why did socrates refuse to escape?

Why Did Socrates Refuse to Escape?Author(s): Andrew BarkerSource: Phronesis, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1977), pp. 13-28Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182002 .

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Whby did Socrates refuse to escape? ANDREW BARKER

I want to take as my starting point an essay on the Crito by Professor A. D. Woozley.1 As will emerge in what follows, I disagree with several of Woozley's views, and I have given this article something

of the form of a reply to them. But the main function of this approach is to give mne a definite focus around which to marshall some positive contentions. My aim is not primarily polemical: on the contrary, I am trying to bring out some important ethical theses which I take to be represented in the Crito, and which are of significance not only for students of Socrates and Plato, but for anyone concerned with central questions in ethics.

One other point by way of preliminary. It will be seen that I have annotated the text of the paper with a number of references to the Gorgias and to the first book of the Republic. For the most part the philosophical relevance of these references is not spelled out: but that should be clear enough to anyone who looks them up. I mention them here simply in order to say, in case anyone is worried about the histori- cal legitimacy of these cross-references, that I am aware of the prob- lems, and that I believe that they can be overcome, though there is no space to deal with them in this article.

Let me begin by sketching one group of Woozley's arguments, with some parts of which I shall venture to take issue. They concern the reasons which Socrates puts forward in the latter part of the dialogue (50 ff.)2 why a man should always obey the law, and specifically why Socrates, at the present time, should not disobey the law by trying to escape from prison. The crucial reason which Woozley picks out (p. 315) is that a man should always obey because 'the consequences of disobedience are, or would be, socially destructive'. He goes on

First, it should be noticed that Socrates is using a "What would happen if ... ?" argument. And we have to distinguish more clearly than he appears to do the question what would happen if

1 A. D. Woozley, 'Socrates on Disobeying the Law', in The Philosophy of Socrates ed. G. Vlastos, Macmillan, 1972, p. 299. I Passages from the Crito are cited throughout without the name of the dialogue.

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he, as a single private individual, flouted the court's decision in his particular case, from the question what would happen if court decisions were always flouted by private individuals. (p. 315.)

The consequences of one act of disobedience are clearly not the same as those of wholesale disobedience by large numbers of citizens; and Woozley seems to be on safe enough ground when he argues that 'the answer to the question ... "What would happen by way of harm to the state and its laws if . . . ?", asked of a single act of disobedience, . . . would almost always be "Nothing".' (p. 316.) Indeed, he argues, it is only in the case where all people disobey all laws that we can be tolerably sure that social disintegration is round the corner, and there might be exceptions even to that. (pp. 316-7.) Nothing that Socrates says has any tendency to show that his own act of disobedience would in the slightest degree promote such general anarchy; and there is no sign in his speeches of any 'principle of fairness' which, so Woozley argues, is necessary for any inference from 'x is wrong when done wholesale, because it would be socially destructive' to 'x is wrong in the single case, even if it would not be socially destructive'. Hence Socrates' argument must fail.

Now if the premisses from which Woozley begins his argument are correct, then, it may be, his case is pretty watertight. At any rate, what I want to take issue with at present is the premisses, and not the subsequent steps. The essential premise is that, according to Socrates, the reason for never disobeying laws is that 'the consequences of disobedience are, or would be, socially destructive'. That is, we are concerned with the claim that Socrates' argument is one which relies on predictions about what would happen to the stability of society if he acted contrary to law. Woozley, as we have seen, has no difficulty in showing that the supposed consequences are illusory - that in all prob- ability nothing, or nothing of any importance, would happen to society if this one man acted to this extent illegally.

I want to argue that this way of representing Socrates' argument is misleading. It is not a 'What would happen if ... ?' argument, an argument about consequences, at all. To show this we shall have to go back to some earlier passages of the text. Socrates' speech at 48B 11-D 5 may be translated as follows.

From what has been agreed, should we not consider the question whether it is right (8Uxaov) or not right for me to try to leave this place without the Athenians' consent? And if it turns out to be right, let us make the attempt, but if not, let us abandon it. As for

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the considerations which you mention, Crito, concerning financial expense, reputation, and the care of my children, are these not in fact merely pretexts characteristic of the many, who kill lightly, and who would bring their victim back to life again, if they could, without the least rational deliberation, But we, since the argument (X6yoq) draws us this way, should consider nothing but what I have just said, whether we shall be doing right in handing out money and favours to those who would let me out of this place, in my escaping and your helping me, or whether indeed we shall be doing wrong in acting in these ways. If we find that these actions would be wrong, do not ask me to consider further whether it is my duty to stay here quietly and die, or indeed to suffer anything whatever, rather than doing wrong.

