Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

one thing, the thinking is part of the fun.

Chapter 2 What should I do? Plato’s Crito
Plato, who was born in or around 427 bc and died in 347, was not the first important philosopher of ancient Greek civilization, but he is the first from whom a substantial body of complete works has come down to us. In the Indian tradition the Vedas, and many of the Upanishads, are earlier; but of their authors, and how they were composed, we know next to nothing. The Buddha pre-dated Plato, though by just how much is a matter of scholarly disagreement; but the earliest surviving accounts of his life and thought were written down some hundreds of years after his death. In China, Confucius also pre-dated Plato (he was born in the middle of the previous century); again, we have nothing known to have been written by him—the famous Analects are a later compilation.
Plato’s works all take the form of dialogues. Mostly they are quick-fire dialogues, conversational in style, though sometimes the protagonists are allowed to make extended speeches. There are two dozen or so of these known to be by Plato, and a handful more that may be. Of the certainly authentic group two are much longer than the others, and better thought of as books consisting of sequences of dialogues. (They are Republic and Laws, both devoted to the search for the ideal political constitution.) So there is plenty of Plato to read, and most of it is fairly easy to obtain, in translation in relatively inexpensive editions. As regards degree of difficulty, the range is wide. At one end we have a number of dialogues comparable to the one we shall shortly be taking a close look at. At the other are works like The Sophist, capable at times of making the most experienced readers scratch their heads and look blank.
A near constant feature of Plato’s dialogues is the presence of Socrates, usually though not always as the leader of the discussion. Since the dialogue called Crito is not only conducted by Socrates but also concerns what he, personally, should do in a certain predicament in which he finds himself, we need to know a little about him and how he got into the situation he is in when the dialogue opens—namely in prison in Athens awaiting imminent execution.
Socrates lived from 469 to 399 bc. He was clearly a charismatic figure, with a somewhat eccentric lifestyle. Accepting the poverty it entailed, he appears to have spent all his time in unpaid discussion with whoever would join with him, which included many of the better-off, hence more leisured, young men of Athens. These included Plato, whose admiration for Socrates motivated the career and writings which immortalized both of them.
Not all our evidence about Socrates’ thought comes to us through Plato, but by far the greater part of it does, so it is no easy matter to distinguish clearly between their views. Little doubt that Plato was sometimes trying to portray the historical Socrates; little doubt that he was sometimes using the figure of Socrates as a literary device to convey his own philosophy. Where to draw the line isn’t always obvious, but scholars seem now broadly agreed that the real Socrates concentrated on ethical questions about justice and virtue (‘How should I live?’ is sometimes called ‘the Socratic question’); and that he constantly probed whether his fellow Athenians really understood what was involved in these matters anything like as well as they claimed to. Nor was he always sure that he understood it himself—but then he didn’t claim to.
2. Not everyone was as impressed by Socrates as Plato was. In The Clouds, by his contemporary Aristophanes, he appears as a self-important eccentric who spends his time dangling in a basket (so as to be in a better position for studying celestial phenomena).
That sounds like a pretty reliable way of making enemies, so this account of Socrates’ activities fits in well enough with the next episode: three citizens, surely acting as the public tip of a hostile iceberg, brought a prosecution against him on a charge of corrupting the youth of Athens. By a small majority he was found guilty, and condemned to death. In The Apology of Socrates you can read Plato’s version of the (totally unapologetic) speeches he made at his trial, one in his own defence, one after the verdict, one after the sentence.
Socrates was not executed straight away. At the time of his trial a ceremonial period was beginning, which would end only when an official ship returned to Athens from the island of Delos. This had religious significance, and no executions could take place while the ship was away. So Socrates had to spend this time in prison—long enough for his friends to set up a routine of visiting him, get to know the guards, and form a plan of action. With time running out, it falls to Crito to put this plan to Socrates: they propose to bribe the guards, Socrates can escape from Athens and go somewhere else, maybe to Thessaly, where Crito has friends who will offer hospitality and protection.
The dialogue Crito is Plato’s account of their discussion and Socrates’ response. Considering that this text is 2,400 years old, one of the most surprising things about it is that it is not more surprising. You may not agree with everything Socrates says—for instance, many readers will feel that his view of the claims that the State can properly make on the individual are exaggerated—but virtually all the points made will be perfectly familiar to anyone who has ever had to think about a difficult decision. When Plato writes about love we are aware that his perspective differs from ours; when we read him on cosmology we are back in a completely different age; but this discussion of a specific ethical question, ‘What should I do in this case?’, could almost have occurred yesterday. I said in Chapter 1 that we were