by Henry Piper (all rights reserved)
Socrates (c.470-399 B.C.) did not believe in writing: it was a technology that he considered detrimental to reasoned thought (see Plato’s Phaedrus); but we know a great deal about the life, death and thought of Socrates, most of it from his close follower Plato. It is impossible to know precisely how much of Socrates’s own thought is on display in his appearances in Plato’s dialogues, and how much of what Socrates says is Plato’s. Generally, for practical purposes we may treat Socrates and Plato as one, however imprecise and unsatisfying that may be. In the case of the Apology and Crito, however, we are surely observing a fairly faithful portrait of Socrates the man, in his own words. We can be fairly sure of this because, at least as to the Apology, we have another detailed and contemporaneous source that is substantially consistent with Plato’s account of the proceedings, as well as a fairly rich history of the events generally concerning Socrates’s trial and the time in prison leading up to his execution. So in our consideration of these works, we shall be endeavoring to get a sense of Socrates as a man and how his words and, at least as importantly, the actions of his life and death, describe and exemplify what Socrates refers to as “the examined life,” which for Socrates is the only kind of life “worth living” for a human being.
How Did Socrates’s Trial Come About?: Some Historical Background
Socrates was privileged to be born into the height of classical Greek culture, which followed the military triumph of the Greek city-states, led by Athens, over the Persian empire; this was the age of the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens, of the famous statesman Pericles (495-429 BC) and the historian Thucydides (d. 400 BC); but he had the misfortune to witness its precipitous decline. At the height of its rise to superpower status after its repulsion of the Persians Athens became overblown with its own power, and its hubris led it into a long and needless war that it could neither win nor afford, which seems to be what superpowers do, more often sooner rather than later. At the end of Socrates’s life, Athens had descended into a condition of economic weakness, instability and political in-fighting and paralysis; and the values that had made Athens the cultural wonder of the age were replaced by greedy and materialistic groveling and backstabbing.
It was the denizens of this rapidly-declining empire that Socrates found himself addressing as he faced trial for his life in 399 B.C. He was accused of corrupting the city’s youth and not respecting its gods—of a general “impiety”; but I think we can safely say that Socrates was just the unfortunate scapegoat for Athens’s real problems. Athens was demoralized and afraid as it witnessed its status plummet, and the atmosphere of fear and insecurity propelled the instinct for survival and finger-pointing that served to obscure all the great cultural and political values for which Athens had become famous. Socrates had the good sense to understand all this, but in his efforts to expose and reform it he became its victim and martyr.
The Delphic Oracle
In the Apology, Socrates recounts how, years before, a friend had consulted the oracle at the Temple of Delphi with the question of whether there was anyone wiser than Socrates, and the answer was that “no one is wiser.” Socrates famously expressed bafflement when told, and set out to understand what the oracle might mean. After all, many people in Athens seemed wise and presented themselves as such, notably the politicians, the poets and the craftsmen. We experience the same in contemporary society: our politicians self-righteously claim special insight to justify their power; we lavish such attention on the sports and movie and rock stars of our day that it seems a reasonable inference that we must accord them some special level of wisdom; and to no one do we grant more power, money and respect than the great “craftsmen” of our own day—the corporate, industrial titans—who claim such wisdom as to deserve to be beyond the touch of government regulation and taxation. Yet our politicians are hard-pressed to give a straight answer to an honest question, if any answer at all; we revel in news of the stars more for their falls into rehab than in their occasional artistic triumphs; and as for the titans of industry, well, some of them at least make some things, though that hardly seems to justify their being “too big to fail” and our being reduced to subservience and creeping impoverishment.
This is precisely what Socrates himself discovered as he questioned these various claimants to wisdom. The politicians appeared wise, and certainly presented themselves so, but, in the face of Socrates’s determined questioning, as sometimes occurs when our own politicians face a serious interview or news conference, it became clear that they were not wise at all; the poets had wise and beautiful things to say, but were personally incapable of understanding their own talent and blown up with their own pride; and the craftsmen thought that because they knew one thing they must thus know everything. In short, all was pride and delusion in Athens, and Socrates, when comparing himself to the craftsmen, who at least actually had some wisdom, nonetheless concluded that he was better off than they since at least he did not think himself wise when he was not. In short, Socrates was “wise” because he knew nothing except that he knew nothing, thus he alone was self-possessed enough to maintain the integrity and humility that consist in being aware of one’s own limitations and also being, thereby, open to the possibility of learning (recall the slave boy in Plato’s Meno). Thus we have the basic outline of “the examined life.”
