Socrates on Obedience and Justice

University of Utah

Western Political Science Association

Socrates on Obedience and JusticeAuthor(s): Curtis JohnsonSource: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 719-740Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/448733 .

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SOCRATES ON OBEDIENCE AND JUSTICE CURTIS JOHNSON

Lewis and Clark College

here is an old problem, discussions going back at least to Grote, for students of Plato's earliest dialogues. It concerns an alleged discrepancy in Socrates' attitude toward civil obedience. In the

Crito Socrates appears to take a hard line: the just man must always obey what the city commands of him (unless it commands him to commit an injustice), even if it commands him unjustly to go to his death.' But in other works, notably the Apology of Socrates (henceforth Apology), Socrates openly admits that he has on occasion disobeyed the city, and states that he would do so again if the city commanded him to cease the pursuit of philosophy (29c7ff.). Can Socrates consistently have it both ways? (Dis- cussions include Grote 1875: I, 302-04; Adkins 1960: 263-64; A. Barker 1977: 13-28; Dybikowski 1974: 519-35; Friedlinder 1964: vol. 2, 176; Greenberg 1965: 45-82; Maier 1913: 409; Martin 1970: 21-38; Romilly 1971: 130; Taylor 1936: 168; Wasserstrom 1975: 358-84; and Young 1974: 24 n. 18).2

In certain recent studies this old problem has been transformed. Now the Crito too is taken to be a defense of sorts of civil disobedience (most recently Kraut 1984; cf. Allen 1980: 86, 109-13; E. Barker 1918: 123; Murphey 1974: 17; Santas 1979: 26; Vlastos 1974: 530-34; Wade 1971: 324; Woozley 1971: 307-08; and 1979: 28-40)." Yet, while helpful for the old problem, this reading creates a new one: if Socrates was defending civil disobedience in the Crito, why did he not escape? Generally defenders of this reading of the Crito try to show that civil disobedience requires

Received: July 13, 1989 First Revision Received: January 8, 1990 Second Revision Received: February 13, 1990 Accepted for Publication: February 16, 1990 1In the Crito (50c), the Laws do not contest Socrates implied assertion that he has been

wronged by the jury. Rather, they shift the terms of the discussion, as if to suggest that the rightness or wrongness of the verdict is not relevant to the question of whether Socrates may rightfully escape. Cf. Cr. 49 c12-14, where Socrates offers the principle that "one ought never to requite wrong with wrong."

2 Grote (1875: I, 302-4), argued that the Crito was a deliberate attempt by Plato to clear Socrates of the reputation, derived from the Apology, of being disloyal to Athens and its duly constituted authorities.

3 Hobbes' judgment, that Socrates was an anarchist, presumably refers to the Socrates of the Apology; it is difficult to imagine any support for this position in the Crito no matter how construed.



720 The Western Political Quarterly

that certain conditions be met and that Socrates failed to meet them. They also argue that if Socrates had met the conditions, or at least believed that he had met them, he would have been able justifiably to escape. The Crito on this reading then becomes useful for establishing Socrates as an important progenitor of a civil disobedience tradition of political thought.

The aim of this essay is to reexamine what may with warrant be claimed as Socrates' contribution to the theory and practice of civil disobedience, based on a careful reading of the "Socratic" dialogues of Plato. It is possible to show, I believe: (1) that Socrates himself had little, if any, interest in the question of whether civil disobedience (by which I mean here nothing more than disobedience to the city) can be justified; (2) that his own conduct and words separate Socrates sharply from modern civil disobedience figures like Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Ghandi, and others; and (3) that, in spite of the above, civil disobedience theory may still trace a debt to Socrates for his insistence that the city be able to give an account of itself. Socrates, in short, was a dutiful servant of the city; but his duty was based upon reasoned dialogue rather than upon blind submission. Socrates took a small but important first step in the direction of Walden Pond and the Birmingham Jail.

It would be impossible to bring within a small compass all of the ideas that may be placed under the rubric of civil disobedience theory. There appear to be, however, certain indispensable minimum requirements. First and foremost is the idea, as implied in the name itself, that a citizen may justifiably disobey the city and its laws under certain specifi- able conditions. These conditions, further, seem invariably to center in the idea that the city (state authority generally or any specific organ or institution of the state) has given unjust commands. The grounds for disobedience then become the injustice of the commands. Finally, an invari- able feature of civil disobedience theory is that the citizen decides whether the city's commands are unjust. She may decide by appealing to other authorities, or to a "higher law," or to conscience simply, or perhaps in other ways; but ultimately the citizen and not the city decides about the justice of what the city commands (cf. Walzer 1970: 10ff.).4

In what follows I shall be in the main concerned to examine the prin- ciples that govern Socrates' relations to civil authority. Those relations are marked by certain complexities, to be sure. But his way of conceiving of and describing those relations does not square well with the civil disobe-

4 Thoreau (in Somerville and Santoni 1963: 282ff.) particularly emphasizes the sovereignty of individual conscience in determining when disobedience is justified, though the same idea is implicit in Ghandi and King, Jr. as well.



Socrates on Obedience and Justice 721

dience position outlined above. In particular, if one may ever justifiably disobey the city - and I believe even this statement needs to be qualified in the case of Socrates - one may not do so by reference to the injustice of the city's commands. It is even doubtful whether Socrates would fully agree that the citizen rather than the city must decide whether what the city has commanded is unjust.

