Free Crito Response Essay Sample

The soul of this dialogue is the debate between justice and injustice. This is one of Plato’s smallest dialogues and consequently is quite terse – it has a fairly simple structure with only two people involved in the whole dialogue – Socrates and Crito. Crito was one of Socrates’ more wealthy admirers; he had arranged for Socrates to escape prison and go into exile. The ensuing dialogue is built around Crito’s arguments for Socrates’ escape and Socrates’ rebuttal of them.
Crito argued that, in staying behind, Socrates was aiding his enemies in committing a wrong and, consequently, committing a wrong himself. Socrates responds by stating that public opinion and esteem mean nothing – one must be guided by ‘expert advice’ and wisdom. In other words, he (Socrates) would leave with Crito if he could prove that the act of escaping was just. For this argument they used the basic premise that it is never permissible to be unjust and certainly not to be unjust in response to an injustice. Through the whole dialogue, there is never any question as to whether or not the laws of Athens themselves are just or unjust – Socrates only says that they are a unified whole and to brake one of them is to brake them all.
Moreover, Socrates compared the relationship between a city and a citizen to a parent and child, or a master and a slave. Therefore Socrates, who had lived in and benefitted from Athens was now obliged to follow the laws of Athens – to brake them would be unjust and do harm to the city. From these arguments, it can be seen that Socrates has an underlying sense of moral unity. Much like the arguments he used in the Meno, Socrates constantly looked for unity and homogeneity. From this, it can be argued that justice is not just because it is transcendentally or morally so, it is just because it is homogeneous and unchanging. Therefore, Socrates’ argument, though not entirely convincing, has an allure to it because of its elegance (through terseness and homogeneity).