Socrates’s “Apology”
It is vital to not at the outset that the term “apology” refers here not to an acknowledgement of personal wrongdoing but to a defense: Socrates’s speech in Plato’s Apology is an utterly “unapologetic” justification of how he has lived and specifically of precisely the behavior for which he is being prosecuted.
The jury before which he pleads his case consists of all the “citizenry” (male landowners—no women, peasants or slaves) of Athens, and in the early part of his speech Socrates suggests that is has been prejudiced by various inaccurate reports of his past practices and beliefs, which he would like now to dispel. He had been accused in the past, notably, of concerning himself with astronomical observations, and the astronomers of Socrates’s day may well have conflated the heavenly bodies with the gods and thus tended perhaps toward atheism, like many scientists of today, and Socrates’s association with them might indeed have lent support to the charge of impiety; however, not only did such things not in fact much interest Socrates himself, but also there is a deep irony here, as Socrates takes pains to emphasize, in that Socrates was onto a version of “spirituality,” so to speak, far exceeding anything his fellow Athenians were prepared to entertain. In the immediate event, Socrates was pleading for attention to the spiritual reality of the soul, or mind, as against the body; but ultimately, his project was perhaps much greater (though this project may well have been not that of Socrates himself as much as of Plato), namely, to open up human understanding to a realm of reality and even “divinity”—that of the Being of eternal Ideas or Forms—far exceeding the parochial and earthly foibles of the Greek gods [see the earlier chapter, “How Do We Know that 2+3=5?…”]. So, ironically, if anything Socrates was guilty of being too spiritual.
Socrates also recounts that he had been accused of “making the weaker argument appear the stronger” and of accepting fees for the service. These are ironic charges as well, for it is Socrates’s accusers the “Sophists,” if anyone, who seem clearly guilty of these charges, whereas Socrates, whatever he may have done, is surely relatively blameless on these scores: it is not Socrates who is out for fame and fortune, nor Socrates who concerns himself with the sort of fancy speechifying that the slick, ambulance-chasing lawyers are rightly despised for. Socrates takes no money and offers no knowledge, for he claims none, as we have seen. This is why Socrates asserts, “I have never been anyone’s teacher”: by his own admission he has nothing to teach!
The Current Charges
Though ultimately there are bigger matters at issue here, the specific arguments Socrates makes in response to the current charges—of corrupting the youth and not respecting the gods and spiritual mores of the city—should be recounted briefly.
Socrates makes light of the notion that he doesn’t believe in “spiritual things.” As noted above, Socrates is concerned with a kind of “spiritual” reality of a fundamentally different kind than his accusers are prepared to acknowledge.
As to the charge of corrupting the youth, Socrates suggests that, as one with no claims to knowledge and who accepts no fees for “teaching,” he can on no account be thought an “expert” in training the youth, thus he can hardly be said to be corrupting them, particularly as the slick-talking Sophists, who abound in Athens and among whom are many of Socrates’s primary accusers, are presumably the ones guilty of this, and not he. Moreover, Socrates recounts the evidence of his dedication to Athenian citizenship, as evidenced for example by his distinguished military service, and surely to corrupt the youth would amount to degrading the city itself, of which he has proven an ardent defender, and this cannot make sense.
