Obedience to the State in the Apology and the Crito

Obedience to the State in the Apology and the Crito

Kyle Dingman

Kyle Dingman is a second year philosophy major (note: I’ll be a 3rd year philosophy major in the fall – I’m not sure when you date this from, so feel free to change what I have.) at the University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in the philosophy of language, the early 20th century analytic philosophy, and Marx’s theory of history. He plans to attend graduate school in philosophy after finishing his undergraduate studies.

I. Introduction

A great trouble for lovers of Socrates is the fact that one of the central claims espoused in the Crito - the requirement that one must, failing successful persuasion, obey the orders of the state - seems to directly conflict with a passage from the Apology in which Socrates threatens to disobey a court order to cease philosophizing. Though other philosophers in the past have attempted to reconcile the Crito and the Apology, the rigidity of the principles in the Crito condemns such an endeavor to failure from the start.

Nowhere is the Socratic devotion to the state more obvious than in the combination of two principles that Socrates puts forth during the course of the Crito:

(P1) When one has come to a just agreement with another, one should fulfill it.

(P2) When one has freely lived their whole life in the city of Athens, one implicitly [and justly] agrees to either (A) persuade the state to adopt one’s own point of view or (B) obey the orders of the state.

Together, these two principles lay the foundation for a stronger principle concerning obedience to the state for anyone in Socrates’ position. By showing that 1) Socrates accepts both of the principles above and that 2) Socrates considers his agreement with the state just, I come very close to constructing a valid argument for why Socrates believes he must either persuade-or-obey the state. Thus, for the first half of this paper, my intention is primarily to demonstrate that Socrates supports both of the principles above and that he considers his agreement with the state just. After that, I intend to demonstrate that these two principles combine to form a principle requiring either obedience or successful persuasion from anyone in Socrates’ position. Finally, I’ll spend some time looking at a passage from the Apology that seems to best express the conflict with the principles of the Crito. Specifically, I’ll advance an interpretation of the Apology called the strong promise of defiance (SPD) which states:

(SPD): Socrates will disobey an order by the Athenian jury, legal or illegal, if it would keep him from philosophizing.

While it’s true that, in the Crito, Socrates gives arguments for obeying the state in addition to the ones I discuss, these other arguments tend to have ambiguities that decrease their usefulness in examining Socrates’ position in relation to the Apology.

Furthermore, in this paper I intend to avoid a qualitative assessment of Socrates’ position, relegating myself instead to a description of Socrates’ position as seen in the text. Because one goal of this paper is to draw a contradiction between the Crito and the Apology, attempting to determine Socrates’ position on the basis of what would be the best argument, as others have done, does little good. The existence of any contradiction necessitates a false premise, so to determine the actual premises in Socrates’ argument by assessing the plausibility or truth of each potential premise is to rule out a contradiction from the start.

II. Review of the Crito:

The dialogue in the Crito progresses through three sections, each of which is distinguished by its own style of argument. The first of these, in which Crito presents his reasons for escape, is characterized by a number of small, unrelated arguments that, for the most part, Socrates dismisses as irrelevant. Crito argues that Socrates’ failure to escape will be taken as a sign of cheapness on the part of his friends, that his failure to escape will leave his children with no one to raise them, and that, if Socrates escapes, he will have a place to stay in Thebes. (45a-46b)[1] However, Socrates dismisses each of these reasons for escape on the grounds that they appeal to the wrong things. Rather than worry oneself about the opinion of the majority or the fate of one’s children, Socrates claims, one should concern themselves with acting justly. So important to Socrates is living the “just life,” that it supersedes any other concern, and its absence makes life not worth living (47e-48a). Thus, if escaping would be unjust, then Socrates should not escape - regardless of any other factors that may seem relevant.

This ultimate importance of right action lays the foundation for the second section of the dialogue. Here, Socrates states one of the essential premises of his argument – given that right action is so important, “one must never do wrong.” (49b) Furthermore, Socrates claims, because to injure someone is always to do wrong (even when one injures someone in retaliation), and since one must never do wrong, “one should never do wrong in retaliation, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.” (49b-c) In addition to this principle, Socrates uses the second section of the Crito to make the claim that “when one has come to an agreement that is just with someone,” one should fulfill it. (This is principle 1, or P1) (49e)

After establishing these two points, Socrates moves into the third section of the dialogue. Here, Socrates ceases to speak as himself and instead begins to speak on behalf of the Laws of Athens. In addition to creating confusion, this rhetorical device is used by Socrates to make his three primary arguments against escape. On their own, each of three arguments stands as an independent, though weak, reason for Socrates to stay in prison. However, I believe that when taken in unison, the three arguments present a substantial case for absolute obedience to the state.