I. THE "SOCRATIC" DIALOGUES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION

In this essay I wish to defend the view that the Apology and the Crito are mutually consistent with respect to what they say about the citizen's duty to obey: both are, pace Hobbes and many others since him, fairly strict. They are mutually consistent, in other words, not because the Crito carries a covert disobedience message, but rather because the Apology does not. At times Socrates does indeed disobey the city and its commands; but he does not and would not defend disobedience as such. Rather when he disobeys he does so incidentally, as an almost accidental consequence of his obedience to some other authority. Socrates' conduct stands in sharp contrast to the conduct of a Thoreau or a Ghandi or a King, Jr. (even if they regard him as a kindred spirit): these men disobeyed the city, and defended disobeying it, on the grounds that the city commanded them to do something unjust. For Socrates disobedience to the city on these grounds is not conceivable, because for him obedience to the commands of the city (and to other authorities) is precisely what it means to be just. The just person is the one who obeys.5

I am guided in what follows by certain methodological assumptions about the Platonic corpus. First, I take the Apology and the Crito to be relatively early works of Plato and, as such, to be relatively faithful to the historical Socrates (Guthrie 1975: 41ff.). Along the same lines, I assume that it is desirable whenever possible to find consistency of philosophic doctrine within the "Socratic" parts of the corpus. When, therefore, two "Socratic" dialogues (in this case Apology and Crito) appear superficially to be saying different or contrary things about a philosophical issue (in this

5 Is 'justice is obedience" the whole of Socratic justice, or a part only? That it cannot be the whole seems evident from the consideration that in the Crito Socrates and the Laws agree that Socrates has been the victim of injustice; but they do not mean by this that he had been disobeyed. Closer to their meaning is that he had been "wronged" (as they say themselves). But Socrates nowhere gives any indication of how he himself, as a citizen of Athens, might have performed an unjust act other than by disobeying some authority. I tentatively conclude that for Socrates the citizen obedience is the whole of justice; whereas for the city (and other wielders of authority), justice includes obedience (the rulers too must obey the gods, for example, if they are to be just) but extends beyond this to "treating well" those over whom they exercise authority (e.g., rendering verdicts that are fair, and the like).




case, the citizen's obligation to obey his city), one ought first to attempt to reconcile the two by appealing to deeper levels of meaning or other expe- dients; only if every plausible attempt at such reconciliation fails would one conclude that Socrates held conflicting or incompatible beliefs. That is, one wishes to retain the philosophical unity of Socrates' beliefs when possible.

One assumes also, however, that Socrates - at least the Socrates of Plato's dialogues- matched his words to his audience. What he (or the Laws, with whom he agrees) says to a Crito about obedience, therefore, might not be exactly what he says to a large Athenian jury (Young 1974; Strauss 1983: 56 ff., esp. 62). But let us not exaggerate this point. One can agree that Socrates tailored his talk to his audience without drawing the conclusion that he was thereby bound to make inconsistent or contra- dictory assertions to different audiences. Of course Socrates was a ques- tioner more than an asserter, and I do not rule out the possibility that his questions at times caused his interlocutors to assent to propositions to which Socrates himself would not assent (Robinson 1953: 7-19; Johnson 1989: 196ff.). But when one finds Socrates assenting to propositions, then I take it that he really does believe what he says and that he is not merely saying something for the sake of winning the agreement of a particular audience.

But it is necessary to qualify here. Socrates was a notoriously ironic speaker, perhaps nowhere more so than in the Apology itself. If irony is a form of dissimulation or untruthfulness (Strauss 1964: 51; Robinson 1953: 8-9) then one is constantly coming up against the possibility that a given assertion of Socrates states something other than what he himself actually believes. Moreover, because of what irony is, it is extremely difficult to know in any given instance whether or not he is being ironical. Indeed, students of the dialogues often disagree in particular cases, and the art of interpretation seems often to be reduced at best to a question of an interpreter's intuitive feeling. I know of no easy solution for this difficulty. Generally I have taken the approach that statements made by Socrates repeatedly, in different dialogues and contexts, are "authentic," reflecting Socrates' true beliefs (as, e.g., one ought never commit an injustice); whereas statements that either do not square well with Socrates' usual positions, or whose context suggests irony, ought to be treated with caution. These are admittedly imprecise interpretive guidelines, but it is hard to know how else to proceed. At least to be aware of the problem is a beginning.

There is also the problem of Socrates' "ignorance." He is generally reluctant to "give answers" to moral questions; what he knows about "the highest matters" is only that he does not know much about them, that his knowledge is of little value (Ap. 21b ff.; cf. also Laches 200e; Meno 70b-71b;




Phaedo 64c ff.; Theaet. 149; 157 c; 161 b). In this essay I am particularly concerned with what Socrates took "justice" to mean since, as I show, this has a direct bearing on the obedience question. Yet neither in the Apology and Crito nor in the other dialogues generally taken to be "Socratic" does one find a "definition" of justice - an answer to a "what is justice?" question - that is endorsed by Socrates.6 Is it possible to speak with confidence about Socrates' understanding of justice in the absence of reliable and explicit testimony from him about what it means?

Socrates evidently believed that knowledge is not strictly necessary to morally correct conduct; that it is possible, in other words, to be just (for example) without necessarily possessing knowledge of justice. It is sufficient, for morally correct conduct to occur, for one to have "true opinion" only, not complete knowledge (Meno 96d-97c; cf. also Symp. 202 a; also Theaetetus 187 aff.). If this is so, then one learns a great deal, if not everything, about Socrates' views about justice by looking to his conduct, and above all to how he interpreted his conduct. For it is beyond doubt that Socrates took his own conduct to be morally correct, to be just, and that he never knowingly committed an injustice (Ap. 26a; 28c; 32d; Crito 49d). Where his words alone fail to bring into focus a particular conception of Socratic justice, then, we may be warranted in looking to his life - his actions - for guidance on this question. This will be especially true if his conduct, wherever the virtue of justice is involved, reveals unmistakable patterns and regularities.

Finally I should like to emphasize that I am here concerned only with Socrates' own claims and beliefs. I do not propose to examine the "hidden implications" of what he said or believed, even if questions of that sort hold an interest for some. More plainly, it may be possible to discover a logically implicit disobedience doctrine in Socrates' thought. But if he himself did not discover this doctrine, then the relevant conclusion for this essay must be that, as far as Socrates is concerned, no such doctrine exists.

II. SOCRATIC DEEDS: THE APOLOGY

What is it "to be just" for Socrates? This is a difficult question to answer for we do not have a "Socratic" definition of justice. His actions, on the other hand, reveal that the virtue of justice was strongly linked in his own mind to obedience to authority. To persuade the jury that he has

6 Republic Book I may appear to furnish an exception. But even if one accepts this as gen- uinely "Socratic," it is, like many other early dialogues, purely aporetic - showing the difficulties in others' opinions about what justice is without arriving at a positive Socratic teaching.




lived a just life he repeatedly and consistently focuses on aspects of his past behavior involving obedience; justice involves a proper relation to authority, almost without exception (cf. note 5).

