also central to the Gorgias as noted by Santas.15 In particular, he notes the double analogy at 466a between gymnastic and legislation on the one hand, and medicine and justice on the other. Those institutions, which promote justice and punish injustice, are, according to Plato, like those, which promote health and cure disease.
What is relevant in the Crito, the Republic and the Gorgias is not only the fact that Plato is concerned with the health of the soul, but that he believes this can be achieved by living virtuously. In other words, he is linking morally good behaviour with character development and happiness. This is also what we find in Aristotle when he defines eudaimonia in terms of the role played by the virtues in the functioning of the soul.16
Why does Socrates' adherence to a virtue morality mean that he cannot believe he owes the laws unconditional obedience? As Socrates also believes that life with an unhealthy soul is not worth living (48b), he is unwilling to act in a manner that will harm his soul: "Then in no circumstances one must do wrong" (49b). But because Socrates knows that the laws will sometimes require him to act unjustly, as they did in the case of Leon and the Thirty (Apology, 30d), it follows that he cannot believe he should obey them no matter what. The passage at 48b-49b makes it apparent that Socrates' conception of justice is agent-based, it entails that actions are just, not because they accord with rules, but because they contribute to psychic health. Hence for Socrates, adherence to rules - and in this case laws - and justice are not necessarily co-extensive. He would not believe that his being just depended every time on his obeying the laws of Athens; as indeed he did not in the case of Leon and the Thirty, and would not in the hypothetical case of the jury ordering him to give up philosophy.
My argument so far relies on claims Socrates makes in the Apology, however, advocates of the authoritarian interpretation of the Crito may well question the validity of appealing to material outside that dialogue. One might defend the view that the Crito stands apart from the other early dialogues, it represents an ideological departure from the Apology. Kraut suggests such a view:
It might be objected that the Crito's apparent authoritarianism is consistent with the authoritarianism of the Republic, and that the former work should therefore be considered a middle dialogue, or a least a transitional dialogue. According to the hypothesis, the Crito represents Plato's quarrel with Socrates, rather than the latter's quarrel with himself; and therefore there is no reason to try to interpret the speech of the laws in a way that makes it consistent with the Apology's tolerance for disobedience.17
Kraut replies to this potential objection that the Republic certainly does not advocate unconditional obedience. It only makes the claim that in the ideal state, the philosopher rulers must be obeyed. This is a far cry from the claim that rulers must be obeyed in any state. It depends on the presumption that the rulers of the ideal state will be as wise and just as it is possible for a human being to be. To demand from citizens total submission to rulers who are models of virtue may be authoritarianism of a kind, but of a very different kind from the demand that we submit to any authority we happen to live under.
There is another reason why the claim that the Crito is an authoritarian dialogue would not be an easy one to sustain. Although there might be reasons to believe that Plato changed his mind after writing the Apology about whether it is just to obey the law in any circumstances, the argument of 48b-49b means that he would have to change his mind about something more substantial. One must never act unjustly, Socrates says. But the laws have been known to request people to act unjustly, the episode of Leon and the Thirty is an example of such a request. So if Socrates now believed that it was always just to obey the law, it would have to be conjoined with his stated belief that one must never act unjustly, and thereby entail the unstated belief that the laws never request one to do something which is unjust.
Kraut again, notes this problem of internal inconsistency of Socrates in the Crito. He suggests that one way we could attempt to solve it would be by adopting the doctrine that law and virtue cannot conflict. He rightly recognises this as Thrasymachus' relativist conception of virtue, i.e., virtue is whatever the rulers decide will best serve their interest. This association with the villain of the Republic, of course, makes it highly implausible that Plato could ever have adopted that doctrine.18 (And note that in order to explain the inconsistencies both internal and with other dialogues, our objector would first have to liken the Crito to the Republic, and then distance it from it!)
Bostock19, while arguing for the authoritarian interpretation, also remarks on the inconsistency issue. He puts forward as a solution the claim that the Laws of the Crito are believed by Socrates to represent the expert he introduces at 47e. Many people will find this suggestion highly implausible. For one thing, it is hard to believe that a set of democratic laws, i.e. the laws of the majority, could represent an expert which is defined in an opposition to the opinions of the many. Socrates makes it very clear that the expert's pronouncements on justice have more value than the many's opinion. Could the many's opinions grow so drastically in value simply in virtue of becoming law? It does not seem that this could follow from what Socrates says at 47-48, nor does Bostock give any argument to show that it could. Bostock's main argument in support of his view that the laws are the expert referred to at 47e is that no other candidate seems suitable, the other candidates being Socrates, or 'the Truth itself'. I have no disagreement with the view that it is difficult to make either of these wear the hat. But contrary to what Bostock says, it is not just in the Crito that an expert is announced without appearing. The Laches does the same at 184e-185e. The question of moral expertise in general is much discussed amongst Plato scholars, and so far it remains an unanswered one.