First among these arguments is the claim, made of course by the Laws of Athens, that by escaping, Socrates is doing injury to (and even destroying) the Laws. Because the Laws reason, a city is destroyed when the verdicts of its courts are reversed and nullified by private individuals, Socrates would be destroying the Laws of Athens were he to escape[2]. (50a-c) Further, Socrates should remain in prison because he should never mistreat anyone and, by escaping, he would be mistreating the Laws of Athens.

The second argument given in the third section of the dialogue claims that Socrates owes fealty to the state above all others. The Laws claim that Socrates owes a duty of obedience to the state because it was through the state that his father married his mother, through the state that Socrates was born, and through the state that Socrates was raised. Thus, the duty of Socrates to the state resembles the duty of a son to his father, only stronger. (50d-51c) So strong is this duty to the state, that Socrates has no right to retaliate against the state, no matter what the state does to him. (50e-51b)

The third and final argument given by the Laws of Athens is an appeal to a social contract between Socrates and the state. According to the Laws of Athens, an Athenian citizen could, at any time after reaching the voting age and after observing the city and the ways of its government, freely leave the city with all of his possessions. (51d) Because of this arrangement, anyone who stays in the city tacitly agrees to “either persuade [the state] or obey its orders, and endure in silence whatever it instructs [them] to endure.” (This is principle 2, or P2) (51-52, the quote is from 52b)[3] Because, by escaping, Socrates would be failing in his duty to persuade-or-obey, Socrates would be breaking his agreement with the state. Given that Socrates should never break his just agreements (P1), then, Socrates should not try to escape.

III. Two Principles

Having reviewed the basic structure of Socrates’ arguments, I now intend to look at both (P1) and (P2) individually in order to demonstrate Socrates’ acceptance of them. The first principles runs as follows:

(P1) When one has come to a just agreement with another, one should fulfill it.

Compared to the second principle, Socrates spends relatively little time arguing for the acceptance of (P1), treating it instead as if it were obvious. However, the first principle is vitally important to Socrates’ argument as a whole because it gives the argument its prescriptive force - at least insofar as the argument appeals to the moral significance of agreements. One recent interpretation of the first principle by R.E. Allen^[4], however, seeks to limit the prescriptive force of the first principle to the point of redundancy by overemphasizing the qualifier which requires the agreement to be “just.”^[5]

Allen makes the claim that Socratic conceptions of the moral duties surrounding promises differ considerably from modern conceptions of the same thing.^[6] While to a modern philosopher like Kant, a promise creates an absolute obligation to see the promise fulfilled, to Socrates one’s duty to fulfill any agreement is always contingent on the fact that the actions involved in fulfilling the agreement are just.^[7] Thus, according to Allen, the prescriptive force provided by (P1) is voided if the agreement between Socrates and the state is in any way unjust. Because Allen (seemingly) views any agreement that requires one to submit oneself to death as unjust, he rejects the idea that the agreement could require Socrates to remain in jail.

Yet it’s not immediately clear how exactly Allen thinks the requirement that an agreement be just functions or where he thinks it would apply. I see two immediate interpretations of Allen’s analysis:[8]

(A) Socrates is only obligated to take/submit to those actions which are independently obligatory (i.e. actions which he would be required to take/submit to were there no agreement in the first place) when those actions are required by an agreement.

(B) Socrates is obligated to take/submit to actions required by an agreement only if those actions are independently permissible (i.e. actions which he isn’t obligated to refrain from prior to an agreement), and he is not require to take/submit to any actions that are morally impermissible. [9]

The difference between the two interpenetrations obviously hinges on the function of justice in each one. In the first interpretation, an action can only be required by an agreement if it would be required by the dictates of justice without the agreement. In the second interpretation, an action can only be required by an agreement if it would be permissible to take without the agreement.[10]

I don’t think Allen actually intends to advance an interpretation of the Crito that attributes (A) to Socrates. If that were Allen’s intention, then he would have no real explanation for what a promise actually does in Socrates’ mind. Under (A), the only time Socrates is obligated to comply with a promise is when he’s already obligated to take the actions required by the promise independently of the promise – the obligations stemming from the promise are, in this case, little more than redundant. Further, under (A), promises to repay debts or honor contracts would be meaningless since the actions required by those promises wouldn’t (for the most part) be obligatory prior to the agreement itself.