Socratic Shame and Why Socrates Does Not Fear Death
Socrates considers whether he should feel “ashamed” for pursuing a course that has brought him to this trial for his life. To this Socrates responds that a human being should be concerned with living well rather than with fearing death. Socrates points out that it is simply irrational to fear death since we know nothing about it: as the philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) will put it, “When death is, I am not, and when I am, death is not.” Thus we human beings are so completely separated from death, as long as we are alive, that we must acknowledge that we can only be totally ignorant of it. It is of course perfectly rational to fear a known danger, since such fear alerts us to act to preserve our safety; but to fear death is to presume to know something that one does not, and as Socrates has already learned in his pursuit of the meaning of the Delphic oracle, human wisdom, and specifically Socrates’s own wisdom, begins with an awareness of one’s own ignorance. So the fear of death makes no sense, since death may be a great blessing—a dreamless sleep or a remove to a “heaven” where we can converse with all the great people who have died before us. But note carefully, Socrates’s speculations about the afterlife are at most idle musings, since he can know nothing of such things: his point is not that death is welcome, for surely it is not, but that death is utterly unknown and thus offers no reason for one to fear it.
It is vital to keep in mind, particularly when we turn to the Crito—where he argues that he must face his execution rather than flee for personal safety—that surely Socrates does not want to die; indeed, in life Socrates was famous for loving a party and the fellowship of his friends. No, it should be clear that Socrates does not welcome death as something good, for this would imply that he knows something about death, and he is perfectly clear that he does not; again, awareness of one’s own ignorance is the whole basis of Socratic wisdom. At the same time, it is surely not shameful to face one’s death, as does Socrates, with the equanimity of the rational man that Socrates is; on the contrary, the shameful act would be to cower in the face of danger and grovel or flee to protect one’s physical safety, particularly where, as here, such cowardice would be utterly irrational. Thus, as an honorable soldier holds his position in the face of the enemy, and as Socrates himself was famous for doing during his own military service, so Socrates does now in the face of his accusers in defense of his life and principles; and what would be shameful would be to turn and flee.
It would of course be easy to assume, when Socrates speaks of caring for and preserving the integrity of his soul, that his concern is “otherworldly”—that he is not concerned primarily with “this (mortal) life.” But this is surely wrong, because it is not supported by Socrates’s own reasoning. Yes, he is concerned for the soul—or mind, the faculty or power of rational thought―but it is the soul that animates and motivates him now, precisely in this life. It is clear that the body will perish and rot, whereas if the soul is “immortal” it will not; but, to repeat, Socrates makes it as clear as can be that he does not know this to be true. He knows precisely nothing about “life after death” or whether there is such a thing; to repeat, awareness of one’s own ignorance is the whole basis for Socratic wisdom. Thus he can only be concerned with life now.
Having said that, it is vital to emphasize that it is the soul, as opposed to the body, that primarily concerns Socrates; indeed, he makes a plea, and in substantial part his whole life is an embodiment of this plea, that his fellow-citizens look out for their souls rather than be so consumed, as he sees them being, with superficial and ephemeral concerns like physical fame and material fortune. There is certainly no shame in living an examined life, says Socrates, but to his accusers and other fellow citizens Socrates asks, “are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom and truth, or the best possible state of your soul?”
Socrates as Example
The best evidence for Socrates’s innocence of the charges, for which he is eventually executed, consists not of his words themselves, which while frequently persuasive are also laced with sarcasm and hyperbole; rather, the best evidence that supports Socrates’s case is Socrates himself.
Thus, notably, consider Socrates’s trial strategy, or rather the lack of one. Socrates notes that most defendants in a trial such as his would resort to the typical tools of the criminal defense attorney’s trade, such as appealing to the sympathy of the jury by bringing the wife and children of the accused to court. This is the rule in modern trials, of course. An attorney defending a client against whom there is overwhelming evidence, and who therefore seems certain to be convicted, would probably first advise his client to negotiate a plea bargain in exchange for a reduced sentence, but if the client insists on his day in court to gamble on a complete acquittal, which is his legal right, how is the lawyer to proceed? A jury takes a sworn oath, at the beginning of a trial, to appraise the facts honestly and to apply the law as directed by the court; but in a case like this, it would seem that if the jury is true to that oath, then the defendant is sure to lose. Thus it would seem that a defendant’s only chance, in such a case, is to try to prevent the jury from doing the job it is sworn to do by diverting the jury’s attention away from the facts and the law. Thus the lawyer makes sure to line up, behind the defense table in the courtroom, the sobbing mother and the wailing children in an attempt to get the jury to look at them rather than to pay attention to the cause of justice.