What follows from the authoritarian interpretation of the Crito is a faith in the laws' unfailing capacity to know and to order what is just, basically the belief that a legal system (not just an ideal one, but for instance, the Athenian system) can never be corrupt and can never make mistakes. This is not compatible with anything Plato says in the Crito or in any other dialogue, early, middle or transitional. If the authoritarian reading entails that Plato believed at any point that the Laws represented the expert in virtue, then it seems we ought to reject that reading.
3. The role of the Laws: The parent analogy.
In a long passage from 50c to 51c the laws lay out what seems like an authoritarian argument par excellence. Socrates owes his birth, nurture and his education to the city of Athens. The city and its laws therefore stand to Socrates as parents, but even more so. Just as a child has no right to stand up against her parents, Socrates then has no right to disobey the laws. Socrates expresses no disagreement with that part of the Law's speech and is thus in danger of being understood as accepting the laws' claims to unconditional obedience. This passage has traditionally been understood as unequivocally authoritarian. Nevertheless, there is no single interpretation of it available. Writers on the dialogue disagree as to what the Laws mean and in what way they are authoritarian. I will argue that a non-authoritarian interpretation yields a better explanation of what the Laws mean and why Socrates appears to agree with them. First, I shall discuss the shortcomings of two different interpretations of the passage as authoritarian.
Kraut, when attempting to explain the passage appeals to an argument from gratitude:
The Laws are relying on the assumption, widespread in Ancient Greece, that although there is no general objection to violence and killing, attacks upon one's parents are absolutely forbidden. They seek some rational basis for this ban on parricide and they find it in the extraordinary benefits conferred. Logically, anything that is no less responsible for these benefits is no less entitled to forbearance from attack; since Socrates owes his existence and upbringing not only to his parents but also to Athens, he must not, for his part, destroy its laws.20
Two points may be made in criticism of Kraut's reading of the passage. First, the Laws are not just putting a ban on violence done to them. They are referring to any kind of disobedience. Although they do regard the possibility of Socrates disobeying in this instance as an attempt to destroy them, 21 it is unlikely that they would interpret any kind of disobedience in such an extreme manner. Thus it may be that the ban on parricide can only shed light on some aspects of what the Laws say at 50c-51c.
Secondly, the argument from gratitude is difficult to extract from the passage for several reasons. As Weiss points out,22if the Laws wanted Socrates to obey out of gratitude, they would not need the parent analogy, i.e. they would not need to invoke only the benefits of life and education which they give in common with parents. They could mention shelter, safety from tyranny, food in plenty and comfort. The list would be greater and thus they would be in a better position to demand grateful feeling from Socrates.
The argument from gratitude also fails for the following reason. Children do not obey their parents out of gratitude. By the time offsprings are able to understand what they do owe their parents (and some never do), they are no longer required to obey. Gratitude is thus at least as likely to be expressed as love and respect than as obedience. I conclude that although the Laws may be appealing to gratitude, it would be surprising that Socrates does not spot the weaknesses of the argument, and expresses no disagreement with it.
The second authoritarian interpretation comes from Weiss. Having rejected the argument from gratitude she goes on to propose an alternative reading:
What the laws do instead is point to the laws concerning marriage, nurture, and education and assert that, because of these laws, they stand in a parental, hence hierarchical and unequal, relation to the citizen.23
According to Weiss, the laws are arguing that Socrates must not disobey because he is on an inferior footing - his authority to decide what to do is overridden by the authority of the laws, just as the authority of a child is overridden by the authority of her parents. But where does the inequality come from? In the case of the child parent relationship, it would seem that if there is a hierarchical difference it is derived, at least in ancient Greece, from the sacred.24 Oedipus raises a curse from the Gods when he kills his father. This is in spite of the fact that he acted in self-defence and is ignorant of his lineage. Antigone defies the King, who represents her foster parent and her ruler, in order to bury her brother according to religious rites. In both cases, real blood matters more than parental or legal authority. Both Oedipus and Antigone have adopted parents who are in charge of their life and education. But in both cases, the real crime is to fail to respect what they owe to blood relatives. This sacred blood link is obviously absent from the relationship between a citizen and the law. It is unclear what else we might appeal to in order to deduce that there is an unequal hierarchical relationship between citizens and the law.