However, if Allen takes (B) as Socrates’ actual position, then he leaves himself without a finished argument. Allen’s absolutely correct in claiming that Socrates has no obligations to submit himself to death prior to an agreement – but simply showing that doesn’t go far enough (it would only be enough if Allen accepted (A)). What Allen’s required to show if he wants to maintain that Socrates isn’t bound by his contract under (B) is that there’s something about submitting yourself to death that itself is unjust – that regardless of any agreements Socrates had made, submitting himself to death would be wrong. Not only does Allen not show that Socrates thinks there’s something immoral about submitting himself to death, but the very fact that Socrates does submit himself to death (on the grounds that it’s morally obligatory, no less) indicates quite strongly that he thinks submitting yourself to death can be morally permissible in his situation. It would seem, then, that not only is (B) the only reasonable interpretation of Socrates’ intentions in (P1), but also that there’s nothing about submitting himself to death that violates (P1).

The objection made by Allen covers one of two ways in which Socrates’ agreement with the state could be considered unjust - the way in which the terms or requirements of the agreement itself are unjust. That said, it is still at least possible that Socrates could consider his agreement with the state unjust if he believes that the means of coming to such an agreement were unjust. However, there seems to be no real reason to suspect this. Socrates mentions that not only was he free to leave at any time with all of his possessions, but that he also had 70 years to do so, and it is hard to imagine a more legitimate way of coming to an agreement.[11] (52d-e)

The second principle runs as follows:

(P2): When one has freely lived their whole life in the city of Athens, one implicitly [and justly] agrees to either (A) persuade the state to adopt one’s own point of view or (B) obey the orders of the state.

The establishment of the second principle occupies a large part of the later sections of the Crito. Two different justifications for the persuade-or-obey dilemma are given - one of them being the supremacy of the state to Socrates, and the other being the citizen contract. However, while there is little doubt that Socrates accepts the doctrine of persuade-or-obey, ambiguities in the formulations of the doctrine have created problems in the past and some philosophers have been tempted to use these ambiguities to weaken the demands placed on Socrates.

One of the most prominent of these philosophers is A.D. Woozley[12], who forwards an interpretation of the persuade-or-obey doctrine that allows for civil disobedience as long as the disobedience is intended to persuade the state to adopt one’s own point of view. According to Woozley, the persuade-or-obey doctrine requires one to either obey the orders of the state or take steps attempting to change the state’s mind. In Woozley’s reading of the text, the success or failure of an attempt at convincing the state is irrelevant to the justifiability of the disobedience employed in making the attempt to persuade the state. However, though in Woozley’s reading it is justifiable for the citizen to disobey, the citizen is not guaranteed any safety from repercussions.

Woozley justifies his interpretation on the grounds that it avoids a contradiction with Socrates’ other dialogues; namely the Apology. Furthermore, Woozley claims to hold the more moderate position between two opposing extremes - one requiring the disobedient to succeed in his attempt and the other requiring the state to allow all persuasive disobedience, regardless of its success. Because, Woozley reasons, the language of the Crito seems to allow for a non-contradictory interpretation, any contradictory interpretations should be ruled out.

However,Woozley’s interpretation hinges on the reading of the word “persuade” in the persuade-or-obey doctrine as something other than a “success-verb.”[13] If the applicability of the word “persuade” is taken to be dependant on the success of the attempt at persuasion in the same way that the applicability of “fly” and “win” are dependant on success, then it is obvious that Woozley’s interpretation will not work. Unfortunately for Woozley, at least one formulation of the doctrine hints strongly that a success-verb reading is appropriate.

The speech of the Laws of Athens between 51e and 52a gives one of the more revealing formulations of the doctrine:

We say that the one who disobeys does wrong in three ways, ¼ ,he neither obeys us nor, if we do something wrong, does he try to persuade us to do better. Yet we only propose things, we do not issue savage commands to do whatever we order; we give two alternatives, either to persuade us or to do what we say. He does neither. (51e-52a, emphasis added)[14]

The subject of the entire quote, from 51e4 to 52a3, is “the one who disobeys.” That said, it’s obvious that by “the one who disobeys,” the Laws are referring to anyone who chooses to do anything other than obey the orders of the state. The interesting and important thing to note about the formulation is that at end it makes the claim that the one who disobeys neither obeys nor persuades. This means that anyone who disobeys orders in an attempt to persuade becomes “the one who disobeys” and, at the same time, does not persuade.