But this Socrates refuses to do. He had a wife and children, but to bring them to court would tend to accomplish precisely the opposite of what he is most intent to promote and defend, namely justice, that is, what is right according to reason. Though of course the jury that Socrates faces is already hostile to him, and of course we know (as did Socrates) that this jury was likely bound to condemn him regardless of the evidence, still for Socrates “two wrongs don’t make a right.” So to appeal to emotion rather than reason would be shameful, impious and unjust. It would have been shameful because it would have reduced the courtroom to a theater where the real purpose of justice would effectively have been replaced by a show of sobbing and wailing; it would have been impious because its intent would have been to manipulate the jury into violating its sworn oath to follow the facts and the law to be swayed rather by emotion; and it would clearly have been unjust as the whole point of the court is to accomplish justice through deliberation on the rational persuasiveness of the arguments of the disputing parties.
Thus Socrates was bound by his own reasoning to do justice, even if his accusers and the jury had lost sight of it themselves. For, as Socrates says, a better man can’t be harmed by a worse, “a good man cannot be harmed either in life or death.” Moreover, the primary sufferer of an injustice is not the “victim,” says Socrates, but the perpetrator. The “good man” that cannot be harmed, of course, refers to the “soul” or character of a person and not the body. Thus come what may, Socrates asserts that he cannot be harmed, even if unjustly executed, whereas his accusers stand to do mortal damage to their own souls if they persist in condemning him. So Socrates is committed to use reason, and not an appeal to their pity, to attempt to persuade the jurors rather than manipulate them with the physical emotion they might be induced to feel for the defendant’s wife and children: Socrates insists, consistent with his own principles, on appealing not to the emotional perturbations of their bodies but to the reasoning of their minds.
In short, the “examined life,” which alone, according to Socrates, is “worth living,” is precisely a life lived by rational deliberation based on the ideal truths and principles of the soul, or mind, and not based on physical appearances and the fleeting concerns of the body.
Socrates as Gadfly
After he is found guilty of the charges, the trial turns to consideration of the punishment; in this it is very like a modern capital trial, where a jury typically first decides on a verdict of guilty or not guilty, and, if guilty, the trial turns to the “penalty phase” of the trial in which the jury considers whether to recommend the death sentence for the guilty defendant. Socrates provocatively suggests, to the jury that has just declared him guilty, that he should be treated like an Olympic champion and given free meals for life. He declares, “The Olympian victor makes you think yourself happy, I make you be happy.” Socrates’s point is that the Olympic athlete offers us the pleasing appearance of a fit body, whereas Socrates offers us guidance on how to nourish the soul. Thus the Olympian is offering only a relatively superficial entertainment, a diversion from what’s really important, such that we “think” (or more precisely, “believe”), that all is well, simply as long, that is, as we don’t truly think (rationally and deliberately) at all; by contrast, Socrates is concerned not with the changing appearances of the physical world but with the enduring being of the world of eternal principles or “Ideas” and the soul, which nurtures them.
It is this lesson that Socrates has been trying all his life to convey to all who will listen to him. He compares himself to a “gadfly” who, in annoying and bothering a horse, causes it to wake up and become conscious and aware. So Socrates is attempting to make his fellow Athenians aware of how misplaced their values are as they ignore the inner, spiritual, rational capacity which is what makes them human. Socrates’s ultimate thesis of life, as we have noted and which he utters toward the end of the Apology, is “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To examine oneself is to live up to one’s ability as a human being and so to become aware of oneself and one’s possible meaning in and contribution to the world, to be responsible, to be free, to think.
Reason, thought, awareness, consciousness—these are the province of the soul, or mind, for it is the mind, and not the body, that distinguishes us from all other creatures on earth. However important and glorious the body may be, it is always changing and soon passes into nothingness; but the ideas and principles by which we live and for which, even, we might die—these, if we live well, might outlast our mortal lives, might be passed on to our children, might contribute to the progress of justice for humankind as a whole and into the future that extends after we are gone. Our bodies will die, but our lives need not end, in the spiritual sense; and this is true quite apart from any prospect of “life after death,” which is irrelevant to us, practically, since we can know nothing about it. By “spiritual” here no religious connotations are intended; we are speaking simply of the capacity for consciousness, thought and freedom that all humans share, a capacity that exceeds and transcends the mere physical survival of our bodies. Even the atheist, presumably, can hardly fail to acknowledge these uniquely human qualities and, moreover, wishes to leave a better world for her children than the world she found.
