Plato’s Crito and the Common Good

What is it about?

I am concerned here with the grounds for the authority that the personified Laws of Athens claim for themselves in Plato's Crito. In the second half of the dialogue Socrates portrays them as convincing him that he should not escape from prison although he would thereby avoid suffering an undeserved yet duly rendered sentence of death. Accounts of the Crito generally do not come to grips with the full force of the first half of the speech given by the Laws (50a-51c).1 I take this to be the key to resolving three intertwined issues in the interpretation of the theory that Socrates allows the Laws to present. These are the questions (i) why law has the authority it does (in other words, what is it in virtue of which law as such, with its power to punish disobedience, can be considered as just?); (ii) how law is harmed by disobedience, and (iii) how the Laws can expect that Socrates should be motivated to act justly in tbis case.

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