Martin Luther King Jr Vs Socrates Essay

Martin Luther King Junior and Socrates argue for a different meanings and reasoning’s behind the differences of a single person and the law by which we have to follow. They were written many years apart but they are still very similar to the ideas of justice. The way that the two argue are almost completely opposite depending on the way that they feel towards authority and inner direction or moral guidance to lead you by. In the Crito, Socrates provides a lot of different arguments to understand why he refuses to escape from jail and avoid certain death, even though he believes that his sentence is unjust in its own. In the Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. is speaking to Birmingham’s clergymen who requested that he stop demonstrating
and stop stirring up civil rights rebellion. Both Socrates and Martin Luther King Jr. suggest higher forms of justice than just man-made laws, and give reasoning as for why they would rather die than to escape and stay in jail than turn a “blind eye” to justice and what is right. Should we always agree with the law of the land and put up with all the injustices, as Socrates would have us do, or should we stand up to injustice and instead obey a higher, natural law, as Martin Luther King Jr. thinks we should do?
In the Crito, Socrates asks “Shall I do what is right, or not?” and then goes on to talk about and explain the way that he believes is right is for him to listen to the rules of the state. He recognizes that he is in a form of contract with the state and is required to follow the laws that are set. He claims that the state brought him into existence under the fact that his mother and father were married according to the laws of the state. The state also made it easier for him to receive an education. For these reasons and more, he claims that his relationship to the state is like that of child and father, and he has no right to break the laws of the state. By staying in jail when he has multiple opportunities to escape and get away, but because he has his children there, and enjoys the benefits that are provided by the state, it seems as if he is under contract to the state because of it. Socrates considers it pointless to escape from jail, and as a philosopher who has always upheld virtue in his teachings, he would be doing basically the opposite of his philosophies by committing such an unvirtuous act if he were to leave. Leaving jail would be unjust and no one should willing do an unjust act even though his friends are ready for the risks that they may face but he is not. In the Crito it offers to help Socrates escape from “certain death” arguing that Socrates has an obligation to his friends, himself, and to his philosophy to survive. Despite everything, Socrates is not worried with what people think, in doing so what he believes he is upholding a higher law than man-made law.
In Dr.
Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he talks about a much different feeling towards the law. In an attempt to change the laws of segregation in the South, King directly breaks the laws and then accepts his punishment for doing so. King thinks that the segregation issue must be solved by “compromise and negotiation” but he also thinks that the breaking of laws is necessary to form the creative pressure through which the true understanding of an issue can be acknowledged and then negotiated upon after that. King states that “the laws that violate and degrade humanity are inflicted upon the minority who have no voice in the voting progresses are unjust.” He also points out that segregation “degrades human personality,” black people in the south are not allowed to vote nor do not have a voice in any of the democratic processes. This is all leading to the way that King defines segregation as an unjust law, and the separation of human beings as sinful. Martin Luther King, Jr. also believes in a higher law than just a man-made law and it is this law that he shapes his actions around. St. Augustine states that “an unjust law is no law at all” leading King to believe that unjust laws that fall under this should be broken. This is a strong argument because the main audience was the clergymen who look to the bible for guidance and follow what is
preached.
Socrates looks to the state for the laws that should be followed, on the other hand King instead looks to a higher natural law to follow. King uses Jesus as an example of “extremism for love,” and because he shows his disappointment that the church has not been a moral guideline that should lead Christians to the “higher levels of justice.” While the concept of a natural law is extremely unspecified, but he provides us with a definition by comparing it to Christianity. Accepting King’s reasoning for promoting virtue depends on your belief in the Bible and how much a person may know or understand; his argument still holds up because of the practical reasoning that he gives for breaking the law. He also argues with solid reasoning that the only way to open up negotiation about the segregation laws and ultimately change it to take on segregation and be able to create the tensions that bring the issue to the front part of American consciousness. Other than holding on to his dignity by not following an unjust law, he also sets out to change the segregation situation at that time. This is a true and easy to understand reason for his more direct actions that can be accepted regardless of the way one defines virtuousness and your understanding of religion and the church.
Socrates relies in part on defining the state as analogous to parents or a slave master which is not a very strong argument in the end. The reasoning to his argument is that a slave-master relationship is not valued on one side if not both compared to the relationship to the state or to parents who possess unconditional love for their children no matter what happens. So the same argument, the state-subject relationship is not anywhere near being equal to a parent-child relationship. King’s arguments about the virtue of breaking unjust laws are strong for the clearly obvious number of points he backs up his arguments with. Since King shows and argues so many premises and defines his vague terms, while Socrates instead relies mostly on what, in my opinion is weak analogies and not a fair number of premises. King’s argument about his point of view makes the whole thing much stronger to prove his point to the clergymen and how unjust the laws are and who they truly effect.