Handout #4 (Introduction to Political Philosophy, 2008-09)
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Crito’s arguments for Socrates’s escape Argument #1: You should escape because it will be worse for your friends if you don’t. Your friends will lose a little bribe money and run a small risk of being caught if they arrange for your escape. If, however, you don’t escape, the reputations of your friends will be ruined, because people will think they were too cheap or too cowardly to arrange for your escape. [44b-45b, 45d-46a] Argument #2: You should escape, because if you don’t escape, you will abandon and therefore betray your children, leaving them to the usual fate of orphans. [45c-d] Argument #3: If you escape, you will be able to live safely. If you don’t escape, you will be killed. You should escape because you shouldn’t give up your life when you can save it. [45c] A version of the argument from self-defence P1. You may harmlessly escape from a murderer in self-defence. P2. Whatever you may do in self-defence in response to a murderer, you may also do in self-defence in response to state officials who are unjustly trying to kill you. Therefore, you may harmlessly escape in self-defence from state officials who are unjustly trying to kill you. Socrates on doing injury [49b-d] Socrates: And so one must never act unjustly? Crito: By no means. Socrates: Nor should one repay an injustice with an injustice, as the many think, since one should never act unjustly. Crito: It appears not. Socrates: What next? Should one cause harm, Crito, or not? Crito: Presumably not, Socrates. Socrates: What then? Is returning a harm for a harm just, as the many say, or not just? Crito: Not at all. Socrates: Because harming a man in any way is no different from doing an
injustice. Crito: That’s true Socrates: One must neither repay an injustice nor cause harm to any man, no matter what one suffers because of him. ... it is never right to act unjustly or to return an injustice or to retaliate when one has suffered some harm by repaying the harm.
Socratic responses to the argument from self-defence First response: He would have rejected P2 of the argument, since he thought we had special obligations to the state (as opposed to the average private individual) for the following three reasons: (1) (2) We have made a just agreement to obey the laws of the state. One has a sacred obligation to defer to one’s parents, and the state is more sacred than one’s parents; therefore, one has an even stronger obligation to defer to the state. We owe obedience to the state in return for all the benefits the state has provided for us.
(3)
Second response: He would have tried to minimize the impact of the argument by demonstrating that even if he believed the argument to be sound and accepted the conclusion, it would not follow that he has reason to escape prison. The conclusion of the argument is as follows: ‘Therefore, you may harmlessly escape in selfdefence from state officials who are unjustly trying to kill you.’ In response to this conclusion, Socrates would say, ‘Even if I accept this conclusion, and the argument leading up to it, I would have reason to escape in self-defence only if my escape would be harmless. Yet my escape would be harmful rather than harmless. Therefore, the argument is irrelevant to my predicament.’ ‘Tell me, Socrates, what do you have in mind to do? By attempting this deed, aren’t you planning to do nothing other than destroy us, the laws, and the whole city, as much as you can? Or does it seem possible to you that any city where the verdicts reached have no force but are made powerless and corrupted by private citizens could continue to exist and not have been overthrown?’ [50b] Objection to Socrates’s second response: It is not at all obvious that a single prisoner’s escape would have any destructive effect on the laws and institutions of society at all.