“The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living”
A human being, unlike any other animal we know of, has a choice to make. First there is what might be viewed as the “easy” choice: I can ignore my ability to think for myself, I can simply accept the values I learn from my society, my parents, my religion, and never bother to think for myself; I can take the job that pays the most without bothering to consider whether it is a job that will make the world a better place or not; I can live generally oblivious to the opportunity I might have to contribute positively to the world and to leave it, when I die, a better world than the one I was born into.
Or I can take the more difficult path, the path of “the examined life.” If I choose this option, I make myself aware of my freedom, of my power to choose. I become conscious, which is for me to say something like, “I am, I exist; I am I, and I am not you nor am I a stone.” Though only a beginning of a truly human life, this is profound! I can make a difference in the world, starting of course with myself: within the limits of physical reality, I can, using the power of reason and rational deliberation, decide what to make of myself—I can be free! I may not be able to be absolutely anything, but there are a great many options at my disposal, and with only the slightest effort of rational thought I can presumably discern that some options are better than others. In other words, I can hardly help to acknowledge the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, which is the basis for ethics and morality: though these determinations can at times be very difficult to make, still clearly some choices are more good or less bad than others. Who can fail to admit this?
Socrates asserts, of course, that if you do fail to acknowledge this—consciously, responsibly, humanly—you are not being “all that you can be”: you might as well be an animal or a plant, since if you do not acknowledge your uniquely human faculties of reason and choice, or will, you will just be “taking up space” and not contributing anything to the world. So, I suggest, Socrates is effectively asserting that if you are just taking up space and getting in the way of others without adding anything, your life is “not worth living.”
To Flee or Not to Flee: Socrates in the Crito
In Plato’s Crito, we find Socrates in prison awaiting his execution and in conversation with his old friend Crito. Crito has come with a mission: he has made arrangements for Socrates to escape prison and he hopes to convince Socrates to flee into exile and save his life. And Crito has some persuasive arguments to make.
First he asserts that Socrates’s condemnation is unjust, and in an important sense we can surely agree with him, but we must be careful to distinguish two different kinds of “justice.” On the one hand, clearly Socrates’s conviction and sentence are perfectly “just” in terms of the basic legal institutions of the state: the appropriate legal procedures were invoked, formal charges were brought and Socrates had a full and fair opportunity to present his defense before the court—Socrates has had the benefit of what the U.S. Constitution calls “the due process of law.” So his condemnation is perfectly “legitimate” and thus “just” in terms of everyday, human, legal procedure.
However, there is another version of justice at play here, which we might refer to as “divine” justice as opposed to “human” justice. I use the word “divine” here because Socrates himself does, on a number of occasions; and it is particularly appropriate, perhaps, since Socrates was convicted of a form of “impiety,” which has religious connotations. But as I have emphasized above, the point here has nothing to do with any particular religion; rather, the kind of justice involved here is what we might refer to as “spiritual,” or, better yet, “ideal” or even “true.” In other words, no matter your religious convictions or lack thereof, we can all see that there is a sense in which Socrates’s accusers were arguably wrong to condemn him, and we can conclude this not based on any “divine intuition” but on the basis simply of rational argumentation. Indeed, no religious conviction of any sort is needed to consider the rational merits or persuasiveness of Socrates’s arguments about the meaning of life, generally, and the way he has lived his own, in particular. Thus Crito’s assertion that Socrates has been “unjustly” condemned is a highly persuasive judgment—in terms of “divine” justice if not “human”—and a judgment, clearly, consistent with the judgment of history since we would not be reading about Socrates today if it were not the judgment of most people through the ages that Socrates is the “hero” of this story and his accusers the “villains.”
Crito adds two further arguments, which are less persuasive in a principled sense, yet perhaps more persuasive in concrete, everyday terms. First, Crito appeals to Socrates to consider the “shame” that his friends will suffer if Socrates is put to death, since the Athenian public may conclude that his friends, who are wealthy and politically connected, must have let him down. Next, Crito reminds Socrates of his obligation to his children, who will be deprived of a father if he is executed.