This rather counterintuitive claim can only be understood in one of two ways:

1. Choosing to persuade might be seen as some sort of legitimate alternative to obeying, such that one who chooses to persuade instead of obeying isn’t really “disobeying.” Both Woozley and I reject this possibility. The problem with it is that the Laws of 4^th century B.C. Athens simply lacked this kind of written in exemption.[15]

2. It can be presumed that, if a citizen were ever to successfully persuade the state, then state would rescind its order, and the citizen would be obeying the state at that point. Thus, when persuasion happens successfully, there is no disobedience, while any attempt at persuasion that ends in failure is not persuasion. This interpretation of 51e4 to 52a3 demands the use of a success-verb reading of “persuade.”

That there is only one viable solution to the problem above forces us to adopt a success-verb reading of the word “persuade.” This use of a success-verb reading has rather significant ramifications when applied the whole of (P2). What it says is that any disobedience to the state will always be a violation of the citizen agreement which demands that one either persuade-or-obey. This is because the only acts of disobedience that are permissible (those in which persuasion succeeds), are impossible (because they cease to be acts of disobedience).

This, of course, holds only if we ignore temporal complications of the issue. What are we to say, for example, of the one who disobeys for a time and only after disobeying for some time succeeds in his persuasion? Is his disobedience before the persuasion still unjustified, or does his success retroactively pardon his persuasion? The passage quoted points to neither of these.

However, in relation to the threatened disobedience of the Apology, the question may not even matter. We can sidestep all temporal complications of the issue simply by weakening (P2) to claim that at some point in time, if one is to hold to the citizen agreement, then one must have obeyed all of the unrescinded orders the state. According to this newly weakened (P2), one must fulfill every order of the state, at least by the time one dies, unless the order is successfully persuaded away if one is to maintain the citizen agreement. Further, this weaker version of (P2) is logically implied by a version of (P2) that uses a success-verb reading of persuade.

IV. Synthesis of the Principles and the Apology:

The now completed (P1) and (P2), while individually weak, together form a substantial foundation for a principle governing civil disobedience. By providing (P2) with prescriptive force, (P1) allows us to form the following statement:

(P3) If one is in Socrates’ position, one must never fail to fulfill one’s unrescinded orders from the state before death.

However, (P3) is seems almost like a direct inversion of Socrates’ statement in the Apology claiming that he would take death before following the orders of the court. At 29c-d in the Apology, Socrates says:

if you said to me in this regard, ’Socrates, we do not believe Anytus now; we acquit you, but only on the condition that you spend no more time on this investigation and do not practice philosophy, and if you are caught doing so you will die’; if, as I say, you were to acquit me on those terms, I would say to you: “Men of Athens, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy¼”(29c-d, emphasis added)[16]

This moment of defiance against the state seems from an initial reading to conflict directly with (P3). Even if we assume that Socrates might somehow convince the state to rescind its order by continuing to practice philosophy, it seems obvious that Socrates’ threatened disobedience in the Apology is not contingent on the success of this persuasion. Rather Socrates seemingly intends to continue the practice of philosophy - even if the state executes him for disobeying the court order. This is problematic for a reader who wants to avoid ascribing a contradiction to Socrates because obviously if Socrates allows the state to kill him while he’s in the process of disobeying the state, he will be in a direct violation of (P3).

However, there are a number of potential escapes readers might take if they were to accept my findings on the Crito but not the Apology. In particular, one argument has been made in the past that would seemingly allow Socrates to hold a position of strong obedience to the state while at the same time making the statement he gives at 29c-d. A reader might argue that Socrates’ threat to disobey the jury at 29c-d of the Apology is actually not a contradiction with the Crito because (P3) only demands that Socrates obey legitimate commands from the state.[17] The reader might then reason that because an Athenian jury would lack the legal authority needed to make the kind of order that Socrates considers in the Apology, Socrates wouldn’t be obliged by (P3) to obey the command to cease philosophizing.

Such an argument hinges on the difference between two claims that Socrates might be making at 29c-d. He can be interpreted as making either a strong promise of defiance (SPD) or a weak promise of defiance (SPD). These claims run as follows:

(SPD): Socrates will disobey an order by the Athenian jury, legal or illegal, if it would keep him from philosophizing.