There is another way to account for the Laws' puzzling paternalistic argument and Socrates' acceptance of it, a way which situates the agreement within the virtue ethics tradition and in particular which has resonances in Aristotle's work. What we need to do first is answer the question why we think children owe their parents obedience. Gratitude is clearly not the answer, as we saw, and the fact that they are blood relations and that the miasma will be raised if we harm them is a little fantastic and old-fashioned for a thinker, who like Plato, is keen on psychological accuracy.
The key to understanding the purpose of obedience lies in reflecting on the nature of the exchange that takes place, in particular, how it takes place in time. The Laws' speech makes it sound as though obedience is offered in return for a gift of life and education, after that gift has been offered. This is because it is the case for Socrates. Socrates is not any longer receiving education from the city of Athens. A child, however, must obey during the time she is being educated. She must refrain from playing with matches, she must spend time everyday doing her homework, she must answer questions politely, etc. If she did not do these things, her parents would not be able to teach her very much. By obeying she is transforming herself into a learner. Obedience is thus not primarily offered as payment or gratitude for education, after the benefits have been conferred, but it is a condition of being educated.
This argument can be expressed in virtue ethical terms. Parents give us what we need in order to flourish. They can only make that gift if children will lend themselves to a certain discipline: virtues are acquired through habit, and habit requires discipline, i.e. in order to become habituated to a certain kind of behaviour, one has to do it again and again. If we decide to acquire a certain habit, or if someone else decides that we should acquire it, then we need to discipline our behaviour in order that we behave in the required way regularly and frequently. For instance, in order to become a pianist, one has to habituate one's fingers to move effortlessly on the keyboard. This habit is acquired through practicing playing scales at length. As most children are not self-disciplined enough to practice scales for an hour day, the parents and the piano teacher impose that task and the child obeys.
In the same way that the parents' imposition of discipline can be seen as a prerequisite for the development of virtuous habits, and hence for flourishing, the law can be seen as providing the conditions needed for the nurture of virtuous citizens. This indeed is what Aristotle regards as the role of laws in the following passage:
But it is difficult to get from youth up to a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for they will not be painful when they have become customary. But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention; since they must, even when they are grown up, practice and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking, to cover the whole of life; for most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishment rather than the sense of what is noble.25
According to Plato and Aristotle, the state is concerned with producing virtuous citizens. Both believe that moral education is a job parents are not best suited for, Plato because he believes that whereas the philosophical elite is in charge of the running of the city, the parents of any individual may belong to any of the three classes he divides people into (workers, soldiers, rulers) - so every one has a better chance if the rulers make decisions about education. Aristotle believes paternal authority is just not strong enough to impose virtuous habit on offsprings, and that moreover, children are more apt to resent impositions coming from an individual than from the law26. In other words, he believes that virtue requires an authority which on the one hand, cannot be easily questioned or challenged, and on the other, is impersonal and does not cause offence. For this reason, his view is unsatisfactory. There can be no real analogy between parental authority and state laws if one considers that parental authority is ineffective. Plato's view is more persuasive, in that he believes that the authority of law is a continuation of, not a replacement for, parental authority. Moreover, Plato sees that the analogy can be given as a justification for the authority of law, and an argument for political obedience. Aristotle does not, it seems, consider that political obedience might be a problem - at least not in the arguments surrounding the passage quoted above.
So far we have failed to address one obvious objection to Plato's argument that we should obey the law because it promotes and protects virtue. It may seem that because Socrates is no longer receiving education from the city of Athens, he should no longer be required to obey. The point of obeying is to learn, but Socrates, as we know from the Apology, does not believe there is anyone wiser than him in Athens.27 Consequently, there should be no need for him to obey. But this objection is spurious, as it assumes that Socrates does not care about virtue, but only about his virtue - this is unthinkable given any sensible way of understanding what virtue is, and in any case not true, as we know that Socrates was deeply concerned about promoting virtue in Athens. Socrates may not need the laws to make him virtuous any more (although as we saw above, Aristotle believes the role of the laws is to promote virtue throughout life), but the Laws are asking him to recognise the role they play in maintaining the conditions necessary for virtue to flourish in all citizens. If Socrates cares about virtue, as opposed to his virtue, he should respect the laws.
I have argued that no part of the Crito, that is, neither Socrates' own argument nor the laws' speech should be read as in any way authoritarian, but that the dialogue in general, and 50c-51c in particular can be interpreted as an illuminating answer to the question 'why should a virtuous agent obey the law?'. The Crito argues that laws have a claim on virtuous agent, even though virtue is not concerned with rules. This claim is grounded in an understanding that the development of a virtuous character requires habituation, and that habits are acquired through the authority of law. When the Personified Laws of Athens are asking that Socrates should obey them, they are not appealing to Socrates' respect for his older and better, but to his conviction that what matters is flourishing, i.e. living virtuously, as well as a recognition that in order to achieve this, people need laws. The Laws are not appealing to hierarchy, they are asking Socrates not to dismantle the system which is enabling him and his fellow Athenians to live the good life, i.e. the only life worth living. If, on the other hand, Socrates had good grounds to believe that the laws of Athens did not promote flourishing, or that they prevented it, then he would have no reason to obey. It seems that when Socrates accepts the Laws' argument, this is what he understands.