As for his friends’ “shame,” Socrates points out to Crito that we should concern ourselves not with what “the majority” think, but with the opinion only of “reasonable people.” This is consistent with Socrates’s appeal to the Athenian people―that they should be concerned not with money and reputation and other superficial appearances associated with bodily existence, but rather with truth and reason and principle, which are functions of the soul or mind. In other words, Socrates is here gently chiding Crito for worrying more about physical appearances than about ideal, rational reality. We can’t control “what people think,” after all; all we can be responsible for is to do our best to know the truth and to follow it in our own actions.
As for the concern for his children, this may feel like a particularly persuasive line of argument: could a father have any greater moral obligation than to his children? But Socrates points out that, if he flees, either he will have to leave his children to be tended by others, or he will have to remove his children to a strange land where they will share the life of a fugitive. Socrates’s devotion to his native Athens is based on his conviction that Athens is the best place for his children in any event; but more importantly, Socrates asserts that, if he flees, he will effectively vindicate the accusations made against him and justify his condemnation. This is so because Socrates has argued repeatedly and consistently that he has an obligation to his city and to the ideal of justice itself to do the right thing, and this includes respecting the law. Although the law here, as applied to Socrates’s personal case, clearly subverts true, “ideal” justice, still it is the principle of law as such to make justice for all possible in human society. If we repudiate the law because we don’t like how it applies to our individual case then we are repudiating the principle according to which we are “a nation of laws and not of men,” the principle that gives us all the rights of citizenship, but also imposes on us the obligations of citizenship, including obeying the law, for there can be no rights without the corresponding duty of society at large to respect them. Moreover, no person can be above the law if the law itself is to survive.
Human Justice v. Ideal Justice
So Socrates has always been devoted to the principle of justice, which law as such aspires to, and it is this which motivates him to be a “gadfly” in order to make his fellow citizens aware of their own corruption and their misplaced values and of how the “human” law as administered in his own case, for example, is not worthy of the “divine” law of ideal justice. Thus we have seen how Socrates’s devotion to this principle of law as the vehicle for justice has extended to Socrates’s own trial, where he refused to appeal to the emotional sympathy of the jurors by bringing his family to court, insisting that that would have been shameful, impious and unjust. Socrates asserts repeatedly, in both Apology and Crito, that it is his obligation to try to make the law work for justice by persuading the jury of the true justice of his cause, rather than undermine justice by manipulating them with legal trickery or slick, theatrical rhetoric; it is his duty to recognize the legitimacy of the law as such, even where it is in the wrong, and to repudiate the law by fleeing would suggest that Socrates himself does not believe in the principle of law, which after all is to do justice, even though it surely, as here, at times falls far short of that ideal.
I noted above that the fact that Socrates does not fear death does not mean that he welcomes it; moreover, although he hopes that death will be a blessing, it is merely a “hope” and not a rational conviction, since we know nothing of death. Thus Socrates would clearly prefer to live. Recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his last speech, the night before he was killed:
Like anyone, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not worried about that now. For I’ve been to the mountaintop, and I looked over, and I have seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I know that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearin’ any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
These are precisely Socrates’s sentiments. Life is good, of course; but there is something more important to live for than merely “saving his skin.” “The unexamined life is not worth living.” If Socrates flees prison, he will effectively be putting his own bodily existence before the principles on which he has based his life; and if those principles are worth living for, then that can only mean that they are worth dying for as well. Our bodily lives must at some time end; but the principles for which we live and die might indeed survive us, as they clearly have in the case of Socrates and King.
So the ultimate reason why Socrates must not escape, in a sense, can be attributed to his children: he will not be there for them physically, if he dies, but surely it is more important that, in life as well as in death, he furnishes them an enduring, even immortal, example of living well, of “the examined life,” of what it can mean to be a human being. In other words, a parent must know that children pay attention more to what a parent does than what he says; so the greatest and most enduring legacy a parent can give a child is not merely “to talk the talk” but also “to walk the walk,” thus not to be a hypocrite by saying one thing and doing another.
