Crito by Plato
This post is part of my journey through the classic texts of Western civilization.
I want to tackle one issue brought up by Plato's Crito, and that is the question of whether or not it is ever just and right to disobey the civil law.
It is important to note the way that the issue is actually framed by Socrates in this dialogue. Socrates frames the question as whether or not injustice can ever be returned with injustice, or whether evil can ever be returned with evil. The answer to this, of course, is no. But behind this framing is the very key assumption that any violation of a civil law or legal rendering is unjust and evil.
We see this expounded on out late in the dialogue when Socrates personifies the law and presents what is very plainly a social contract theory of government.
"But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we [the law] command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong; first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are unjust; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of obeying or convincing us;—that is what we offer, and he does neither."
For Socrates, an attempt to escape would be to break the contract he assented to with the laws of the state and thereby commit an injustice.
I will not delve into the social contract theory itself here; we will get there in due time. Certainly Socrates is correct in saying that he would be breaking a law, namely the civil law and the legal ruling of his death sentence. What is missing is the recognition of another law, a higher one: the natural law.
Any civil law or ruling is only just if it accords to the natural law, for all civil law must be derived from and in accordance with the natural law, whose author is God. If a civil law fails to do so, it is not a righteous one. This is summed up in the perennial phrase lex iniusta non est lex [an unjust law is no law at all]. In the case where the state commands/rules what is unjust, it would be right to say as the apostles did, "We ought to obey God rather than men."
That a civil law may be justifiably resisted if said law is unjust (not in accordance with the natural law) seems so obvious that it is odd that Socrates would deny this, for Socrates was clearly not a stupid person. Would Socrates have submitted with deference to the law if it commanded him to murder his own children? An extreme example of course, but one can see the point.
One could suggest that Socrates is submitting to his fate at the hands of the state not out of submission and respect for the law but as an intentional victory—the making of a martyr shall we say. That is, Socrates recognizes his death sentence is unjust yet is choosing to accept it for he believes it will bring about greater good (Socrates states a prediction in Apology that his death will bring about a new generation of his followers). Assuming his death sentence was indeed an unjust ruling, this would garner more sympathy for his decision. There is a popular phrase attributed to Scottish Reformer John Knox: "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." Some have used this phrase to then suggest that not resisting tyranny is disobedience to God. Whilst the vigor and sentiment can certainly be appreciated, it is simply not true. For starters, it fails basic logic: the inverse of a true statement is not necessarily true. The original statement is true indeed, that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, but prudence should dictate whether or not resisting an injustice would bring about benefit. In certain cases, the decision to submit to an injustice may be the better choice. Let us not forget that the greatest act ever committed by a man was an act of submission to perhaps the greatest injustice ever committed by man: the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified for the sins of His people.
All that being said, Socrates did not actually argue in this manner, that prudence and the particular situation he found himself in demanded he submit to his death sentence. Socrates instead argued on principle that to break the civil law would be an injustice and an evil, period. In this, Socrates is incorrect.