What, though, is the proper relation to authority? A first look appears to show inconsistency. At times he claims that the just thing to do is to obey the rulers of the city, as when he was ordered to fight in the battles of Amphipolis, Delium, and Potidaea (Ap. 28e). At other times he found such blind obedience to the rulers and their commands unjust, as when he refused to participate in the trial of the ten admirals (Ap. 32b), or again when he refused to participate in the arrest of Leon the Salaminian (Ap. 32c). He plainly tells the jury that if it were to release him on the condition that he cease practicing philosophy, he would disobey that order (Ap. 29d; 37e).

The evident inconsistency is of course only apparent. Many scholars have pointed to the fact of "competing duties" and a "priority of obligations" to account for Socrates' wavering attitude toward political authority (Wade 1971: 320; Woozley 1979: 80; Santas 1979: 38; Vlastos 1974: 530). When- ever he disobeyed a particular authority he did so only, and in every case, because the command of that authority had been interdicted by a "higher" authority. This higher authority is usually "the god," but sometimes it is something else. For example, the decision to disobey the order of the council to try the ten admirals as a group was evidently based on the fact that such a command was prohibited by Athenian law, not by "the god" (Ap. 32b-c). Similarly, when the Thirty Tyrants ordered the arrest of Leon, Socrates disobeyed because the command of the government was illegal, and he may well have regarded the whole regime as illegally constituted.7 In each case one may trace Socrates' decision to an underlying conviction about one's duty to obey some authority, and in each case it is the "highest" authority that speaks on the issue.8

"To be just," then, is very nearly identical in meaning for Socrates to "to obey one's superior." We must qualify this statement in the following ways: (1) if there is only a single authority or superior with a claim on his obedience issuing commands to Socrates, he must obey that authority; (2) if more than a single superior is issuing commands, and the commands of one contradict the commands of another, he must obey that authority he takes to be higher (beltion); (3) Socrates recognizes several authorities that

Woozley (1971): 306) argues that Socrates could disobey the Thirty because men, not laws, were commanding him and their command was unjust. At Ap. 32c8-10 Socrates refers to acts of the Thirty as "acts of defiling" (pleistous anaplesai aition). See note 9.

8 I use "duty to obey" and "obligation to obey" synonymously; Woozley's distinction between the two is I think overly refined (in Vlastos 1971: 313ff.).




all may make legitimate commands and that therefore may expect him to

obey; and further, he recognizes a natural hierarchy among them, so that certain authorities have an inherently greater claim to his obedience than others; (4) in the Apology we may identify the following hierarchy, in

descending order: Socrates' divine guide (his daimonion), "the god," other

gods (in no particular order of importance), humans who are "superior" (beltion), perhaps in a moral sense, the laws of Athens, legally constituted

political bodies which are legally empowered to make commands (e.g., juries, the council, various magistrates).9 The just man must obey all of these when he is commanded; if a higher authority interdicts a lower the

just man must obey the higher. Above all we find no reason for thinking Socrates would ever countenance disobedience to any authority in the absence of an interdiction by a higher authority, and even then the act of disobedience as such would not be defended. One would disobey as an inciden- tal requirement to obeying the superior authority.10

But while justice is obedience to authority, it would be wrong to say that just acts are just because the authorities command them (just as, in the

Euthyphro, the reason that pious acts are pious is not because the gods love

them). But it would also be incorrect to say that the authorities command certain acts because they are just. As to the latter Socrates believes (and will be joined by the personified Laws in the Crito in this belief) that authorities may command acts that are unjust and that such commands must still be obeyed by a just person (50b ff.). To say that obeying author-

ity is just is to say only that if the authorities command certain acts, it is

just to obey. We are not told by Socrates in the Apology or elsewhere why this is what justice means. The Apology permits us to infer what justice meant in important ways to Socrates but not why he took it to mean one

thing rather than something else. The difficult cases in Socrates' own life concern those commands of a

lower authority that have been interdicted by a higher authority, particularly religious authority. The first possibility, one which is mentioned only in the Euthyphro and only as a possibility, is that different divinities might

9 Socrates speaks of his obedience to his daimonion at Ap. 31d; 40a; 41d (here called his semelon, or sign); his obedience to "the god" is mentioned at Ap. 23b; 29a; 29c; 30a; 38a; to his "superiors" at Ap. 29c and, implicitly, at Crito 47d; to legally constituted authorities at Ap. 28d; 32c; and at Crito 50b-c. Cp. the hierarchy of authority described by Wade (1971: 323). In the Crito 46b 6-7 Socrates observes that above all he must obey "the best argument" (to logo hos an moi logizomeno beltistos phainetai); see below.

10 Again the contrast to modern civil disobedience figures like King, Jr. and Ghandi cannot be too greatly emphasized; for the latter what is being defended is precisely the act of disobedience to the state as such. Disobedience is not something which merely hap- pens to happen; it is the deliberate object of conduct, precisely chosen to express the disobeyer's dissatisfaction with state authority.




give conflicting commands. What is the obligation of a just person in this situation? One wishes to obey "the higher," but the gods of Homeric leg- end often had their own conflicting views about the heavenly pecking order. I1

Beyond that, and of greater practical significance in Socrates' own life, is that his own theological views were unusual by contemporary Athe- nian standards. Apart from the fact that he was accused of impiety in the indictment against him,12 Socrates believed that the word given to his friend Chaerephon by the Delphic oracle (that no one was wiser than Socrates) was a personal command to him to "pursue philosophy" as he understood it.13 Issuing as it did from the supreme oracle of Greece this command was obviously to play a decisive role in Socrates' life; nearly all other commands of any authority whatever would be forced to give way before this command.14

Beyond his presumed personal relation with the Delphic god Socrates was accompanied by a divine voice, a daimonion as he usually called it.15

This is one of the lessons of the Euthyphro. Euthyphro had preferred a definition of piety as "what pleases the gods," only to be forced to admit that what is pleasing to some gods may well be displeasing to others-leading his definition into paradox (9c). Cf. Price 1985: 144-50.

12 The actual indictment as summarized by Socrates accuses him of corrupting the youth, not believing in the gods the state believes in, and believing in other new spiritual beings (24b8-cl). Although "impiety" is not mentioned by name it is obviously sug- gested. Cf. 35dl, where Socrates says he has been brought to trial for impiety (asebeia). The charge against Socrates of atheism, judging from his explicit statements in the Apology and in many other dialogues, appears to be unfounded, even concerning the traditional Homeric deities; cf. esp. Ap. 26e and Phaedrus 229c-30d; also Easterling and Muir 1985: 207-9.