The striking thing here is that Socrates, so far from making the question whether or not an action is &flXOV identical with or dependent on questions about the nature of its consequences, seems explicitly to be distinguishing between these questions. We should ask not 'What will be the effect of this action on friends, family, and so on ... ?', but simply 'is this action 8Exatov or not?' If it is not, it will not be made any the more 8(xcov by the fact that other persons are benefited by it. That is, the suggestion underlying the passage is, apparently, that there are certain intrinsic features which an action may possess, whose presence guarantees that it is a case of &&8xwEc no matter what beneficial consequences flow from it. This is, of course, quite different from the contention that such and such a kind of action is prima facie wrong, but capable of being transformed into a right action by special circumstances associated with it. For the Socrates of this passage, the claim that this x is wrong because it is of type P and actions of type P are wrong, is not a claim 'defeasible' by appeal to special conditions.

The claim that we ought never to do anything which is &8lXOV receives similar treatment.

Socrates. Are we to say that we should in no way do wrong, or that we should do wrong under some conditions and not others? Is it not true that wrongdoing is never in any way good or fine, as we have often agreed in the past ? Or have all those earlier agreements of ours been poured down the drain in these last few days, and have we, Crito, at our age, been seriously discoursing together for so long without noticing that we are no better than children? Surely it is certain that the matter stands as we used to say it does. Whether the many agree or not, and whether we must suffer even

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harsher things than these or lighter ones, is not wrongdoing still in every way an evil and shameful thing for the man who does it? Is this our view, or not? Crito. It is. Soc. Then we must under no circumstances do wrong. Crit. Indeed not. (49A 4-B 9.)

Here Socrates is at great pains to drive home the point that what is &gLxov is to be shunned under all circumstances, that it is never right to choose any action falling under this characterisation. The claim is spelled out quite explicitly, even though there is nothing in the passage which could count as an argument towards it - we are merely referred to discussions in the past. (On the lack or slightness of certain crucial arguments in this dialogue, and on their frequent allusiveness, I shall have something to say later.)

We are being told, then, first that there is a characteristic possessed by certain actions, that of being &8LX=, which cannot be charmed away by special circumstances or consequences; and secondly that such actions should never be chosen, or done voluntarily (ex6vroca), no matter what circumstances can be cited in mitigation. If I am right so far, it would be very odd if Plato, in the next (and closely linked) main section of the dialogue, changed horses in mid-career and began to argue for the impropriety of an action by reference to its consequences alone. But before we get down to this point, there is at least one glaring gap to be filled. If there is some indelibly 'ALx(x-bearing mark which actions can have, and which identifies for us actions which we must under no circumstances choose, what is it?

One answer, at least, is not far to seek. Immediately after the passage last quoted Plato gives to Socrates the remark 'o yap 7tou xOCxCc 7tOeLV &vOp ic 'oU O&xsLV ou8& o (49C 7), a claim so phrased as to look uncommonly like an equivalence, if not a definition. At the very least we must allow him to be saying 'Where you meet a case of xMx& 'TCOL?Zv &vOpwrnouq you have a case of &8txeLv, and converse- ly'. It seems, therefore, that harm to another person might very well be the identifying stigma we were seeking.

But doesn't this after all entail that an action is to be assessed for Jc&xEm by its consequences? 'Was anyone damaged by it?' seems to be the test question. The rejoinder looks plausible, but should not, I think, be allowed to take us in; for there is nothing, or almost nothing, in the subsequent address by the Laws, to suggest that anything hangs on the answer to this question at all.

