Commentary on Nicholas Sars, ‘From Polis to Self: A Reinterpretation of Plato’s Crito’
Willie Costello
The main thrust behind Nick’s original and thought-provoking paper is his refutation of
what is a (if not the) predominant reading of Plato’s Crito: the reading that sees the
dialogue as putting forth a sort of incipient contractarian account of our obligation to
obey the law. On this conventional interpretation, Plato is taken to be arguing that our
obligation to be law-abiding is based on an agreement we have made, which thus allows the
view to be naturally associated with the social contract theories of the early modern era.
However, as Nick shows in the first section of his paper, this association is tangential at
best, for the agreement at issue in the Crito is not between Socrates and any other member
or members of the polis (as social contract theorists would have it) but between Socrates
and the laws themselves, which is a far cry from contractarianism as we know it. The
evidence in favor of Nick’s position here is strong, and practically indisputable, and so,
regardless of whatever historical influence the Crito might have had on thinkers such as
Hobbes or Locke, I think we must agree with Nick that the dialogue’s actual
philosophical content has little relation to their social contract theories.
In the second section of his paper, Nick goes on to offer an alternative,
“subjectivist” interpretation of the Crito, in place of the now debunked contractarian
reading. Nick’s central idea is that we should understand Socrates’ obligation to obey the
law as an obligation from piety, arising out of Socrates’ own process of reasoning: since
Socrates has himself come to the conclusion that what is divine is just, he thereby is
obligated to obey the divine laws of Athens. I, however, am skeptical of this reading.
Certainly, such an appeal to piety and its linkage with justice is consonant with the tenor
of Socratic (or rather, early Platonic) philosophy, and so it is not implausible that such
features should be found in the Crito. Yet it seems to me that Nick’s interpretation requires
a bit too much to be read into the dialogue, when in fact a less interpolative reading is
available—a reading which I think, in addition, more appropriately responds to Nick’s
rightful rejection of the contractarian interpretation.
Let me elaborate: At heart, I think both Nick’s interpretation and the standard
contractarian reading suffer from a shared underlying—and uncritical—assumption: the
assumption that the Crito is meant to provide an account of the source of our obligation to
obey the law. That is, both of these readings see Plato as engaged in a metaethical dispute of
what grounds our obligation to be law-abiding. Thus the contractarians find, in the
dialogue’s appeal to an agreement, the idea that this obligation is based on a social contract.
Nick, in turn, after showing this reading to be unfounded, finds, in the dialogue’s appeal
to piety, the idea that the obligation is based on the subject’s own process of reasoning.
This interpretation is by all means more faithful to Plato’s text, yet it still sets out to
answer the same question as before. And as I see it, this conventional way of approaching
the dialogue is itself misguided, and what Nick’s refutation of the standard reading
actually helps us see is that the contractarian not merely reaches the wrong conclusion,
but is in fact asking the wrong question. That is, the metaethical question of the basis of
our obligation to obey the law is of no concern to Plato in the Crito, and thus not the
proper focus of any interpretation of the work.
This much is, I think, made painfully clear in the middle section of the dialogue,
when Plato has Socrates go over his philosophical tenets that (a) we must always do what’s
just and good, no matter what the majority may think about us (48a-b), and that (b) “one
must never in any way do wrong willingly,” even if in retaliation after being mistreated
(49a-e). Strikingly, Plato does not have Socrates actually argue for these principles; rather,
he simply states them to Crito’s nodding approval. That is, our obligation and duty to do
what’s right and avoid doing what’s wrong is taken as a given, or at least not a matter for
present debate. Just actions are simply, by their very nature, such as to obligate us to do
them.
In this way, the Crito neatly passes over the issue of why obedience to the law is
obligatory and instead focuses solely on showing that it’s obligatory. And to demonstrate
this, as we have now seen, all Plato need do is show that such obedience is just. This is
made abundantly clear in Socrates’ remark in the middle of the dialogue that “the only
valid consideration [as to whether we should bribe the guards and escape from prison] …
is whether we should be acting rightly in [doing so] … or whether in truth we shall do
wrong in doing all this” (48c-d). This, I take it, is an explicit statement of what the
dialogue is attempting to argue, and it makes clear that there is nothing metaethical to its
concerns; rather, its focus is on whether or not Socrates’ obedience to the law is in fact
obligatory, and not on what makes it so.
Socrates’ subsequent discussion of his agreement with the laws is thus meant to
show not that this agreement is the basis of his obligation to obey, but merely that
obeying is the right thing to do, as the agreement itself is just. And this is demonstrated by
simply stating the conditions of the agreement, precisely as Socrates does, detailing the
many ways the city has provided for him throughout his life, his freeness to leave the city
at any time should he see fit, and his opportunity to persuade the laws otherwise should
he ever disagree with their actions.
In summary, then, I think the proper way to read the Crito is not as a response to
certain metaethical anxieties about the basis of our obligation to obey the law, but rather
as an answer to the question of whether or not our agreement with the laws is just. Once
this question is answered, no further questions need be addressed (at least as far as the
Crito is concerned), for this is, as Socrates says, “the only valid consideration” as to what
we are obligated to do. Both the standard contractarian reading and Nick’s subjectivist
interpretation seem to me to miss this point and, as a result, end up saying too much.
That being said, I do not intend these comments as a decisive blow against Nick’s
position, which is in the end not far from my own, and undoubtedly much better than the
standard interpretation. Our difference is, I think, more a matter of emphasis, and I am
eager to hear Nick’s own thoughts on the criticism I’ve raised.
In closing, I would like to bring up one final issue, which will hopefully serve as a
topic for further discussion in the Q&A to follow. One of the guiding questions of this
conference is: What influence do our affective ties to one another have on our social,
political, and ethical obligations? On both Nick’s and my interpretations, the answer for
Plato would seem to be, ‘Not much’, as we agree that the relation at issue in this dialogue
is between Socrates and the laws themselves, not with any group of his citizens. Yet one
should not be too hasty in accepting this conclusion, for although the Crito makes clear
that our feelings toward one another do not play any constitutive role in grounding our
political obligations, this is still compatible with their playing a just-as-important enabling
role in bringing these obligations into view. Indeed, I think we find this sort of account
elsewhere in Plato. In the Symposium, for example, it is our erotic love and desire for
another human (or more specifically, another human body) that starts us on our upward
progression toward the Form of the Beautiful (which, of course, is wholly independent of
our desires). And somewhat closer to the present topic, in the Republic’s quasimythological account of the origin of the state, the polis (and ultimately, the kallipolis) is
said to arise from a small society of people coming together so as to make up for their
individual insufficiencies. Thus it does not seem out of place to wonder what role our
“social bonds” have in relation to our obligation to obey the law, despite what else the
Crito has to say about this obligation, and I look forward to hearing Nick’s and your own
thoughts on this and other issues in our following discussion.