13 The evidence from the Apology is that the Pythia told Chaerophon "no one is wiser than Socrates." This is not a command, and becomes one only through a most imaginative interpretation. Socrates himself seems to have been responsible for this interpretation ("I began to reflect: what can the god mean by this riddle?" at Ap. 21b), but the Pythia's answer generally required some interpretation. What matters, though, is only that Socrates took it to be a command of the god Apollo that he pursue philosophy, however he may have arrived at that understanding. At Ap. 33c5-9 Socrates says that he had been instructed to pursue philosophy repeatedly, in dreams, by oracles, and in other ways.

14 This is the most expedient way to explain Socrates' assertion in Apology that he would disobey the jury if it were to release him on the condition that he give up philosophy. The jury's order, whether one calls it a command or, with Woozley (1979), a "warning" of what would happen if he were to disobey (i.e. a conditional command, 44-46), is overridden by the command of the god; since the latter is known by Socrates at the time of his trial he has no trouble predicting what his behavior would be if the conditional became an actual order.

15 This daimonion must be distinguished from "the god" which commanded Socrates to pursue philosophy; for we know from Socrates' explicit testimony that the divine voice only prevented him from undertaking a course of action that he might be considering;




This too was in the habit of giving him commands: it "holds me back from what I am thinking of doing, but never urges me forward" (Ap. 31d4-5). The commands of this authority were known only to Socrates since it was his own personal voice, although he has made no effort to conceal the existence of the daimonion itself from others (31c7-9). Socrates in fact believes that the charges against him were prompted in part by his

loyalty to the voice. The voice presents a twofold difficulty for Socrates: it raises public suspicions about his piety, and it at times was capable of

counseling, or in any event tacitly endorsing, disobedience to specific commands of earthly authority.16 There is little doubt that if the voice ever did

urge disobedience (i.e., held Socrates back from obeying) to a particular law or command Socrates would have heeded the voice and disobeyed the law or command.

Socrates' understanding of justice in the Apology tends to a rather authoritarian conception of the citizen's relation to the city: obedience to the reigning authorities, disobedience only when an inferior authority is interdicted by a superior. Superior authorities do at times speak to Socr- ates, as is particularly true in the case of the Delphic deity. But this fact

by itself does not provide generous grounds for civil disobedience. Every- thing depends for Socrates on whether a superior authority has been heard to countermand a lower. It is especially important to note in this connection that one does not "invoke" higher authority, but rather "hears" it. On the basis of the Apology alone he heard the call in such a way as to over- ride his commitment to lower authorities only occasionally: in his imper- ative to pursue philosophy, in one or two decisions to disobey specific earthly commands, but never else. The weight of his testimony and behavior confirm the citizen in his obligation to obey the city and its laws.

There is an apparent exception to this strict standard in the Apology which I shall only mention here, postponing a discussion of it to the next section of this essay. After informing the jury that the "only thing" to consider in deciding how to act is whether or not "the things he does are

just or unjust," Socrates immediately turns to the Homeric heros, especially to "the son of Thetis" (i.e., Achilleus) for confirmation of this principle. Achilleus, he observed, had no other concern in determining to

avenge the death of his friend (the "just thing" in this context) than to

its role, though extending "even to trivial matters", is presented by him as wholly negative. "The god", by contrast, issued a positive injunction: pursue philosophy. Cf. Strauss (1983: 46), who summarizes the points of contrast.

16 Perhaps Socrates' divine voice was responsible for his disobedience to the order of the Thirty to arrest Leon and for other acts of disobedience to the city, although the text does not furnish support for this view. At a minimum the sign did not oppose his decisions to disobey, and so at least tacitly supported these decisions.




avoid living in disgrace: "For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth; wherever a man stations himself, thinking it is best to be there, or is stationed by his commander, there he must, as it seems to me, remain and run the risks, considering neither death nor any other thing more than disgrace." A man may, it seems, not only be stationed by a commander; he may also "station himself." This is an admitted chink in the hard armor of strict obedience that we have seen to this point. The question is whether a suf- ficiently wide opening is hereby provided for the thin edge of the Hobbesian suspicion that Socrates is really an anarchist. The Crito helps furnish an answer.

III. SOCRATIC WORDS: THE Crito

After he is condemned to death by the Athenian jury, Socrates is still willing to entertain discussion about whether it is just to abide by an unjust verdict; is Socrates' obedience to the jury the just course of action? It cannot escape comment at the outset that he does stay and die. He tells Crito that he will act in this way because "it is the way the God leads us" (54e1-2); and he implies that it is also what reason (the logos) commands (especially 45b5-7; also 48c8ff.). Finally, the Laws themselves, who become in the Crito the mouthpiece of the logos, advance several arguments (which I shall examine more closely at a later point) all pointing to the rightness of Socrates' remaining to die. From all appearances Socrates remains in prison to die because he has been so ordered (by the jury, the Laws, the God, and the logos), and because he takes obedience to these authorities to be the conduct of a just man.

That there is a convergence of authorities in this case obviates certain difficulties. One need not worry, for example, as some commentators do, whether Socrates' action is seen as obedience to the laws of Athens or to the jury that condemned him. In this case both laws and jury command the same thing, or at least the laws do not interdict or countermand what the jury has commanded, and the jury has acted legally (e.g., Murphy 1974: 28-29; cf. Allen 1980: 81 ff.; Woozley 1971: 304-5; Woozley 1979: 57).17

Nor does it touch the question of Socrates' obedience that the verdict of the court "wronged" (kakos poiein: 49c9) Socrates, or that it was itself unjust (a point readily conceded by the Laws: 50cl-6). For, in the first

17 Strictly speaking, Socrates sees himself as obeying the laws when he remains in prison, specifically the law commanding that jury verdicts are binding (50c). But what the jury commanded and what the law commanded amounted to the same consequence: he must stay and die. He did not seem to recognize a distinction between substantive and procedural justice, and even if he had he would have discovered no release from his obligation to obey in it.




place, since Socrates regards his obligation in this case as one owed to the laws (and not to the jury), the fact that a particular jury may have wronged him does not diminish his obligation to the laws. (There is no reason to think that Socrates regarded this particular law--the one that makes verdicts binding-as a bad or unjust law; indeed, what evidence there is points the other way, that he regarded it as a good law; cf. Allen 1980: 95; Strauss 1983: 63).18 But beyond that, and more decisively, it is a basic Socratic maxim that one ought never return a wrong for a wrong or an injustice for an injustice (e.g., 54c). Disobedience to the law or to the jury cannot then be justified solely by appeal to the fact that one has been wronged by them.