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On the contrary, despite Woozley's claims (which he does not sub- stantiate from the text), the bulk of the argument, here at least, is not concerned with consequences. Indeed, there is only one mention of any relevant consequences, however hypothetical: this I shall discuss shortly. (It is to be found at 50B 2 ff.) If for the moment we ignore that sentence, what the Laws are laying to Socrates' account is not the charge of planning an action which will have disastrous social consequences. It is the quite different charge of trying to overthrow the laws (&s?xpLQmao0cs, 54C 8, cxrcpX, 50B 1, D 1, qyLX6Lpxv, 52C 9, D 2), so jar as in him lies (6 a6ov zpoc, 50B 2, 54C 8, xcxO' 6aov 8UVMXcM, S1A 5). Nothing further is said about the likely success of his 'attempt', or the extent of his power in the matter: what is treated as culpable is the intent to perform the proposed action, knowing that it will be an in- stance of law-breaking. It is on his intentions and not on the probable outcome of his action that Socrates is being judged.

But why are breaches of law &wLxa? Woozley's case, or a part of it, might still be upheld if it could be shown that the Laws are representing the proposed breach as &8Lx' only because such breaches, in general, do endanger social stability. One possible route to this position might be through the use of the criterion given above, that an action is &MLxov if it xmxFoJ 7roLeL &vOp6irou4. If we take the word &vOpornouq seriously, it might be said, Socrates' escape could not fall under the ban unless people, as contrasted with institutions and laws, were endangered by it, and that could be the case only if it was likely to lead to a general social breakdown. (We can ignore for the present the supposedly harmful consequences for family and friends referred to at a later stage of the discussion, at 53A 4ff and 54A lff.) But this suggestion is not convincing: it is a feature of the argument, and one which, I think, we must simply live with, that the Laws are themselves personified, treated as parents and parties to a contract, and that they are to fall, for present purposes, under the heading %vOpw7toL' just as much as the citizens whose polity they represent.3 Even if this were not so, there is no doubt that we are to conceive of harm to the Laws of Athens as itself constituting, or at least involving, harm to the Athenian people: I shall discuss this point a little later.

A second route, however, is undoubtedly more plausible. It relies on the sentence at 50B 2ff which I mentioned above. Aoxe aoL &6tv re 9TL iXEV9V r~V 7t6'XLV EIVOXL XOc d avoT?e'rp&oc, 'V h xo yev a OevxL &Ex0a

a Cf. Woozley, op. cit., pp. 312-3.

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,u-r8jv EG)&Ltv &XX t76 LtC8w-r6v &xupo( -re ytyvwwva'rott toI cOeEpc)V'a;

This, I think, is much the nearest we have to evidence that the Laws in their harangue are envisaging anything like general social collapse: they are holding up for our consideration a situation in which the decisions of the courts are altogether ignored, and might well be thought to be suggesting that Socrates' proposed escape will be instru- mental in ushering in such a state of anarchy, with all the appalling consequences which would inevitably flow from it. But two considerations at least count against this interpretation. In the first place, the sentence in question is immediately preceded by one of those referred to earlier, in which Socrates is accused of trying to destroy the laws and the city, so far as in him lies. (50B 1-2). In that context, the present sentence reads more like a rhetorical flourish than a description of consequences: the sense seems to be 'No city can survive if its laws and the decisions of its courts are ignored; and you are doing your best to bring this state of affairs about'. Of course no one man, through one such act of disobedience, can produce this species of social chaos. But if one man acts in such a way that a general imitation of his behaviour would bring about social chaos, he is fulfilling his pApoq, doing what one man can do towards that end, and hence must fall under the condemnation, even if no one else imitates him, or is likely to be in- spired by his action to similar crimes.

Secondly, there is no hint of the 'consequences' version of the argument in any part of the long passage which follows. There the contention of the Laws is not that by trying to escape Socrates will be igniting the fuse of anarchy, that he will by some obscure chain- reaction be causing the breakdown of civic life. It is rather that the damage to the laws and to the city is the action contemplated, just because it is an intentional breach of law. To put the point in a slightly different way, there is no suggestion here that we can properly ask the question 'When will it do harm for a law to be broken, and when will it not?' Plato, through the personae of the Laws, is arguing from the position that the law-breaking is the harm. A law is being overturned ('o&rou rOU v6ttou ?cXXuI?vou, 50B 7): this very fact entails that damage is being done to the laws; and if to the laws, then to the city, to r6 xoLv6ov 'rr nr6Xe.o. Further, Socrates' projected action is treated directly, and without reference to any possible consequences, as falling under one of those categories explicitly listed as varieties of &Lx8xE in the earlier discussion (49B lOff): it is &V'rLIMOLV, (V'04yetLV, (X'v-rL?TU-

'rCLv, (50E 9-51A 1), and must therefore lie under the prior ban on

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&v'9sx8CXZv (49B 10, C 10, D 8), &V'rLxaxoUpySZV (C 4), 046vOLcTOQL ;V'L-

apv'wrm xomx& (D 8-9). Just because it is intentionally inflicting harm for harm, however great the provocation and however slight the retaliatory effect, it is L8txEx and must not be chosen. MuAoxii &pa 8?c C8LxCLV.

