Conflicting Values in Plato's Crito by Verity Harte My paper has two aims. The first is to challenge the widespread assump- tion that the personified Laws of Athens, whom Socrates gives voice to du- ring the second half of the Crito express Socrates' own views. 1 (By "So- crates" I shall always mean Plato's Socrates, not the historical Socrates.) I shall argue that the principles which the Laws espouse not only differ from those which Socrates sets out in his own person within the dialogue, but are in fact in conflict with Socrates' stated principles. This view has the consequence that no-one in the Crito spells out Socrates' own reasons for refusing Crito's urgent appeal that he escape from prison. If the personified Laws do not do so, nobody does. But it might be thought that the goal of the dialogue, the Crito, is to do just this: to show why Socrates did not escape. Hence the second aim of my paper, which is to give an alternative account of what the dialogue does instead. First, then, let me set out the case for taking the arguments of the Laws to be in conflict with the principles which Socrates states in his own per- son. 1 This assumption motivates the entire volume of literature addressed to the ap- parent conflict between Socrates' attitude to obedience to law in the Apology and that of the Laws in the Crito, since the apparent conflict is worrying only if both attitudes are Socrates' own. For a representative sample of works which make this assumption, see Allen (1980), Bostock (1990), Kraut (1984), Vlastos (1991) ch. 7 and (1994) ch. 4, and Woozley (1979). Exceptions include: Bentley (1996), Calvert (1987), Jones (unpubl.), Lane (1998), Miller (1996), and Young (1974). In general, those who depart from the assumed consensus between Socrates and the Laws take the Laws to add something to what Socrates says in his own person, but to depart from strictly Socratic argumentation for the pur- poses of persuading Crito. I too think that the Laws' arguments have special significance for Crito, but in a different way. And I shall go further than most in identifying genuine conflicts between the arguments of the Laws and those of Socrates, and in making these conflicts central to what the dialogue is about. Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 81. Bd. f S. 117-147 © Walter de Gruyter 1999 ISSN 0003-9101 Brought to you by | University of Tennessee Knoxville Authenticated | 160.36.192.221 Download Date | 8/18/13 1:44 AM