Even if it is granted that in this case Socrates stays and dies because he has been commanded to, is it not still possible that under other circum- stances Socrates may have been justified (may have felt himself to be justified) in disobeying a verdict of this kind? Is the mere fact that a command (verdict) has been given a sufficient reason to abide by it, at least as far as the arguments of the Crito are concerned?

Many scholars (see page 719) have concluded that it is not. Even though in this case Socrates obeys the verdict, he tacitly outlines conditions (in the guise of the speech of the personified Laws) that would enable or force him to disobey a legally rendered verdict in some other (hypothet- ical) case or cases. The case assumes some such form as the following. The Laws inform Socrates that he must obey (1) because disobeying this law would be "to destroy the city for his part," and this one ought not to do (the "Argument from Injury"); (2) because he has agreed to obey this law (and other laws) by manifest signs, and, his agreements being just, he is obliged to keep them (the "Argument from Agreements"); and (3) because he has been nurtured and raised by the laws, as by his parents, and so owes them the same kind of filial obedience he owes to his parents (the "Argument from Piety") (Martin 1970). It is then argued that each of these reasons for obedience (or some of them, or at least one of them) may be read as implying conditions for obedience which happen to be fulfilled in this case but which might not be, and when not, would justify disobedience.

What are the implied conditions? The condition implied in the argument from Injury is that if disobedience to the laws or to a particular law would not destroy or contribute to the destruction of the city then disobe-

18 It may be noted that, while he does criticize one law (the one limiting the trial of capital cases to a single day, Ap. 37 a7-bl), Socrates never urges its defectiveness as a basis for disobeying it or any other law. Contrast both Thoreau and King, Jr., for whom it is precisely the injustice of a law that explains why it may (or must) be disobeyed.




dience would at least not be prohibited on these grounds; if one had a good reason for disobeying a law, and no destructive consequence would result from disobeying it, then one might (or possibly must) disobey that law. The condition implied in the argument from Agreements is that if the agreements are not just, or if one has not had adequate opportunity to do otherwise than enter into them (e.g., as one would not if one were forced or tricked or rushed), then the agreements are not binding and one may legitimately disobey what one earlier had agreed to obey. The condition implied in the argument from Piety is that obedience is limited in part by the age of the child (is s/he an adult?), and in part by the persuade- or-obey doctrine (obey us, say the Laws, or persuade us where justice lies) (Kraut 1984: 90, 100-101; Walzer 1970: Ch. 4; Strauss 1983: 62-63).

Socrates does not escape. Assuming that the Laws do intend to suggest conditions under which he might justifiably escape, his failure to do so can only mean that he believed the conditions did not apply to his own case. For another man, or for the same man in another situation, the conditions might apply, and when they do, escape becomes justified by reference to those (or that, if only one) conditions. This is the sort of argument that is sometimes brought forward to explain what the Laws really mean in the Crito.

Much might be said (and much has been said) concerning this whole approach to the Crito (see especially page 719). I shall limit myself here to noting several awkward interpretive difficulties that the foregoing interpretation is bound to encounter. First, much is being inferred here ab silentio: why do not the Laws state a case for disobedience more plainly and overtly? Second, if the Laws are making a case for disobedience, even if an oblique one, their case is extremely weak in a variety of ways; this is conceded even by the defenders of the disobedience interpretation. It takes a peculiar and strained form of reasoning to get it to add up to an argument for obedience in this case. Third, when disobedience is made to depend upon difficult judgments as to when it may lead to the destruction of the city, when it involves breaking just agreements, and when it is akin to dishonoring one's parents - and when it is not these things - it opens up a great deal of leeway for disobedience on spurious grounds, particularly to those less attentive than Socrates was to the finer points of logic and argumentation.

I do not suggest that Socrates is never willing to disobey any earthly command. He tells Crito that he must follow the logos wherever it leads; and in the Apology, as we have seen, he will obey the god or his voice even if this means disobeying the city. Everything depends upon what authorities are commanding. In the Crito the Laws, the logos, and the god all, in effect, command the same thing: that Socrates must abide by the verdict




of the jury. It is possible in principle for these authorities to have been in disagreement, and I shall consider below how Socrates might then have acted. The point here, however, is that even if they did disagree - even if, for example, logos forbade what the Laws commanded, or the other way around--there is still no theory of disobedience in the Crito. Socrates and Crito are not debating, as do Thoreau, King, Jr., and Ghandi, when one may justifiably disobey. They are answering the quite different question: why must the just citizen obey his city? The Crito offers us a theory of obedience, not one of disobedience,not even implicitly. The guiding principle in this theory is that, in the absence of specific vocalized commands to the contrary by superior authorities, one obeys the city.19

The Laws, it seems to me, are best read as making a simple point: if one is tolerably satisfied with one's city one must obey it. There are some cities, such as Athens, which are more generous than others; they give citizens the opportunity to persuade it that its commands are unjust. It does this by allowing accused citizens the opportunity to argue against the accusation in a court of one's peers, to show the court "where justice really lies." But whether this opportunity does or does not exist the real question is one of overall satisfaction. The view of the Laws is that anyone who remains in the city willingly is showing enough satisfaction to be presumed to have made an agreement to obey it, and this is virtually everyone. People who are so dissatisfied as to go into voluntary exile are no longer citizens of the city they have left, and so have no obligation to that city. But anyone who stays is by that fact obliged to obey.