Some further light may be cast on the points I have raised by attention to another matter on which Woozley criticizes Socrates' arguments. In considering Crito's appeal to Socrates to escape, and Socra- tes' tactics in rejecting it, Woozley finds first that Crito's appeal is based on moral arguments, and secondly that Socrates' reply to it is woefully inadequate. He lists four reasons with which Crito backs up his appeal. If Socrates does not escape, (a) he will be depriving his friends of an irreplaceable comrade, (b) his friends will be left with a public reputation for stinginess and timidity, (c) he will be making his enemies a present of precisely the result they wanted, and (d) he will be betraying his children. Woozley comments 'Of those four arguments, Socrates makes no reference at all to (a) and (c), summarily dismisses (d) as irrelevant (48C), and concentrates only on (b), his reply to which is, in fact, not a refutation of Crito's claim, but at cross purposes with it.' (p. 309)

If this is really all that Socrates' answer amounts to, it obviously will not do. It is certainly true that Socrates does not distinguish and list the various reasons given, as Woozley has done, and attempt to answer them separately: it is equally true that his reply does nothing whatever to show that Crito's point (b) is wrong in its contention that the reputations of Socrates' friends will suffer. But this does not necessarily mean that Socrates has failed to answer Crito's arguments. I shall suggest, on the contrary, that though he has adopted somewhat oblique tactics in giving his reply, it is nevertheless intended to be a complete and adequate answer to all four points, since the defect which he attributes to Crito's mode of argument is to be found in each of them.

As a preliminary it is worth noticing that Socrates has, in fact, given a direct answer to (b) at an early stage in the discussion. At 44C-D Crito presents this argument for the first time. The =XW, he says, will sneer at Socrates' friends for failing to spend their money for his safety, and the 7o?Xo( have the power otu -s& atLxpo'rvroca v xmxc&v

XpyrEaXL mX)4 T& 0dyLaTM eC86v (44D 3-4). I have called Socrates' reply 'direct', but it is not, of course, a denial of the claim that his friends will incur this blow to their reputation. It is instead a denial that this will do them any real harm, since the uninstructed masses

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have no power to do anyone either harm or good. el y&p pcaov, 6 KpUr&v, oto' 'r' EIvoX o' 7ro?XoL a ' ylt=X xMxX epya,eoOoa, tva otoL 'r' iaov xal &yxO& Tot vxyt.azx, xal xmX&q &v e.lX?v. VUV 8? 6u8brepx o7to r? 0wre

yap (ppOV.LFov OUre &(ppOVO& auvocroL 7OL7Vac,

71tO)i 'TOlYTo 6TL &V 'XaL.

(44D 6-10) This answer is no doubt oblique and allusive, but its force is clear

enough: its basis is spelt out unambiguously in various passages of the Gorgias and of Republic Bk. I.4 Nothing will count as harm to a man except what makes him &(ppovx - that is, what impairs his capacity for moral excellence; and nothing counts as benefit to a man except what makes him ypouVL.LOV, since it is 9po6v-aL, and nothing else, which is man's characteristic &pe?'-. Other things may damage his body, or his possessions, or his reputation, but none of these things is the man: man is a creature whose gpyov is to live well, and only that which affects his ability to fulfil his lpyov can properly be said to inflict upon him xaxo or to confer &yxO&. If the mob has no power to affect our moral wisdom and excellence, we have no reason to fear it, or even to take any notice of its activities. They are simply irrelevant. We shall return to this fundamental Socratic doctrine later in the paper. For the present let us turn to the point at which the issue of (b) is reopened, for though at this stage Crito seems willing to accept Socrates' oblique and allusive argument as adequate (Taka ' iv 8? ouTmw eXkTW, 44E 1), he returns to the same thesis at 45E.

