What is Law, Socrates?
In the dialogue of Crito, Socrates mentions that the punishment of crime is in accordance with the law, that the law orders are also in accordance with the law, and that the laws and the law are an indication of the commitment to the state. If he escapes from prison, he will have betrayed the laws and the law and will not be a good citizen. But I think the problem starts with the punishment of the wrongful crime. The crime committed by Socrates is the accusation arising from the hatred of Meletus and the others towards Socrates(Plato 25). The same accusers say that the penalty for Socrates’ crime is also death. Even if the jury decides with very close votes in Apology (Plato 39), the penalty for socrates is death. But Socrates is not really guilty, he did nothing in the literal sense of these accusations. In other words, he has been wrongfully accused and it is also a crime to accuse someone unjustly and to slander him. Socrates’ arguments are morally correct when they consider both as immutable concepts in the relationship of crime and punishment. However, when I think about it, I don’t know how accurate it is to use Socratic method in his own concrete case, since Socrates’ crime is not a crime. The mistake made during the foundation caused the collapse of a philosophical building, and here also caused the death of Socrates. In fact, the death of Socrates is not something to be feared in itself (Plato 33). He will even be able to continue testing people, as he considers death as sleep or a transition (Plato 33). But it is not fair for him to be innocent and to be punished for an unjust crime. His view of justice is from crime to punishment. If he had thought of a way from punishment to crime, maybe he would have thought that he had received an unfair punishment by thinking in reverse and would have said that this was against the law and laws of the state he was attached to, or Crito could have convinced Socrates like this.
The issue of the social contract is an ongoing debate since the existence of humans; for someone with religious beliefs, considering the worldly debates that broke out after the apple issue even between Eve and Adam, and how the conflict between Abel and Cain ended with murder, the idea of a social contract is actually a good idea even for two people. Optimists and pessimists among modern age philosophers are in favor of the idea of social contract on two different bases. This is a valid idea for both Hobbes, who says that man is man’s wolf, and Roussea, who expresses this with the title of natural contract. Socrates, who is referred to as the wisest person, also believes that there are abstract bonds between the state-individual-society established either with chains or threads. The social contract bond is established with chains because people have to obey it, they have to live by these rules. This is done with threads because it will ensure people’s full commitment and ethical compliance if they think it’s healthy for them and the rest of society to live their lives with the full benefit of the existence of this idea. The main feature of this system is that those who use it do not have toys, and people do not go beyond the rule of natural social contract by making arbitrary decisions. But in the Crito, Socrates sees commitment to the state, that is, commitment to the social contract, the same as those who are at the head of the state, those in power. This may be due to the fact that the heads of state always think that they make just and right decisions for the state. But for someone who knows that he is not really guilty unjustly, I think it would be much more correct and easier to refute this for Socrates, who adheres to the concept of social contract.
The law is not all laws and laws, but neither are those who apply them. When it is synthesized with the idea of social contract, law takes a pragmatist form and benefits people. For Socrates, the idea of the social contract was simply synthesized with the trio of right, law and laws. It did not look at who applied them and the conditions of the concrete case. This essay deals with the comparison between the social contract and the understanding of law in Socrates’ non-escapism, and the ideal understanding of social contract and law in my mind, and finds Socrates’ escape both more beneficial for other people in terms of social contract and Socrates’s social contract by not obeying the law as an individual of the society. It aims to show that infringement is not the same thing.
WORKS CITED
Plato, and Grube G M A. Five Dialogues. Hackett Pub. Co., 2002.