(WPD): Socrates will disobey an order by the Athenian jury to cease philosophizing if and only if the order is illegal.

Proponents of the positioned outlined above are going see Socrates as espousing the weaker of the two promises while others like myself will see Socrates as intending the stronger. Regardless of which promise one initially reads, however, the viability of either position is going to depend on two questions that I see as being at the center of the dispute:

1) Would an order like the one Socrates considers at 29c-d be a legitimate order under Athenian law or, more importantly, does Socrates see it as being a legitimate one?

2) Would Socrates disobey even if the order were legitimate?

An affirmative answer to either question is enough to logically imply the (SPD) instead of the (WPD), and so my efforts for the rest of this paper will primarily focus on why we have few good reasons to answer the second question in the negative.

In their valuable work on the subject, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith advance a typical argument for the (WPD) reading.[18] According to Brickhouse and Smith, there are two ways in which the events of Socrates’ hypothetical might actually come to pass. (a) The jury could offer to acquit Socrates of all charges on the condition that he cease philosophizing under pain of death or (b) the jury could find Socrates guilty of the charges and assess his punishment as a prohibition against philosophizing. However, as Brickhouse and Smith point out, the Laws of Athens at the time simply didn’t allow for such contingencies and thus 29c-d seems not to actually commit Socrates to any kind of defiance.

However, such replies seem misguided for two reason. The first is that Socrates makes no indication at all that he’s giving a vacuous conditional when he vows defiance. If Socrates really intends for his hypothetical to hinge on the fact that the court would lack the legal authority to satisfy the antecedent conditions for his threat, then why doesn’t he give any indication that that’s what he’s trying to do?

Secondly, even if the court-ordered proscription against philosophy would be illegal, there’s still no reason to think that such a proscription couldn’t come about by other, legitimate means. For instance, the Athenian assembly could pass a law requiring that Socrates cease philosophizing in which case the limitations of the jury’s power could be avoided. Such a law might, of course, contradict an earlier law passed by the assembly, but this would only matter if Socrates was able to demonstrate the contradiction to an Athenian court and if he failed he would have no further recourse.[19]

Brickhouse and Smith consider this possibility and come to the conclusion that even if Socrates failed at his attempt to get the law revoked, he would still have a way to avoid a contradiction because he would likely see the law as illegitimate and therefore lacking prescriptive force. Even if the Athenian legal system failed to find a contradiction, they reason, Socrates would still see the law proscribing philosophy as a perversion of due process and therefore not really a law at all. If Socrates was willing to simply declare any law he disagreed with “a corruption of due process,” however, it becomes hard to see how he would view himself as having an obligation to sit in jail since in the Crito, he readily admits that his conviction was wrongful.

Of course, my arguments here for the (SPD) reading don’t cover all the possible interpretations, and it may very well be the case that another unconsidered reading is the correct one. However, I do believe that most will agree with me that an intuitive reading of the Apology yields my conclusions and that any alternative theses will require extensive consideration before they can be accepted. Further, I hope it’s fairly obvious by this point that a reading of the Apology that ascribes the (SPD) to Socrates will undoubtedly conflict with any reading of the Crito which yields (P3).

V. Conclusion:

In the late 1880s George Grote proposed an explanation to the inconsistencies between the two dialogues. The Crito, according to Grote, was tasked by Plato with combating a widespread negative image of Socrates that arose after Socrates’ speech at his trial.[20] Because the disobedient nature of Socrates’ speech had cast him as an enemy of the state in the public’s eyes, the Crito sought to portray Socrates as exceptionally patriotic and dutiful. While there is very little positive evidence for this theory other than the contradiction itself and the historical climate, the theory at the very least provides a possible explanation that is seemingly more palatable than the claim that Socrates could actually have such a gross inconsistency in his ideas.

More importantly, what the Grote example seems to show is that even in the presence of substantial reasons for thinking that the two dialogues conflict (and I take myself to have provided those reasons by now), we’re not forced into a position of claiming that Socrates himself was unable to see the inconsistencies. There’s little need for elaborate and counterintuitive interpretations when history alone may provide an intelligible explanation that doesn’t impugn Socrates’ ability as a philosopher. I don’t at all claim to have solved the riddle with Grote’s suggestion, but I do at least hope (by now) to have alleviated the pressure to find a solution within the texts themselves.

To reiterate, then, because Socrates gives support to the principles (P1) and (P2) and because he makes such a strong promise of defiance in the Apology, a direct reconciliation of the texts is impossible.