This second introduction of (b) comes at the end of Crito's longest and fullest appeal to Socrates (45A46A), one which contains all four of the arguments isolated by Woozley, and it is in the passage which follows that the main answer to his criticisms will be found, if any- where. Socrates begins his substantial response by distinguishing between right and wrong opinions, and by arguing, as he has done exa=o-re in the past, that it is only to the right opinions that we should pay any attention (46C 8ff). Now if we take this to mean that we should only accept, or be convinced by, right opinions and not wrong ones, the point is perhaps unobjectionable enough, but Woozley is quite right to treat it as irrelevant to the status of Crito's reason (b). However, though this is, apparently, the sense in which the claim is first made, it has developed, by the end of the passage, into something rather different. The change comes gradually, and can be picked out in

4See especially Gorgias 466-8, 470E 4-11, 474C 4-478E 5, 511A 1-513C 6, etc., Republic 335A 6-E5, 350C 1-D8, with 352D 8-354A 11.

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a gradual shift of terminology. We are told first that it is only to some opinions and not to others that we should npoakXew '6v voi5v (46D 1). At 46E 1 this is transformed into the claim that there are certain opinions which we should 7pl 7roBou 7toLZaOt, and others which we should not: and shortly after that (47A 3) the sense is, as I under- stand it, strengthened still further, to assert that there are some opinions and not others which we should sc,uav. Finally, both in the parallel argument about athletes in training and in the culminating return to the matter in hand, yet another and stronger set of terms is introduced. The opinions of the expert, now given the form of blame and praise, are such that we should cpof3ZaOocL and Oa7r&4eaOL them (46B 5-6): in matters of right and wrong we must 9tcaOaL and cpopfecaOc the opinion of the man of understanding, if such a man can be found, and that man we must &LayX)vcaOcL xct (poptaOcL ~t&XXov % a maq 'To6 0ou; (47C 9-D 3).

How are these shifts made, and what do they amount to? The first two are of little real significance, and are not argued: it would presumably have seemed unnecessary to Plato to argue that true opinions and not false ones are those which we should value (7eplt 7roXoiu 7roCLaO*c) and esteem (-rL[iXV). But the last move does win some discussion. The reason we should fear the blame of the knowledgeable trainer, if we are athletes, and not that of the ignorant XoXof, is simply that he will put the blame in the right place: that is, if he rebukes us, it will be because we have genuinely damaged our athletic capacity: if he warns us against some proposed course of action, it is because such a course really will do us harm. If on the other hand the athlete is swayed by the injunctions of the crowd, &pv ou'v xacx6v netavora; (47B 3). This xmxov affects the body: if, in the paralel moral case, we follow the call of the mob and ignore the expert, aq)OepoU3tev &txvo xia6' cona6lieo 8 -Cp X?v &=xEcp PkXnov 'y yvvro 'r' 8i cgtx OCan u-To (47D 3-5).

From this point, the argument proceeds (briefly and roughly) as follows. Since that part of us 4. 'ro &LXOV piv XO . Cr 8 8&XOLOV

&M-,aw is of far more account than bodily concerns, we should pay no attention to popular opinions, but only to those of the expert (47E 648A 10). The fact that the 7roX?oE can bring about our death is simply irrelevant: it gets no grip at all on the Xoyo;, since r6 EGi 4iV - that is, 'r6 xaoc; xoc aLXCLtd; Uv - is of more account than s'o 4iv (48A 10-B 9). Similarly, all considerations about money, reputation, and the maintenance of his children are irrelevant to the question

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whether Socrates should try to escape: all that is at issue is whether his actions and those of his fellow-conspirators in the matter would be ULxatL or not (48B 11-D 5). From here we move on to passages which we have already looked at, the absolute and reiterated rejection of

cxLv in any circumstances, and the oration of the Laws. What are we to make of all this? If Woozley is right, it is for the

most part a very bad shot at an answer to Crito's point (b), and one which simply fails to get to grips with what Crito has said. Crito's point is that men can be damaged by hostile public opninion, right or wrong; and this can remain true even if, as Socrates argues, it is likely to be wrong and thus not worthy of respect. Socrates' argument then has no tendency to destroy Crito's contention that there are moral reasons why he should escape, in that failure to do so, or at least to make the attempt, would do harm to others, It would indeed, it appears, be a case of xcxxs 7oLe-Lv &vOpwrnouc, which Socrates has himself described as identical with Oc8XeV.