Sandrine Berges
Instructor in Philosophy
Department of International Relations
Bilkent University
Bilkent
06533 Ankara
Turkey
Berges@bilkent.edu.tr
Virtue and the Laws: The Parent Analogy in Plato's Crito.
1. Introduction.
One noticeable omission in the otherwise ever flourishing literature on Plato's Crito (and one might say on the early Platonic dialogues in general) is the recognition that Plato is presenting a problem from a virtue ethical angle. This is no doubt due to the fact that Aristotle, rather than Plato is regarded as the originator of Virtue Ethics as a branch of philosophy.1 Plato's own contribution to the discipline is more …show more content…
often than not bypassed.2 This has unfortunate consequences not only for Platonic scholarship, but also for the study of Virtue Ethics. What the latter loses by not considering the Crito as a central text is an opportunity to expand into the domain of political philosophy.3
One question the virtue politician has to answer is this: 'what should the virtuous agent's attitude to the laws be, considering that she believes morality cannot be law-like?' If the Crito is considered as a text in Virtue Ethics, we should expect it to shed light on this issue as the question it deals with is 'under what circumstances should one / Socrates obey the law?'
In this paper I shall argue that the Crito offers a deep and subtle answer to the question: 'why should a virtuous agent obey the law?' and that this answer is couched in terms of the law/parent analogy presented by the Personified Laws of Athens at 50c-51c. This answers is controversial in that it refutes two schools of thought: one is that the Crito lends itself to an authoritarian interpretation, we must obey the law no matter what4 (this is clearly not compatible with a virtue ethical reading) and the second is that the Crito presents the laws' claims as authoritarian but does not recommend that we should obey the law at all, and claims instead that Socrates obeys as a protest, or for entirely personal reasons.5 I shall argue in the first part of the paper, that the first set of interpretations are wrong. In the second part, I shall defend my own interpretation against the second set.
The question Plato is asking in the Crito is not 'under what circumstances should one obey the laws?' but 'under what circumstances should a virtuous agent obey the laws?'6 That this is the case can be deduced from Socrates' approach to the question as a question about what is "just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable, good and bad" (47c). This is in fact a reiteration of what he says in other dialogues, namely, that morality must be virtue-centred, that any talk about what one should or shouldn't do ought to take into consideration the vices and virtues at play, and how the ones can be avoided and the others pursued. Secondly, Socrates makes it very clear in the dialogue that what he is concerned with first and foremost is his psychic health, and that he will refrain from committing unjust acts because they endanger his soul (47d-48a). Thus morality for Socrates in the Crito must be character based. It follows that we are quite justified in interpreting the perspective of the argument of the Crito as a virtue ethical one.
That the Crito discusses political obedience from a virtue ethical perspective presents a philosophical problem hitherto unexplored in studies of the dialogue. Socrates, as a propounder of the claim that morality must be virtue centred, and therefore character based, cannot agree that morality is law-like.7 Hence he cannot accept legal pronouncements as morally binding per se. The duty to obey cannot be derived from a universal duty to abide by agreements, or to respect the authority of one's superiors. From a virtue ethical perspective, moral judgments must be determined by the particular features of the situations they address. When Euthythro asks Socrates whether he is justified in taking his father to court, Socrates is not impressed with Euthythro's claims to universality. He asks Euthythro to reflect on the particular nature of his accusation, and the relationships between the accused, the victim, and the accuser.8 However, the law does not deal in particulars. One is required to obey whatever the circumstances, and a legal system which makes exceptions loses its authority, as the Personified Laws of Athens point out to Socrates at 50 b: "Can you deny that by this act you are contemplating you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the laws, and the whole state as well?" It follows prima facie that a virtuous agent may not be able to make a virtuous judgment as to whether he or she should obey the law.
Two considerations must be brought to clarify the problematic outlined above.
First a virtue ethics perspective is not incompatible with rules of thumb, which help those who are not fully virtuous.9 If this were not the case, one would wonder at the needs for laws in the Republic. There Plato makes it clear that the laws are needed to compel non-virtuous agents to lead a life which will help them become as virtuous as they are capable of being. This is similar in spirit to Aristotle's discussion of laws in the last book of the Nichomachean Ethics. Secondly, the role of laws may be perceived, even from a virtue ethics perspective, as guaranteeing the conditions necessary for citizens to live virtuous lives, e.g. peace, education. This claim seems to motivate one of the Personified Laws' arguments in the Crito, i.e. that Socrates owes his education, and his opportunity to live the philosophical life to the Athenian laws (50d-e). However, both considerations are relevant only if the laws in question are not incompatible with virtue and if they do indeed facilitate, rather than hinder, the virtuous life of citizens. Although this may be the case in the cities described by Plato and Aristotle, there is no evidence that the Athenian laws do have this
property.