Socrates and The Laws
The heart of Plato’s Crito concerns Socrates’s description of the obligations of citizenship. These obligations have two sides. It is the ordinary, everyday obligation of any citizen, of course, to obey the law, and Socrates explains, in persuasive detail, the rational basis for this obligation. But there is another obligation at work here as well, which may not be so obvious, and that is to stand up for what is right even when the law opposes it. This is the obligation of non-violent resistance, or “civil disobedience.”
Let’s first briefly review the reasons underlying the basic obligation to obey the law. In principle, as I suggested above, the stable institution of human law—the everyday system of justice with its courts, lawyers, judges and juries—despite its flaws in practice, is vital to insuring some measure or opportunity for justice for all in society. More concretely, Socrates offers what we would refer today as a “social contract” theory of law as he considers what “The Laws” would say if they were addressing Socrates on this occasion, where he is deliberating with his friend Crito about whether to flee from prison or stay to face his punishment. “The Laws,” says Socrates, would remind him that the marriage of his parents, and thus his own birth, were sanctioned and protected by the everyday laws of the state of Athens, and that he had been raised and protected and educated at the expense and by the authority and good graces of the state. But more importantly, when Socrates reached the age of adulthood, he was given the option, as are we all, either to accept the obligations of citizenship or to leave the state of our birth. We all have this opportunity, this choice. Though we may indeed frequently complain about the laws, the police, taxes and the like, all of us are still here! Again, we don’t have to be: we can move to another country, or, even today we could find some remote desert island or cave or forest retreat where we could learn to survive on our own without any social or political constraints. Many people these days seem to feel that such a life without social or governmental constraint is the most “free,” but is it really? If it were, why wouldn’t those people be living that way themselves? It can only be the case that we like living with other people, on balance, despite the annoyances and constraints we must endure in society. Moreover, we like the fruits of citizenship, such as roads, police and fire protection, the delivery of goods and services; and all these things require complex organization and a substantial degree of centralized control and regulation and the tax money to permit it all.
Finally, we even have the opportunity, in a democracy, to play a direct role in participating in the collective decisions about how tax money is raised and spent, for example; so if we don’t like the way government is run, we might try voting, for starters, informing ourselves about local and national and global issues and, in short, taking responsibility for our political and economic lives. But in any event we have little basis for complaint as long as we willingly choose to live here, with all the benefits, and obligations, of the institutions of government as directed by law.
Socrates’s Legacy: The Non-Violent Resistance of Gandhi and King
In theory, as noted above, all laws are designed to accomplish the interests of justice: no one would ever propose a law on the basis of its being unjust. Having said that, however, it is obvious, as in the case of Socrates, that no law can achieve perfect justice, since “justice” is an ideal to which we may surely aspire but one that we can never hope fully to achieve. Moreover, some laws, clearly, accomplish the precise opposite of justice: a law that supports slavery, for example, or racial segregation, we can all agree to be utterly unjust since it treats people differently for no rational reason. Yet it is obvious that there are, and have always been, such unjust laws.
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates at one point lets his fellow citizens know what he will do if he is acquitted of the charges against him: he will go right back to doing what he has been doing, which is precisely what has gotten him into trouble in the first place. Moreover, in both the Apology and the Crito it is clear that Socrates could easily have gone free on the condition that he simply agree either to stop what he was doing or to go into exile so he could do it somewhere else. But such options, to Socrates, would have violated his principle that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” because to him, as he argues, he is doing the right thing, and it is the people of Athens and their laws that have gone astray. So Socrates represents an ancient example of one who “speaks truth to power” and one who, moreover, openly flouts the laws of his state even though it leads to his prosecution and ultimately to his death.