But this is, I think, a misleading interpretation. Socrates is not trying simply to answer point (b) and failing. Rather, he is picking up a phrase out of (b) as a clue, and using it to introduce an argument designed to undermine the whole basis of Crito's case. The argument is essentially a simple one. Socrates and Crito are agreed that the issue must be settled on moral grounds. Nothing is more important for any man than the well-being of that which is damaged by sor &&xov and benefited by o' 8(xocwv.5 On the question of the morality of an action, there is no point in appealing to mob opinions, which are more likely to be wrong than right;6 so that from Socrates' point of view, taken alone, the views of o' noX?oL on whether he should or should not escape are indeed irrelevant. But - and this is the point which Woozley seems to miss - they must also be irrelevant from the point of view of his friends. Not only may the advice which the many give be misleading and harmful if followed: it is also the case that the damage which can be done to a man by hostile public opinion is of no account, compared with that which is generated by his own wrong-doing. Socrates' friends as much as he have a moral choice to make, and it is to their advantage, just as it is to his, that the choice should be the right one.7 We have, as Socrates has argued, nothing to fear from the blame of the

6 Cf. e.g. Gorgias 477-8 and passim. Republic 353-4. * E.g. Gorgias 459. There are, of course, many other passages of similar import. 748C-D.

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7O?Xoo so long as our actions have been gtxzca: the harm such blame can do, through loss of reputation, position, money, and even life, is the merest trifle compared with the harm we should have done ourselves had we chosen the wrong course.8 The only blame we should fear is that of the expert, and that not because of its effects (which may be much the same as those of inexpert criticism), but because of its causes: we receive such blame only when we merit it, and when we merit it we have already done ourselves grievous injury.9

If the argument is taken in this way, and supported, as it can be, by the more elaborate versions to be found in the Gorgias and Republic Bk. I, it is enough to dispose of at least Crito's first three reasons. The fourth, (d), that by failing to escape he will be betraying his children, is arguably not yet answered, since the children are in no way moral parties to the matter. They will be damaged by Socrates' death, and having no moral responsibility for the actions in hand, will suffer no harm from his escape. In the present passage, it is true, nothing like a convincing answer is given to this point. The 7arcLov 'Lpo?p is simply lumped in with financial matters and reputation as of no relevance to the issue. (48C 3). Clearly this will not do: unnecessarily withdrawing all support from one's children, through an act with which they are not associated, is not in the same class as risking another man's money, or even his good name, when that man is (after persuasion) a willing party to the risk, and will be morally damaged if it is not taken. Never- theless, it becomes clear in the sequel that Socrates' reply to this argument will be based on the same ground as his rejection of the others. It is set out by the Laws, at 54A. They have argued that if he leaves, it must be to some country where the rule is ao'C0X and KoMOCXatoc, and where his manner of life must be anything but an example of the ideals which he professes to follow. X4yoy g& 'XELvo o' 7sep'L &xaoco;v ,r? xactd ' &XX-qp M'peT6q =0o5 'Zv gaoVu; (53E 6-7). But then he has two choices only, either to take his children with him to roister in Thessaly, thereby ruining them as well as himself, or to leave them in Athens to be looked after by his friends, something which will be done as surely if he goes to Hades as if he goes to Thessaly. The first choice will only do his children harm, and that in the part of them which matters by far the most: as such it would clearly be &&xov. The second will at any

I Gorgias 472D 1476A 2, etc. ' 47A-E.

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rate do no more good than would his death, and its possiblity is therefore no argument one way or the other. Hence (d) fails with the rest, and essentially on the same grounds, that nothing does a man signif- icant harm except his own wrong-doing. In this case the principle is somewhat extended: Socrates' action in taking them to share his disgraceful old age in Thessaly would not directly involve his children in a&8xtm, but would doubtless lead them to it through the pernicious influence of the social environment.'0 The underlying thesis is the same, and its extension entirely fair: it is to this one principle that Socrates pins his entire case both in the introductory exchange at 44C-D and in the extended arguments which we have subsequently been considering.