In accordance with the above considerations, I will argue that the Crito answers the question "why should a virtuous agent obey the law?" by suggesting the following very general principle:
VGP A virtuous agent will obey the laws, provided they do not demand that she act in a way incompatible with remaining a virtuous agent, if their purpose is to guarantee the conditions needed for flourishing, in the same manner that a parent's claims to obedience is justified by the need to educate the children's character.
This principle helps explain why Socrates decided to obey the laws and die, while he made it clear that under different circumstances he would or did disobey them. It tells us under what circumstances he would disobey: had the laws ordered him to give up philosophy he would have disobeyed; and did disobey: when he was a member to the council and voted against the trial of the ten commanders, and again when the government of the Thirty ordered him to bring Leon of Salamis for trial.10 But it also tells us under why Socrates felt obliged to obey when the laws of Athens condemned him to die: because the laws of Athens promote and protect the flourishing of the Athenian citizens.
The structure of this paper is as follows. First I shall address a substantial objection to my argument, namely that Socrates obeys the laws because he believes he owes them unconditional obedience. In other words, the argument of the Crito is not a virtue ethical one, but it is authoritarian. I will reply that Socrates does not believe he should obey the laws no matter what. I will argue that aside from the inconsistencies such an interpretation would raise between Crito and Apology, it would also run counter to an important argument in the Crito, i.e. that one must never act unjustly. Secondly I will show that the Laws present themselves through the parent analogy at 50c, not as absolute masters, but as the guarantors of flourishing and the virtues. I will argue that it is for this reason that Socrates will not risk destroying them. I will situate this in the Virtue Ethics tradition by comparing the parent analogy with some of Aristotle's arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics, and at the same time show that we owe the relevant argument to Plato, not Aristotle.
2. Unconditional Obedience.
To interpret the Crito as putting forward an authoritarian argument is to accept that Socrates agreed wholeheartedly with the Personified Laws' demand for unconditional obedience at 50c: "Did you undertake to abide by whatever judgments the state pronounced?" According to Bostock11, and to some extent Vlastos12, Socrates believes that it is just to obey the laws even when what they order is effectively unjust. It seems to them that we can only interpret Socrates' refusal to escape from his death sentence and his apparent agreement with the Laws of Athens' various claims at 54, if we suppose that he believed he owed the laws obedience, no matter what. This interpretation is highly dubious, at least in part because it leads to inconsistency between the Crito and the Apology, where Socrates twice defies the laws and threatens disobedience. Some writers on the Crito have inferred from this that Socrates cannot in fact be agreeing with the Laws' claims to obedience no matter what.13 It seems to me that there are strong reasons to agree with the non-authoritarian interpretations over and above these inconsistencies. Socrates makes claims, before the Laws' speech even begins, from which it follows that he will only obey in certain circumstances. I will show how these claims should compel a non-authoritarian reading of the dialogue.
At least one14 of Socrates' claims in the Crito is incompatible with his believing that he owes the laws obedience no matter what. It is his equation of justice with psychic health. I will explain how this claim entails that the Socrates of the Crito is not authoritarian, and consider an objection to my argument.
At 47e, Socrates states that just actions are those actions which promote psychic health:
What about the part of us which is mutilated by wrong actions and benefited by right ones? Is life worth living with this part ruined? Or do we believe that this part of us, whatever it may be, in which right and wrong operate, is of less importance than the body?
This concept of psychic health is recurrent throughout the early and middle dialogues (see Protagoras 313a-c, Gorgias 464a, 480a-b, Republic 444c-e), where it serves to build an account of virtue. In the Republic, for example, Plato writes that justice and injustice
are in the soul what the healthful and the diseaseful are in the body; there is no difference. […]
Virtue then would be a kind of health and beauty and good condition of the soul, and vice would be disease, ugliness and weakness. (444c-e).
The concept of psychic health is also central to the Gorgias as noted by Santas.15 In particular, he notes the double analogy at 466a between gymnastic and legislation on the one hand, and medicine and justice on the other. Those institutions, which promote justice and punish injustice, are, according to Plato, like those, which promote health and cure disease.
