The Conditional Acquittal:
On a Supposed Contradiction in Plato’s Apology and Crito
Ben Blanks, Lynchburg College
(Editor’s note: This essay by Ben Blanks is the winner of the North Award for the best paper in the 2012 Agora. Ben presented an earlier version of this paper at the ACTC Student Conference at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, in March, 2011.)
When reading the Apology and the Crito of Plato, one inevitably comes upon a seeming fundamental contradiction between the two dialogues. The Apology presents readers with a defiant Socrates who declares in his trial that, if acquitted on the condition that he never philosophize again, he would continue to practice philosophy in spite of the jury’s order to the contrary:
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Rather, it clears the debate considerably. If the Apology passage is shown to have been made in defiance of an illegal court procedure, then the Apology passage cannot be taken as evidence of Socratic support of civil disobedience. Such evidence, coupled with the obedience to law proscribed in the Crito, allows the supposed contradiction between the two dialogues to be dismissed.
In order to analyze the Apology and the Crito in relation to each other, one must first make an assumption that has not been proven to any significant extent. One must assume that the Socrates character within the two dialogues is both consistent and trustworthy in espousing philosophical arguments. By accepting this assumption, one can evaluate the inconsistencies within the two Socratic dialogues as if they were a complete, consistent whole. Following such an assumption, one can examine the philosophy in the Apology in relation to that within the Crito with logical bearing.
In order to understand the seeming contradiction between the two works, one must understand the passages on which it is based. The defiance passage of the Apology, when interpreted literally, does indeed seem to contradict the obedience to the state espoused in the
3 Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Plato’s Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 145- 146.
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Crito. In the passage, Socrates declares that, if given a choice between obeying the
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In Plato’s The Republic and The Apology, the topic of justice is examined from multiple angles in an attempt to discover what justice is, as well as why living a just life is desirable. Plato, writing through Socrates, identifies in The Republic what he thought justice was through the creation of an ideal city and an ideal soul. Both the ideal city and the ideal soul have three components which, when all are acting harmoniously, create what Socrates considers to be justice. Before he outlines this city and soul, he listens to the arguments of three men who hold popular ideas of the period. These men act to legitimize Socrates’ arguments because he finds logical errors in all of their opinions. In The Apology, a different, more down-to-Earth, Socrates is presented who, through his self-defense in court, reveals a different, even contradictory, view of the justice presented in The Republic. In this paper, the full argument of justice from The Republic will be examined, as well as the possible inconsistencies between The Republic and The Apology.
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In Plato’s works Apology and Crito there is an attempt by Socrates to defend himself in court and defend his choice to receive the death penalty when found guilty. Although he makes very valid and strong arguments throughout one can only wonder why such a wise person would choose death over life. The following essay will analyze three quotes from Apology and Crito, find the correlation between them, and reveal any flaws that may exsist inside these arguments made by Socrates.
The Apology Written By Plato, is a detailed account of the trial of Socrates, who was a great philosopher in Athens. Socrates was brought to trial based on charges of “corrupting the youth” and “not believing in the gods” (23d). The people of Athens believed Socrates was corrupting the youth because they simply did not understand his method of inquiry, which consisted of Socrates teaching them to question what they thought to be true. Socrates’ method of inquiry drove his listeners to question their beliefs and often brought them to a state of puzzlement, or a state Plato calls ‘aporia.’ There are many examples of the Socratic method present in The Meno, which is also written by Plato. The entirety of The Apology consists of Socrates