The rest of the speech of the Laws does not alter the basic case. Rather it shows that what is true of citizens in general is especially true of Socrates; if other citizens who are satisfied enough to remain in their cities are thereby obliged to obey, Socrates is especially so. But they do not hint that if Socrates were less satisfied he would be less obliged. Satisfac- tion permits of degrees; obligation does not. Since the Laws tie obligation to level of satisfaction there is a temptation to suppose that as satisfaction decreases so too does obligation. But this is true only when dissatisfaction becomes so great that one leaves the city. Up to that point one remains obliged. The Laws simply want to remind Socrates how far from that level of dissatisfaction he has been. But everything they say is consistent with the proposition that he would have remained obliged even if his level of satisfaction had diminished considerably.

19 Crito is best seen as trying to get Socrates to "do the noble and manly thing" (Strauss), viz., to escape; he is not urging him to disobey as such. Socrates engages Crito on a deeper conceptual level, to be sure; but his (or rather the Laws') discussion is aimed at showing why obedience even to an unjust command is just, not why disobedience is sometimes just. The contrast with a Thoreau or a Ghandi is again quite striking.




The language of the Laws is in fact quite explicit on this point. After

reminding Socrates that they do not "stand in the way" of a citizen who wishes to leave and that they do not "stop him from going wherever he wishes, keeping what he owns," they add: "But whoever of you stays behind, seeing the way in which we decide our cases in court and the other ways in which we manage our city, we say that he has thereby by his act of staying agreed with us that he will do what we command of him" (51 e, emphasis supplied)." The citizen who stays is taken to have agreed to

obey. 20 So much the better if those citizens have additional liberties and if the Laws are kinder and more generous than in other cities; but this is bonus. The greater liberty of the Athenian citizen and the greater gener- osity of his Laws to the citizen do not place a condition of obedience on the citizen where it otherwise would not lie. Rather, they simply take

away certain grounds for complaint that a citizen might have about what the Laws expect of him. Obedience for those who choose to stay will be

required by the Laws in any city at any time in any place; this is the nature of cities and their Laws.21

In short, the Laws furnish Socrates with arguments--logoi--for why he must obey the city, not conditions under which he might disobey. I do not say that the arguments are good necessarily; nor is it necessarily the case that, in accepting these arguments as decisive for his conduct Socr- ates reasoned wisely. Both of these points are open to debate (cf. Kraut 1984: 26 and n. 2 and 133-34; Woozley 1971: 315; Santas 1979: 37; Martin 1970: 25-6; Dybikowski 1974: 524).22 I am only saying that, whatever the merits of the arguments, Socrates states that he accepts them as authoritative for his own conduct. I venture to go no further, but I believe

20 Vlastos (1974: 526-27) argues that merely staying in a city does not signify agreement to obey for there may be many other reasons for remaining besides satisfaction with the laws. I believe that this misses Socrates' point. The motive for staying may well be something other than satisfaction with the laws; but if one does stay, for whatever reason, one may still be taken by that act to have agreed to obey.

21 I agree with Woozley (1979: 93) that the Laws' case is weak here; it is implausible to assume that people who stay in their cities are by staying implying that they agree to obey.

22 The argument from Injury is especially weak, which I believe is the consensus view among Plato's interpreters. The basic problem is that a single act of disobedience by a single person seems hardly to constitute a threat to the safety of the city; Socrates is a victim here of a version of the generalization fallacy. But whether he reasoned rightly or wrongly is beside the point; by accepting the arguments of the Laws Socrates thereby signified his belief that disobedience is wrong. A. Barker (1977: 13-28) argues convincingly that Socrates rejects escape primarily upon non-consequentialist grounds, even if the Laws are concerned with the consequences of disobedience to the city; cp. Rep. II. Cf. Johnson (1984) for a discussion of a similar commission of the generalization error by Socrates in Book I of the Republic.




to have gone this far renders vain the search for a disobedience doctrine in the Crito.23

IV. DISOBEDIENCE IN THE APOLOGY AND CRITO

Behind the rather strict standard of obedience found in the arguments of the Laws one finds in the Crito a deeper Socratic allegiance, to the logos itself. "I am," he tells Crito, "not only now but always a man who

obeys (peithesthai) nothing but the reasoning (to logo) which on consideration (logizomeno) seems to me best" (46b5-7). The one who will act justly will pay no heed to the views (doxaz) of the many; to follow these opinions is to yield to the ignorant, and to bring evil (kakos) and harm (diaphthora) to what is most important in us (47cff.). Socrates will yield only to the argument, to what truth (aletheia) itself would say. He is willing to be refuted by Crito (or anyone else), "but only if you can contradict (antilege) anything I say" (48d10-11). The logos, or at least one's grasp of it, may change, and if it does change, Socrates must follow wherever it leads; but it does not change merely as a consequence of a change in one's circum- stances (Strauss 1983: 57-58). Ultimately the argument, the logos, must determine what Socrates will do; it is the final authority.24

23 A word about the persuade-or-obey doctrine. Kraut (1984), 11, finds in it a "wide scope for disobedience," but that is an exaggeration. The Laws tell Socrates that he must obey or else persuade the city "where justice really lies." I believe they are making a very non-controversial assertion about how capital cases are tried at Athens: the defendant may try to persuade the jury that he is innocent ("where justice really lies"), and if he succeeds, he goes free. He is not forced to obey a penalty because none is meted out in this case. If he does not succeed he must obey. Socrates tried to persuade the jury, but the jury (or a majority) remained unconvinced. What the Laws do not make clear is whether obligation to obey a verdict requires that a defendant be given the opportunity to persuade: does the Crito recognize something like due process of law? It is hard to know for the Laws are simply silent on this point, though one suspects the smuggling of a modern prejudice into an ancient text if one reads the speech of the Laws in this way. Cf. Woozley 1979: 32ff.; Strauss 1983: 62-63.