What is relevant in the Crito, the Republic and the Gorgias is not only the fact that Plato is concerned with the health of the soul, but that he believes this can be achieved by living virtuously. In other words, he is linking morally good behaviour with character development and happiness. This is also what we find in Aristotle when he defines eudaimonia in terms of the role played by the virtues in the functioning of the soul.16
Why does Socrates' adherence to a virtue morality mean that he cannot believe he owes the laws unconditional obedience? As Socrates also believes that life with an unhealthy soul is not worth living (48b), he is unwilling to act in a manner that will harm his soul: "Then in no circumstances one must do wrong" (49b). But because Socrates knows that the laws will sometimes require him to act unjustly, as they did in the case of Leon and the Thirty (Apology, 30d), it follows that he cannot believe he should obey them no matter what. The passage at 48b-49b makes it apparent that Socrates' conception of justice is agent-based, it entails that actions are just, not because they accord with rules, but because they contribute to psychic health. Hence for Socrates, adherence to rules - and in this case laws - and justice are not necessarily co-extensive. He would not believe that his being just depended every time on his obeying the laws of Athens; as indeed he did not in the case of Leon and the Thirty, and would not in the hypothetical case of the jury ordering him to give up philosophy.
My argument so far relies on claims Socrates makes in the Apology, however, advocates of the authoritarian interpretation of the Crito may well question the validity of appealing to material outside that dialogue. One might defend the view that the Crito stands apart from the other early dialogues, it represents an ideological departure from the Apology. Kraut suggests such a view:
It might be objected that the Crito's apparent authoritarianism is consistent with the authoritarianism of the Republic, and that the former work should therefore be considered a middle dialogue, or a least a transitional dialogue. According to the hypothesis, the Crito represents Plato's quarrel with Socrates, rather than the latter's quarrel with himself; and therefore there is no reason to try to interpret the speech of the laws in a way that makes it consistent with the Apology's tolerance for disobedience.17
Kraut replies to this potential objection that the Republic certainly does not advocate unconditional obedience. It only makes the claim that in the ideal state, the philosopher rulers must be obeyed. This is a far cry from the claim that rulers must be obeyed in any state. It depends on the presumption that the rulers of the ideal state will be as wise and just as it is possible for a human being to be. To demand from citizens total submission to rulers who are models of virtue may be authoritarianism of a kind, but of a very different kind from the demand that we submit to any authority we happen to live under.
There is another reason why the claim that the Crito is an authoritarian dialogue would not be an easy one to sustain. Although there might be reasons to believe that Plato changed his mind after writing the Apology about whether it is just to obey the law in any circumstances, the argument of 48b-49b means that he would have to change his mind about something more substantial. One must never act unjustly, Socrates says. But the laws have been known to request people to act unjustly, the episode of Leon and the Thirty is an example of such a request. So if Socrates now believed that it was always just to obey the law, it would have to be conjoined with his stated belief that one must never act unjustly, and thereby entail the unstated belief that the laws never request one to do something which is unjust.
Kraut again, notes this problem of internal inconsistency of Socrates in the Crito. He suggests that one way we could attempt to solve it would be by adopting the doctrine that law and virtue cannot conflict. He rightly recognises this as Thrasymachus' relativist conception of virtue, i.e., virtue is whatever the rulers decide will best serve their interest. This association with the villain of the Republic, of course, makes it highly implausible that Plato could ever have adopted that doctrine.18 (And note that in order to explain the inconsistencies both internal and with other dialogues, our objector would first have to liken the Crito to the Republic, and then distance it from it!)
Bostock19, while arguing for the authoritarian interpretation, also remarks on the inconsistency issue. He puts forward as a solution the claim that the Laws of the Crito are believed by Socrates to represent the expert he introduces at 47e. Many people will find this suggestion highly implausible. For one thing, it is hard to believe that a set of democratic laws, i.e. the laws of the majority, could represent an expert which is defined in an opposition to the opinions of the many. Socrates makes it very clear that the expert's pronouncements on justice have more value than the many's opinion. Could the many's opinions grow so drastically in value simply in virtue of becoming law? It does not seem that this could follow from what Socrates says at 47-48, nor does Bostock give any argument to show that it could. Bostock's main argument in support of his view that the laws are the expert referred to at 47e is that no other candidate seems suitable, the other candidates being Socrates, or 'the Truth itself'. I have no disagreement with the view that it is difficult to make either of these wear the hat. But contrary to what Bostock says, it is not just in the Crito that an expert is announced without appearing. The Laches does the same at 184e-185e. The question of moral expertise in general is much discussed amongst Plato scholars, and so far it remains an unanswered one.
