Socrates and the State (review)

Book Reviews Richard Kraut. Socrates and the State. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xii + 338. $2o.oo. Professor Kraut raises two issues connected with Plato's Crito. First, what "political theory" does Socrates adopt when, having been sentenced to death by the city of Athens, he refuses to escape from jail? This issue includes whether Socrates' evident authoritarianism in the Cr/to is consistent with his willingness in the Apology of Socrates to disobey the law for the sake of philosophy. Kraut maintains that it is. Socrates' authoritarianism, he finds, is not absolute, but tempered by an awareness that he does not yet possess an adequate definition of moral virtue. Second, then, what is Socrates's general political orientation in the "early dialogues "? For example, is Socrates ultimately opposed to Athenian democracy? Does he consider himself a moral expert? To both these latter questions, Kraut answers no. Socrates is rather ambivalent: "on the one hand, he values the liberty provided by his native city; on the other, he thinks that the many cannot rule well" (231) . As for construing a "political theory" which would justify Socrates' not escaping, Kraut picks two incomplete but complementary strands from the text of the Laws' imaginary harangue of Socrates (Crito 5oa8-54 d 1): Socrates must obey the laws because as a citizen he is their child (5odl-5~c3), and Socrates must obey the laws because as a citizen he has implicidy agreed to do so (5ocl-6). Neither notion is fully persuasive (143ff., t9off. ), though Kraut finds both together intuitively plausible. The analogy of cities to parents gives laws no more right than parents to demand obedience in all cases--though this shortcoming is overcome where a citizen has already agreed to obey. Even so, agreement may well include the proviso that a citizen may disobey if he persuades the city that a particular demand is unjust-hence laws need an additional, nonrevocable warrant for obedience, here supplied by the parent-city analogy. Since Kraut's construction is admittedly not logically compelling, what favors its presumption? Surely not Plato's drama: Kraut ignores much recent literature on the connection between philosophy and drama in the Cr/to) and only offers a few unsupE . g., Drew A. Hyland, "Why Plato Wrote Dialogues," Philosophyand Rhetoric I (x968): 3550 ; Frederick Rosen, "Obligation and Friendship in Plato's Crito,"PoliticalTheory i 0973): 3o716 ; Martin D. Yaffe, "Civil Disobedience and the Opinion of the Many: Plato's Cr/to," The Modern Schoolman 54 (1976-77): 123-36; Leo Strauss, "On Plato's Apology of Socratesand Crito," in Essaysin Honor ofJacob Klein (Annapolis, Md.: St. John's College Press, a976), 155-7o; and, most recently, Thomas Payne, "The Crito as a Mythological Mime," Interpretation I l 0983): x23 • [1.13] l 74 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 2 4" 1 JANUARY 1981 ported suggestions of his own in passing (4of.). Instead he aims to rebut the strict au thoritarian reading of the Laws' speech (by Grote et al.) in favor of a "liberal reading inspired by John Locke (11o, with pp. 6f., 54ff., lo8ff., 158ff.). Socrates's notion of im plicit agreement appears to anticipate Locke's, except that Kraut does not see why Sc crates derives agreement from citizens but not from visitors and resident aliens (16of?~ However, perhaps Kraut's Locke overlooks something which Plato's Socrates does not regarding the philosophical issue of the proper scope and limits of political authority. B giving the Laws apparendy unchecked authority over Socrates simply as citizen, Platq does not necesarily "suggest that their political philosophy [sic]... can serve as a publi charter that a city and its citizens can appeal to in dealing with each other" (40). Dramati cally speaking, the Laws do not philosophize but rather declaim. Only citizens like So crates and Crito, addressed by the full authority of the Laws, have a corresponding in retest in raising pertinent philosophical questions (cf. 232), including whether the Law overstep their limits in Socrates's Case (cf. 5ob5-c2, 5 lc3-4, 52d6) • Here, contra Kraut the authoritarian reading regains a certain plausibility: Socrates's Laws seem deliber ately designed not to allow individual...