24 A complication arises here: at Crito 47e Socrates and Crito agree that life is not worth living when "that (evidently referring to the psyche) is ruined which is injured by the wrong and improved by the right." In other words, the soul and not the logos may be taken from this and other passages (e.g., 49d; Ap. 36b-c) to be the final standard of justice and so of conduct. And since the soul is a private and inward standard the question of civil disobedience becomes more complicated (King's appeal to "human dignity" comes to mind, for example). One could even say, for that matter, that logos itself is a private and inward authority. I can only note here that Socrates himself never heard any authority, civic or otherwise, command that he not care for his soul, so that he was never obliged to disobey any authority on these grounds. Further, he never appears to have contemplated the possibility that such a command might be given, so that he does not speculate about the consequences. Indeed, to care for one's soul evidently includes (though is probably not limited to) obeying the authorities whose commands one hears. Again I shall avoid speculating about the "hidden implications"




This is the Socrates with whom we are more familiar and, with certain notorious exceptions such as Hobbes and Nietzsche, the one with whom we are more comfortable. Obedience to logos is still obedience; but it is no longer blind. It is now an obedience that implies a constant neces-

sity to question the rightness of every facet of a life, including the rightness of obeying every other authority. One recalls in this connection that

passage of the Apology in which Socrates implicitly compares himself with Achilleus (28b5ff. and above pp. 727-28). Achilleus was not assigned to his station - he did not remain to fight and die in the fulfillment of duty to someone else. Rather, he chose his station,his duty was self-imposed. So too, Socrates may be saying here, he (Socrates) has chosen his own station, not the station of "pursuing philosophy," which we know to have been assigned to him by the god (28e5-8), and confirmed in dreams and oracles (33c5ff.), but conceiving of and pursuing it in his own particular and novel way. For it is safe to say, I think, that philosophy for Socrates was nothing other than the pursuit of the logos itself, "talking (dialegomenou) and examining myself and others about virtue and the other

things" (Ap. 38a2-3).25 Is the logos, or obedience to it, potentially subversive to the authority

of the city or to any other authority? The Crito hints that it is, or at any event that it may be. For, while one must obey the logos, there is no know-

ing in advance what it will command. Its commands await inspection of what it has to say, whereas the commands of other authorities are heard; the obedient citizen/subject does not participate in the latter, except to

obey them. There is, in other words, a way in which logos is not an external

authority, as are, say, the Laws, or the god, or apparently even the daimonion. As much as Socrates objectifies logos- speaks of it as though it is entirely independent of his own mental processes, as something out there to be grasped, still it is ultimately an inner authority.26 It requires the use

of Socrates' thought. As to the inward and private nature of logos as the standard of obedience, see note 26.

25 Strauss assimilates this passage of the Apology to the passage in which Socrates invokes Achilleus. In both, Strauss argues, Socrates implicitly places philosophy on a dual foundation: obedience to the command of the god, and obedience to the requirements of the station to which one has assigned oneself.

26 Socrates often refers to the logos as a kind of power external to himself and which holds sway over him: e.g., Soph. 235clff., Phil 29a; 66cff.; Euthyd. 292eff.; Gorg. 482blff.; Phaedr. 260d2ff.; etc.; and cp. Theaet. 173cff. One could argue that logos is nevertheless an inward authority, and that as such it undermines the idea of justice as obedience to an external authority (see n. 24). But: (1) it is again important to distinguish between what Socrates believes and what others may find to be implied in his thought; (2) logos is not a private standard for Socrates because he believes anyone who looks at the matter with sufficient care will find the same logos; (3) to the extent that logos ever




of one's own critical faculty to grasp it, and it can only be articulated by one who has mastered it in this way. It is through one's own lips that it delivers its commands. It requires not the passive acceptance of those it rules but their active cooperation in deciding just what it will command.

We are, then, forced to look into what logos commands Socrates. Look- ing first to the Apology, we find the logos nearly silent. It performs a vital role in his defense, to be sure; for after all the defense is itself a logos, an extended speech. Much is made by Socrates about his manner of speaking and how his speech differs from that of the law-courts and the orators (esp. 17a-18a). But the speech does not command him, apart from the very general injunction to "speak the truth" (legein ton talethe); and he does not represent himself on any occasion as obeying the speech (or following the argument), except in just this way, to speak the truth.

When Socrates obeys, or speaks of obeying any authority in the Apol- ogy, it is always an external authority - a commander or the laws of the city or the god or the daimonion--and nothing else (cf. Part I above). His truth has been, as a principle of action, to obey whatever his commander has ordered, where "commander" is understood as an external authority. The weakness of the comparison to Achilleus is underscored in his own words immediately after he invokes it: "I should have done a terrible thing," he says, "if, . . . when the god gave me a station . . . with orders to spend my life in philosophy and in examining myself and others, I were to desert my post through fear of death or anything else" (28dl 1ff.). Unlike Achilleus, who did station himself, Socrates was stationed by the god.

At best, then, the logos only confirms what some external authority has already commanded, at least as far as the Apology is concerned. The sole possible exception to this rule concerns the manner in which Socrates came to understand the philosophic mission itself, the station to which he had been assigned by the god. Strictly speaking we know only that the god (or, rather, the oracle speaking for the god), told his friend Chaerephon that "no one is wiser than Socrates" (21a8-10). Socrates took this to mean that he should "pursue philosophy." One could debate whether the inference was warranted; but at least he is clear that this is how he understood the god to have commanded him, adding later that the "command" had been reaffirmed "through oracles and dreams and in every way in which any man was ever commanded by divine power to do anything" (33c5ff.).

But was Socrates told how to pursue philosophy? There is much that distinguishes the Socratic manner of philosophizing from that of

commands Socrates, it commands him to obey other external authorities; he never dis- covers in it a defense of disobedience to any authority.




"philosophical" inquiry prior to him. But for the Socrates of the early dialogues what appears to be most distinctive about "philosophy" is the elenchus, or cross-examination (Ap. 29c7ff.; 30 e6 if.; cf. Robinson 1953: Ch. 2). In a sense this was his own discovery; no one is known to have

practiced his particular form of cross-examination prior to him. It seems evident, too, that the practice of the elenchus requires the full play of Socratic logos. Indeed, each examination is an examination of nothing else than the words and arguments - the logoi--of his interlocutors; and each is carried out in the form of an exchange with the words and arguments of Socrates.

Yet the Apology furnishes slim evidence--or rather none at all- that the logos commanded Socrates to pursue philosophy in this way. Repeat- edly Socrates points instead to the god as the source of the command: "when the god gave me a station, as I believed and understood, with orders to spend my life in philosophy and in examining myself and others"

(28e5-8; emphasis added); or again: "I shall obey the god rather than

you, and while I live and am able to continue I shall never give up philosophy or stop exhorting you and pointing out the truth . . . " (29d2-5); or again: "I think the god fastened me upon the city (as a gadfly)", etc.