What follows from the authoritarian interpretation of the Crito is a faith in the laws' unfailing capacity to know and to order what is just, basically the belief that a legal system (not just an ideal one, but for instance, the Athenian system) can never be corrupt and can never make mistakes. This is not compatible with anything Plato says in the Crito or in any other dialogue, early, middle or transitional. If the authoritarian reading entails that Plato believed at any point that the Laws represented the expert in virtue, then it seems we ought to reject that reading.
3. The role of the Laws: The parent analogy.
In a long passage from 50c to 51c the laws lay out what seems like an authoritarian argument par excellence. Socrates owes his birth, nurture and his education to the city of Athens. The city and its laws therefore stand to Socrates as parents, but even more so. Just as a child has no right to stand up against her parents, Socrates then has no right to disobey the laws. Socrates expresses no disagreement with that part of the Law's speech and is thus in danger of being understood as accepting the laws' claims to unconditional obedience. This passage has traditionally been understood as unequivocally authoritarian. Nevertheless, there is no single interpretation of it available. Writers on the dialogue disagree as to what the Laws mean and in what way they are authoritarian. I will argue that a non-authoritarian interpretation yields a better explanation of what the Laws mean and why Socrates appears to agree with them. First, I shall discuss the shortcomings of two different interpretations of the passage as authoritarian.
Kraut, when attempting to explain the passage appeals to an argument from gratitude:
The Laws are relying on the assumption, widespread in Ancient Greece, that although there is no general objection to violence and killing, attacks upon one's parents are absolutely forbidden. They seek some rational basis for this ban on parricide and they find it in the extraordinary benefits conferred. Logically, anything that is no less responsible for these benefits is no less entitled to forbearance from attack; since Socrates owes his existence and upbringing not only to his parents but also to Athens, he must not, for his part, destroy its laws.20
Two points may be made in criticism of Kraut's reading of the passage. First, the Laws are not just putting a ban on violence done to them. They are referring to any kind of disobedience. Although they do regard the possibility of Socrates disobeying in this instance as an attempt to destroy them, 21 it is unlikely that they would interpret any kind of disobedience in such an extreme manner. Thus it may be that the ban on parricide can only shed light on some aspects of what the Laws say at 50c-51c.
Secondly, the argument from gratitude is difficult to extract from the passage for several reasons. As Weiss points out,22if the Laws wanted Socrates to obey out of gratitude, they would not need the parent analogy, i.e. they would not need to invoke only the benefits of life and education which they give in common with parents. They could mention shelter, safety from tyranny, food in plenty and comfort. The list would be greater and thus they would be in a better position to demand grateful feeling from Socrates.
The argument from gratitude also fails for the following reason. Children do not obey their parents out of gratitude. By the time offsprings are able to understand what they do owe their parents (and some never do), they are no longer required to obey. Gratitude is thus at least as likely to be expressed as love and respect than as obedience. I conclude that although the Laws may be appealing to gratitude, it would be surprising that Socrates does not spot the weaknesses of the argument, and expresses no disagreement with it.
The second authoritarian interpretation comes from Weiss. Having rejected the argument from gratitude she goes on to propose an alternative reading:
What the laws do instead is point to the laws concerning marriage, nurture, and education and assert that, because of these laws, they stand in a parental, hence hierarchical and unequal, relation to the citizen.23
According to Weiss, the laws are arguing that Socrates must not disobey because he is on an inferior footing - his authority to decide what to do is overridden by the authority of the laws, just as the authority of a child is overridden by the authority of her parents. But where does the inequality come from? In the case of the child parent relationship, it would seem that if there is a hierarchical difference it is derived, at least in ancient Greece, from the sacred.24 Oedipus raises a curse from the Gods when he kills his father. This is in spite of the fact that he acted in self-defence and is ignorant of his lineage. Antigone defies the King, who represents her foster parent and her ruler, in order to bury her brother according to religious rites. In both cases, real blood matters more than parental or legal authority. Both Oedipus and Antigone have adopted parents who are in charge of their life and education. But in both cases, the real crime is to fail to respect what they owe to blood relatives. This sacred blood link is obviously absent from the relationship between a citizen and the law. It is unclear what else we might appeal to in order to deduce that there is an unequal hierarchical relationship between citizens and the law.
There is another way to account for the Laws' puzzling paternalistic argument and Socrates' acceptance of it, a way which situates the agreement within the virtue ethics tradition and in particular which has resonances in Aristotle's work. What we need to do first is answer the question why we think children owe their parents obedience. Gratitude is clearly not the answer, as we saw, and the fact that they are blood relations and that the miasma will be raised if we harm them is a little fantastic and old-fashioned for a thinker, who like Plato, is keen on psychological accuracy.