Recall that Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were not anarchists who were opposed to all legal institutions and all law as such; on the contrary, like Socrates they fully and even enthusiastically endorsed the notion of the human law as vital to the practical pursuit of justice in society for the reasons we have noted above, and they too believed in the principle of the citizens’ obligation to obey the law. However, where a law is so flagrantly opposed to the ideal of justice as effectively to undermine the basic principles of human life, freedom and dignity, they asserted also that it was their obligation to oppose such a law. In so opposing an unjust law, however, it is not morally legitimate to do so privately and secretly and simply in the interests of one’s own personal rights or profit; on the contrary, in order to constitute a legitimate exercise of civil disobedience against a genuinely unjust law one must do so openly and publicly, with the awareness and indeed expectation that one will face criminal prosecution and other possible hardship as a result. Indeed, the willingness of the civil disobedient to suffer the consequences of the law is what makes the action persuasive, for clearly such a genuine act of civil disobedience, where a person is willing to accept punishment for the violation of an unjust law, can only rather be motivated by genuine, and well-reasoned, conviction; and its power depends exactly on the demonstration of such conviction.
So, ironically, civil disobedience is ultimately in the service of the principle of law rather than in opposition to it, the principle according to which we are “a nation of laws and not of men,” which means that the prejudices and interests of individuals must be subservient to the overriding principle of justice that the law in principle represents. The non-violent resister does not violate the law out of selfishness, but to become a personal example and witness to the injustice the law perpetuates in order to bring about public awareness of that injustice and a change in the law. Ironically, it may seem, no one is more committed to the institution of law than the civil disobedient, because one who is willing to sacrifice convenience, liberty and even life itself in order to expose the injustice of a law shows herself to be truly devoted to the principle of law as the vehicle of justice. And it is this, indeed, that makes civil disobedience not only persuasive, but also potentially transformative, not only of the law but also of the very minds and hearts of the public. It was surely because King and other civil rights advocates, from Montgomery to Selma to Memphis, stood forthrightly by their convictions and maintained their composure and dignity in the face of violent assault, injury, imprisonment and death that people throughout the world took notice. We are persuaded that racial segregation is wrong because we witness the dignity and conviction and courage of those who stand up to it in their willingness to suffer punishment and even death without committing injustice themselves; in the same way, it is Socrates’s conviction that he is obligated to suffer the human consequences of the injustice (in ideal, “divine” terms) of his conviction that persuades us of his seriousness. King could undoubtedly have taken a prestigious academic position in some northern university, but would he have changed the world by writing learned articles in academic journals about the injustices of the Jim Crow, and would anyone even know his name today? And would we be reading about Socrates today if he had taken Crito’s advice and fled Athens to save his life—would anyone have cared about his later death in the obscurity of exile?
Conclusion
We see in the example of Socrates an engaged life lived actively, consciously, deliberately, and according to fundamental principles, which for Socrates are worth dying for because, for him, life is not worth living without them. These principles are summed up in his ideal of “the examined life,” the life of a human being living according to the gifts of reason, deliberation and choice that distinguish human being from all other being—animal, vegetable or mineral. Martin Luther King, Jr., as we have observed, had the same basic view—that life is not worth living absent basic human dignity and freedom. Judge me, insisted King, not “by the color of my skin, but by the content of my character,” because skin color is simply a matter of external, physical appearance and tells us nothing about the kind of human being that one is, which is rather a function of one’s soul or mind: my skin color is not my personal responsibility, whereas my character I develop through my free choices, my conscious actions.
Socrates, like King, was devoted to the promises of political democracy and social justice, but he was born into a world of political and economic dislocation and uncertainty, where people were demoralized about their society’s decline and fearful for their security and future; thus, matters of social justice and freedom were obscured and overlooked as people became overwhelmed by their own selfish, materialistic concerns. Fear is a powerful motivator: consider how political advertisements, and advertising more generally, play on our fears that we will not be militarily or financially secure if we elect the other guy, or that we will not fit in and be accepted and loved if we do not own a certain car or shoe. Such appeals to fear not only manipulate us into acting in irrational ways but they also blind us to the real reasons for our being: if we are fearful enough we become like animals, scratching out our survival, trampling the innocent, forgetting the basis for human dignity and freedom, which alone make life worth living.
Socrates, like King and Gandhi after him, refused to submit to such fears. His commitment to an ideal of human being, like King’s to human dignity and freedom, transcends his own brief, physical existence. The depth of this commitment, and its foundation in an enduring truth that all of us can recognize, gave him the courage and determination to face down and accept his own death and so to achieve the immortality that consists in the living memory of his example and the continuing inspiration he can be to us today.
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