(30e3ff.). If philosophy is the exercise of speech and argument in the examination of self and others, Socrates pursues it in this way at the behest not of logos but of the god.

Are matters any different in the Crito? I believe that in certain ways they are. Two differences in particular need to be noted. On the one hand, the role of logos as the ultimate arbiter of moral decisions, as the

highest authority to be heeded, is more explicitly prominent: "I am not

only now but always a man who follows nothing but the reason (to logo) which on consideration seems to me best" (46b5-7), he says to Crito. There is no mention here of the god; it is the argument alone that he "reveres and honors" (46c1-3). There is no trace of Socratic irony in this assertion, nor can one easily assume that he says this for Crito's sake without firmly believing it himself.

On the other hand, however, the logos in the Crito appears to point much more unequivocally than any argument in the Apology to the absolute

necessity of the just person to obey the authority of the city. Within the limits of the persuade-or-obey doctrine, one must obey unfailingly. Nei- ther the Laws, nor the god, nor the logos itself, leave any room for doubt; one finds in the Crito a remarkable convergence of authorities about the

duty to obey the city and its laws. We are thus confronted with an irony: the logos, which among authorities might be the most promising source of a justification for disobedience to the city, becomes in the Crito the oppo- site of this, confirming the citizen's duty to obey; while in the Apology,




where the voice of the logos as the source of specific commands to Socrates is muted, one finds a disobedient Socrates who makes no effort to ground (justify) his disobedience in words and arguments. In short, when Socr- ates disobeys the city he makes no appeal to, and receives no warrant from, the logos; and conversely, where he does appeal to logos he receives from this high authority explicit instruction to obey and no warrant for disobedience.

But for all this, I see no fundamental difference in Socrates' orienta- tion to authority, civic or otherwise, between the two dialogues. In both cases he is seen to be essentially obedient to authority. In the Apology one recalls that his acts of disobedience are not properly acts of "disobedience" at all. Rather they are simply and directly consequences of his obedience to "superior" authorities; he literally cannot obey the latter without disobeying the former. The logos, assuming that he consulted it when making important decisions, must be taken to have confirmed the rightness of his decisions. One assumes, in other words, that the Socrates of the Apol- ogy was as loyal to the logos as the Socrates of the Crito, and that, as much as in the Crito, it affirmed the duty of the just man to obey his superior.

In the Crito, similarly, Socrates knows only obedience. The Laws (an authority of a fairly high order) confirm what the jury (a lower but by no means insignificant authority) has commanded: Socrates must remain and die. In addition, no other authority interdicts, and we have already observed that Socrates has no notion of "invoking" or "appealing to" higher authorities in search of release from duty. The god is silent through nearly the whole of the dialogue, appearing only in the final sentence, where it confirms the judgment that has already been reached. The authority of the logos has, as we have seen, not been insignificant; it has directed Socrates to seek the opinion of the "one true expert" and to ignore the opinions of the many (47a9-13; 47cl-48al 1). But the only "expert" to advise Socr- ates on the question of escape in the Crito is "the Laws." Ironically, they only confirm what "the many" (the jury) has commanded. Socrates, in short, remains in prison and dies because that is what he has been ordered to do, by the Laws, the jury, the god, the logos itself. In the absence of interdiction by a "superior" (and it is hard to know what superior could have stood against so formidable an array of authority) no escape was possible.

CONCLUSION

It might still be argued that Socrates, by insisting upon a justification for obedience, showed the way to a disobedience doctrine. Socrates, in other words, might at least be credited with breaking the iron grip of blind




obedience to civic (or any other) authority. To expect (or deserve) obedience to itself a city and its laws must be prepared to give a reasoned account of why they should be obeyed; and they must be prepared to be contradicted by a superior logos, if one should present itself. If they cannot meet the contradiction, if the disobedient citizen is able to present the superior argument, then (by virtue of Socrates' insistence upon the sovereignty of logos over all other authority) the city and its laws may justifiably be disobeyed, and in fact must be disobeyed by the just person.

I believe that some such view as this captures well the way in which a disobedience tradition may with warrant trace a debt to Socrates. Socr- ates himself, however, did not discover a disobedience argument that he regarded as superior to the arguments for obedience. In fact there is no evidence that he ever examined arguments supporting disobedience per se. Strictly speaking, his own logos (if one can speak of different logoi belonging to different people) is simply silent about whether to obey the jury. The Laws do speak to the question, but everything they say supports the requirement of obedience. Even if one takes the arguments of the Laws to be Socrates' own views, placed by him in the mouth of "the Laws" in order more easily to persuade Crito, one still finds here no hint of a case for justifiable disobedience. The Laws are concerned solely with prov- ing that escape, and disobedience generally, are wrong.

In short, the just citizen must, as a rule, obey the city; indeed, in Socratic usage, to be just is largely, if not wholly, a matter of obeying. The obligation is not absolute. The commands of the city at times com- pete with the commands of other authorities, and when these, if "superior" to the city, interdict its commands, one obeys the latter, the superior. One may, further, demand that the city be able to explain why one ought to obey, to furnish, that is, a reasoned account of why obedience is required. If the city fails to satisfy this demand, the inference may be drawn that the requirement of obedience fails as well. Socrates himself does not draw this inference explicitly; it is at best implicit in what he does say. The logos may have been Socrates' sovereign master; but it appears never to have interfered with his obligation to other masters. When it spoke to him on this question, its own command was an unequivocal "obey."

A great deal of modern civil disobedience theory sees the question differently. Here the duty of the just citizen is to disobey the city when the city's commands are unjust. That is to say, there is in much of recent civil disobedience literature no argument, much less insistence, that to be just means to obey the city. Justice is now typically situated outside the city and its commands, constituting an independent standard according to which the commands of the city may be evaluated as to their justice. When by this standard (whether it is a higher law, or a principle of




human dignity, or the beliefs of an honest conscience, or something else) the city has issued an unjust command, justice is to disobey the city, and further to defend disobedience as the just course of action. The qualifica- tion is crucial. One does not simply disobey: even Socrates could do that. One makes disobedience the deliberate and chosen aim of one's action because of the conviction that the city's command is unjust. Disobedience in that way with that justification is a type of action that Socrates at least

appears never to have contemplated.

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Socrates on Obedience and Justice

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