We are now in a position to put in a slightly different and perhaps clearer form the claim that it is not the consequences of an action, seen as something distinct from the action itself, but what the action itself is, from the agent's point of view, which determines, for Socrates, its moral content. We may say that the question whether this or that action is Gwov depends not so much, or not directly, on its extemal effect on other people or objects as on what it does, just by being the intentional action which it is, to the internal condition of the agent. The challenge 'Should I do x?' is answered, and answered unequi- vocally, once I have determined whether its effect on my soul will be for better or for worse. Of course the two matters are interconnected: as we have seen, the external mark of any case of &xetv is that it is a case of xox&q 7toL v &6Opnou4. Even here, though, we have to remem- ber that this phrase is itself to be understood in the linternalised' or moral sense. Socrates' refusal to escape will doubtless harm his friends in their pockets and their reputations; but there is no essential link between a man's money and fame and the state of his soul," the true &vOpw7roq, and in this case it is his acquiescence in their plans which will do them damage in this radical sense. It would be a wrong action, a case of &'Ltxta, in which they themselves would be accomplices. If Crito had been able to argue that Socrates' refusal would harm people who were not morally endangered by his escape, his case would have been harder to answer, but even then it could only have been embarassingly

10 With 54A cf. e.g. Republic Bks. II-III, and the thesis of Protagoras in Prota- goras 324E-328C. 11 Especially Gorgias 523B 4-525A 7.

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hard for Socrates if the harm in question could be construed as moral harm - that is, if his refusal necessarily involved someone else in actual wrong-doing. Any other kind of harm could properly be treated as insignificant by comparison with the moral damage to both Socrates and his friends which the attempt to escape would bring with it. In fact, even if a case for the weaker position could be made, Crito does not make it, and there is no sign that the stronger argument would here be plausible at all.

Let us return now to the arguments presented by the Laws. The foregoing discussion has made clearer, if that were necessary, Socrates' reasons for refusing to do anything which seemed to him to be &Muxov. What it at first sight makes more mysterious, however, is his reason for insisting that a breach of law is, in all circumstances, &MLxov. It seems clear that no one else is likely to be harmed at all, let alone morally damaged, by Socrates choosing to break the law; and unless this breach is for independent reasons M&txov, we have no reason for supposing that it will do Socrates himself moral harm either. Certainly we cannot now appeal to the fact that the Laws are personified: why should we believe that disobedience, as such, harms the person who is disobeyed, let alone harms him in a moral sense?

If we look at passages elsewhere in which Plato supports his contention that moral harm is the only harm which really matters, we find what are, I think, clues towards an answer. Such passages are those to which reference has already been made in the Gorgias, and more im- portantly for present purposes in Republic Bk.I. In the latter of these12 we find that nothing can count as harming a man unless it injures him in that faculty through which his function as a man is to be fulfilled. It is no damage to the man if we injure his hand or his foot, so long as his soul is unaffected (as it may not be - resentment and the temptation to take revenge are no doubt moral dangers).313 The man is harmed only if his human aperl' is impaired, where his &perr is the characteristic in virtue of which he is enabled to do well what a man does. This thesis is by now familiar: but the crucial point here is that the argument to this position is built up, as so often, by 'induction' from a number of other cases, and the conclusion is evidently meant to be quite general.1' To damage a knife, qua knife, must be to blunt or chip its blade, or other-

IL Republic 335A 6-E5, 352D 8-354A 11. 13 Cf. 49B 10 ff. 14 Republic loc. cit.

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wise impair its capacity for cutting: to paint its handle a hideous colour will not damage it as a knife, though it may impair it as a work of art or a financial asset.

If this is the kind of reasoning behind Plato's narrow restriction of the notion 'harm to a man', he must mean it to be applicable equally to the notion 'harm to the laws'. Laws are there, presumably, to order and regulate society, and if Socrates' escape would impair their capacity to do this, then he can properly be said to have damaged them if he does escape. It is here, no doubt, that Woozley's arguments could be used to show that no damage would be done, since their capacities in this respect are not in fact in any danger; there is little likelihood that Socrates' action would lead to general anarchy, or anything like it. But this is beside the point, precisely because the case of Socrates is one case in which it is the laws' function to operate. If a workman turning nuts with a self-adjusting spanner on an an assembly line shifts the adjustment so that the tool will not do its job during the passage of just one nut, he has prevented it from fulfilling its function, even if the mechanism is such that it rights itself immediately afterwards. Has he thereby impaired its &per? The question is what might be called a 'nice' one, and we have, I think, no very clear way of answering it :18