The key to understanding the purpose of obedience lies in reflecting on the nature of the exchange that takes place, in particular, how it takes place in time. The Laws' speech makes it sound as though obedience is offered in return for a gift of life and education, after that gift has been offered. This is because it is the case for Socrates. Socrates is not any longer receiving education from the city of Athens. A child, however, must obey during the time she is being educated. She must refrain from playing with matches, she must spend time everyday doing her homework, she must answer questions politely, etc. If she did not do these things, her parents would not be able to teach her very much. By obeying she is transforming herself into a learner. Obedience is thus not primarily offered as payment or gratitude for education, after the benefits have been conferred, but it is a condition of being educated.
This argument can be expressed in virtue ethical terms. Parents give us what we need in order to flourish. They can only make that gift if children will lend themselves to a certain discipline: virtues are acquired through habit, and habit requires discipline, i.e. in order to become habituated to a certain kind of behaviour, one has to do it again and again. If we decide to acquire a certain habit, or if someone else decides that we should acquire it, then we need to discipline our behaviour in order that we behave in the required way regularly and frequently. For instance, in order to become a pianist, one has to habituate one's fingers to move effortlessly on the keyboard. This habit is acquired through practicing playing scales at length. As most children are not self-disciplined enough to practice scales for an hour day, the parents and the piano teacher impose that task and the child obeys.
In the same way that the parents' imposition of discipline can be seen as a prerequisite for the development of virtuous habits, and hence for flourishing, the law can be seen as providing the conditions needed for the nurture of virtuous citizens. This indeed is what Aristotle regards as the role of laws in the following passage:
But it is difficult to get from youth up to a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for they will not be painful when they have become customary. But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention; since they must, even when they are grown up, practice and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking, to cover the whole of life; for most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishment rather than the sense of what is noble.25
According to Plato and Aristotle, the state is concerned with producing virtuous citizens. Both believe that moral education is a job parents are not best suited for, Plato because he believes that whereas the philosophical elite is in charge of the running of the city, the parents of any individual may belong to any of the three classes he divides people into (workers, soldiers, rulers) - so every one has a better chance if the rulers make decisions about education. Aristotle believes paternal authority is just not strong enough to impose virtuous habit on offsprings, and that moreover, children are more apt to resent impositions coming from an individual than from the law26. In other words, he believes that virtue requires an authority which on the one hand, cannot be easily questioned or challenged, and on the other, is impersonal and does not cause offence. For this reason, his view is unsatisfactory. There can be no real analogy between parental authority and state laws if one considers that parental authority is ineffective. Plato's view is more persuasive, in that he believes that the authority of law is a continuation of, not a replacement for, parental authority. Moreover, Plato sees that the analogy can be given as a justification for the authority of law, and an argument for political obedience. Aristotle does not, it seems, consider that political obedience might be a problem - at least not in the arguments surrounding the passage quoted above.
So far we have failed to address one obvious objection to Plato's argument that we should obey the law because it promotes and protects virtue. It may seem that because Socrates is no longer receiving education from the city of Athens, he should no longer be required to obey. The point of obeying is to learn, but Socrates, as we know from the Apology, does not believe there is anyone wiser than him in Athens.27 Consequently, there should be no need for him to obey. But this objection is spurious, as it assumes that Socrates does not care about virtue, but only about his virtue - this is unthinkable given any sensible way of understanding what virtue is, and in any case not true, as we know that Socrates was deeply concerned about promoting virtue in Athens. Socrates may not need the laws to make him virtuous any more (although as we saw above, Aristotle believes the role of the laws is to promote virtue throughout life), but the Laws are asking him to recognise the role they play in maintaining the conditions necessary for virtue to flourish in all citizens. If Socrates cares about virtue, as opposed to his virtue, he should respect the laws.
I have argued that no part of the Crito, that is, neither Socrates' own argument nor the laws' speech should be read as in any way authoritarian, but that the dialogue in general, and 50c-51c in particular can be interpreted as an illuminating answer to the question 'why should a virtuous agent obey the law?'. The Crito argues that laws have a claim on virtuous agent, even though virtue is not concerned with rules. This claim is grounded in an understanding that the development of a virtuous character requires habituation, and that habits are acquired through the authority of law. When the Personified Laws of Athens are asking that Socrates should obey them, they are not appealing to Socrates' respect for his older and better, but to his conviction that what matters is flourishing, i.e. living virtuously, as well as a recognition that in order to achieve this, people need laws. The Laws are not appealing to hierarchy, they are asking Socrates not to dismantle the system which is enabling him and his fellow Athenians to live the good life, i.e. the only life worth living. If, on the other hand, Socrates had good grounds to believe that the laws of Athens did not promote flourishing, or that they prevented it, then he would have no reason to obey. It seems that when Socrates accepts the Laws' argument, this is what he understands.