Rethink.

I am not using the Greek, nor am I look­ing at Plato’s Euthy­de­mus, where Crito is a major fig­ure. The pur­pose of this series of entries is to make good on oblig­a­tions, and pro­vide a brief sketch from which the thought­ful reader can explore more on his own. Noth­ing below is really my thought, nor should I be held account­able for it.

If you want to fol­low along, the Crito is not a long dia­logue — it’s about 10 pages — and I’m sum­ma­riz­ing as I com­ment. The dia­logue occurs between the time Socrates has been found guilty of impi­ety and cor­rupt­ing the youth (Apol­ogy), and is about to be put to death (Phaedo). Here’s a link to the trans­la­tion along­side the Greek.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

1. 43a: Socrates won­ders what Crito is doing in his cell at such an early hour. It’s almost a polite way of say­ing “Why on earth are you here?” Crito doesn’t help his case by admit­ting the time is “just before dawn,” nor by say­ing that he’s been watch­ing Socrates sleeping.

Nei­ther of those issues — Crito’s ear­li­ness or strange atten­tive­ness — are the main issue of this dia­logue, though. They’re not irrel­e­vant, but the real issue is what Crito did to get in the cell: he bribed/blackmailed a guard in some way (h/t Steve Thoma­son). It is that vio­la­tion of the law, for an osten­si­bly just pur­pose, that is Socrates’ and our concern.

2. 43b: Crito says he’s sleep­less and depressed, and that he enjoys won­der­ing about Socrates, who seems to be tak­ing his present mis­for­tune rather calmly. Socrates is in a most “pleas­ant” state, and this is per­haps the clue to Crito’s char­ac­ter we need.

Some men are moti­vated by beauty, oth­ers by jus­tice, still oth­ers by the truth. But what if some­one just wants to get by and not be mis­er­able? What if some­one wants the secu­rity afforded by the mod­ern state only — an avoid­ance of pain more than any­thing else, the feel­ing that one is doing one’s best within lim­its? In striv­ing for beauty, or jus­tice, or the Good one typ­i­cally ends up chal­leng­ing any num­ber of norms. The teach­ing Socrates ulti­mately pushes on Crito, how­ever, is “Obey the law no mat­ter what.”

3. 43b-c: Socrates says it would be weird if he were scared of death at his age; Crito responds that lots of old men would gripe in Socrates’ posi­tion. We have to won­der, now that Socrates has won­dered at Crito in his cham­ber, and Crito has won­dered about Socrates sleep­ing pleas­antly — why is Crito more seem­ingly attuned to the prob­lem of injus­tice than Socrates himself?

4. 43c: Crito tells Socrates that the ship whose arrival ends a reli­gious hol­i­day allow­ing Socrates to be put to death will arrive that day. While say­ing this, he makes it sound like HIS grief mat­ters more than any­thing Socrates might be considering.

Any­one who has par­ents is famil­iar with the char­ac­ter of Crito. It’s not that our par­ents don’t love us. It’s that love of one’s own, when cou­pled with a “I don’t ask for much, I just want to get by” atti­tude doesn’t really take into account how oth­ers feel. It takes into account how one­self feels, and then projects “the best” from there. There is an enor­mous self-centeredness in ask­ing for less, in appear­ing to be gen­er­ous in this way. No mat­ter how much one gives, no mat­ter how lit­tle one asks for, secu­rity is the one thing that can never be guar­an­teed. The world is char­ac­ter­ized by fail­ure and death. Hence the mod­ern state does not hes­i­tate in advanc­ing the sci­ences, so both of those prob­lems can be elim­i­nated as soon as pos­si­ble. Platonic/Aristotlean thought is char­ac­ter­ized by mod­er­a­tion, which is inti­mately tied with virtue and self-knowledge: the idea is to make the most out of the finite with­out mak­ing insa­tiable demands.

5. 44a-b: Socrates claims he had a dream while Crito was watch­ing him. In the dream a beau­ti­ful woman in white robes said he would go to the “pleas­ant land of Phthia” on the third day. He says that this means Crito is wrong, that the ship won’t land today and Socrates will be exe­cuted tomor­row, but that the ship will take one more day and Socrates will be exe­cuted the next. He insists to Crito this dream makes per­fect sense.

Why does it make “per­fect sense?” Con­sider what we’ve been toy­ing with — what Crito’s char­ac­ter may be, why exactly he should obey the law given his char­ac­ter and how he can be exhorted to. The woman talks about pleas­ant­ness, some­thing that Crito has men­tioned before. She ref­er­ences Illiad 9:636, where Achilles pro­fesses a long­ing to be rid of the Acheans and the injus­tice towards him they rep­re­sent and go to Phthia, where he has stuff already.

The key is that while Socrates doesn’t per­suade Crito, he is mak­ing an appeal to piety here — he’s implic­itly say­ing his calm comes from the gods. Now he knows this is not going to per­suade: he’s been with Crito enough to know how prac­ti­cal Crito is, and heck, Crito has laid out an emi­nently prac­ti­cal argu­ment for watch­ing Socrates sleep. Can some­one be happy with their lot in this life, and leave it at that?

The thing is, Crito pro­fessed an admi­ra­tion for such, but he’s sleep­less and mopey him­self. Does he really have the char­ac­ter to be beyond the super­sti­tious piety Socrates has raised?

• An Intro­duc­tion to the Pol­i­tics of Phi­los­o­phy, Part 2: Plato’s Crito, 44c — 45b
• An Intro­duc­tion to the Pol­i­tics of Phi­los­o­phy, Part 3: On Plato’s Crito, 45c-46a
• An Intro­duc­tion to the Pol­i­tics of Phi­los­o­phy, Part 4: On Plato’s Crito, 46b-47a
• An Intro­duc­tion to the Pol­i­tics of Phi­los­o­phy, Part 5: On Plato’s Crito, 47a-50a
• An Intro­duc­tion to the Pol­i­tics of Phi­los­o­phy, Part Final: On Plato’s Crito, The Per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Laws, 50a onward

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plu­gin.