Crito

Crito is a short dialogue by Plato, written in the early part of his output and very close in content to the Apology. It is set in a prison cell in Athens, shortly after Socrates has been sentenced to death by the court, and recounts a conversation between the philosopher and his old friend Crito of Alopece, a wealthy man who has come to propose an escape that would save Socrates' life. The scene is set in 399 BC, at a time of considerable unease in Athens: the restored democracy was still fragile after decades of war, plague, constitutional upheaval and the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, and the city was also marked by a climate of relativism fostered by the sophists.

Unlike many of Plato's other dialogues, the Crito does not seek a general definition of a concept or refute a thesis, but rather aims to reach a definitive decision about life and death. Crito offers several reasons in favour of escape: the irreparable loss of a friend, the damaging reputation that would fall on those who failed to save him, the abandonment of his children, and the urgency of the moment. Socrates replies that he should not be guided by the opinion of the majority, but by that of the one who has knowledge, much as one trusts a physician over an athlete's supporters, and that the only thing that matters is whether the action is just, not whether it is convenient or shameful. From this he concludes that one must never do wrong, not even in return for an earlier wrong.

The heart of the dialogue is the so-called prosopopoeia of the Laws: Socrates imagines the laws of Athens speaking to him directly, reminding him that the city gave him life, education and the framework in which he lived, and that he accepted its rules throughout his existence. To flee, they argue, would be to destroy them and to act like a fugitive who has lost his integrity, whereas accepting the sentence is the way to remain just.

The text has been read as one of the earliest formulations of the idea of the social contract and as a defence of obedience to the law, although its interpretation remains contested. For centuries it was little known in the West, until Renaissance humanism recovered it through Latin translations and Greek editions, and since then it has been debated between those who see in it a plea for unconditional obedience and those who find an affirmation of the individual's moral consistency in the face of power.