but fortunately it is of little consequence. The passages we have cited make it clear both that a thing's ape'rl is to be identified by reference to its gpyov, and that damage to an O&peT is damage to the thing whose &CpE'r it is just because it interferes with the proper performance of the related gpyov. It must follow that anything which impairs this proper performance will count as harm to the thing whose activities are thereby frustated, even if in certain cases we find it unconvincing to say that its &perq, seen as an enduring property of the thing, is necessarily reduced or damaged.16 Here, the laws will have been prevented from fulfilling their function as regulators of social behaviour, and harm will accordingly have been done to them. And the same holds good, of course, in relation to the others roles given to the laws in this passage. Their authority as over-sized parents is being thwarted, and

1I Cf. Republic 353B 2 ff. " See especially Republic 353D 2 ff., where the claim that the &pc ' of a man is of the highest value is not taken as self-evident, but is dependent on the fact that in the absence of human &pvr1 a man - or rather, a +uX*, - cannot satisfactorily carry on its proper activities, 17rt,LLXcea%L, &PXetv, Pou)%ccaOczt (xai rt& 'roLxta

n&V-rM). ~tn.

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their rights as parties to a contract are being abrogated, even if the offending act has no tendency to generate others like it.

Now this is, of course, not enough by itself. It is presumably not &8Lxov, or only in a very attenuated sense, to blunt a knife or interfere with the adjustment of a spanner. These are not people, and :8LxeZv is

Xcc x =OLeLV M66pmorin. But though the laws are not people either, if we ignore the personification of the present passage, there is no difficulty in representing damage to the laws as damage to the people whose laws they are. The laws are the vehicle of the will of the 7r6XL concerning its own behaviour17 - that is, the behaviour of each and every citizen. Hence, at least, the capacity of the people to regulate their own society, their ausovo[M, is undermined by any breach of law, just because it is a breach of law, and regardless of any further consequences. This, to a Greek, is important, but it is not all. The n6XL~, and more especially the laws, are taken by Plato and most of his contem- poraries to embody specifically moral attitudes and injunctions. While it may be that a given law has no specifically moral content, the system of law in general, which constitutes the framework of the n06aq, is a moral system, and breaches in it are thus ipso facto moral breaches: they are 8mxa, &V6TLa. Further, Socrates is himself a party to the Athenian scheme of things, as the laws vociferously urge. This is his code of conduct as well as that of any other citizen: for him to break it is to do what he has already agreed is wrong, and wrong in the moral sense. If he now goes back on his agreement, made over seventy years gpyw &?X' ou M6yc, what indeed are we to make of all his fine talk 72?pt

8xovyc, -re xal rr-c, )AXc, ap?r To sum up. Socrates refuses to try to escape from prison not because

of some misguided belief that the results of such action would be socially destructive, but because the attempt would be &fLXOV. It would be &8txov because, regardless of its consequences, it would constitute a voluntary breach of agreement and a deliberate abrogation of the rights and functions of the norXL. Why should we never do what is &MLxov? Not simply because it is &OmXOv, wrong or immoral - there is no notion here of underived categorical obligation - but because to do wrong in the moral sense is to do harm where it matters most, harm to that part of us which enables us to perform our proper function as men. Not only Socrates, but his friends and indirectly his children too would

17 Implicit in the whole passage from 50A 6. See especially 52D 8-53A 5.

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be involved in wrong-doing, and hence would radically injure themselves, if the attempt were undertaken. The so-called harm which ill- informed public hostility can do them is of no significance by comparison, for the adverse opinions of others are to be feared only in so far as they are signs that we have done wrong.18

University of Cambridge

18 For an interesting and helpful discussion of questions surrounding the subject of this paper, see Gary Young, 'Socrates and Obedience', Phronesis XIX, 1, 1974, p. 1. It contains much that is of value. Nevertheless, I cannot accept the main thesis of his paper (that Socrates's insistence that he must always obey the laws is not something he believes, but a debating position adopted to persuade this particular individual, Crito, of the wrongness of escaping). I would suggest, though I cannot argue it here, that the interpretation of Socrates's principal contentions which I have given in this paper itself contains implications which can be used to dispose of the supposed 'contradiction' between his position on this matter in the Crito and that taken up in Apology 29 D.

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why did socrates refuse to escape?

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