Comparison between Crito by Socrates and A letter from Birmingham Jail

In Crito, Socrates contends contrary to Crito, saying that he should not accept Crito's assist in getting away from jail to bypass the death penalty that has been decreed. Socrates is under the death punishment for what the administration glimpse as his try to corrupt the juvenile with his dialogues, a ascribe of impiety contrary to the state. Basically, Socrates contends that the one-by-one has a higher obligation to the reality, to fairness, to goodness, and to the town, than he does to the gut feeling to endure, or to associates and family.

Crito's contentions are emotional and not grounded in the cause upon which Socrates has founded his entire life. Socrates is saying that he has respected cause and its use as a device to find the reality and reveal lies all his life. If he were to turn his back on cause, and pursue Crito's emotional call to escape to reside and be with his associates and family, he would be betraying every worth and standard thing for which he stood his entire life.

Socrates' answers to Crito

1. The Socratic beginning of damage (Apology 41d): “A good man will not be harmed either in life or in death”. Clearly 'harm' should be being utilised here in an odd sense—at smallest not in the sense it is generally utilised in to recount human harms. For Socrates, harming a individual (like harming any thing else) entails producing him less good, less virtuous, less excellent. Thus, you damage a individual by producing him less just or good. (Harming a individual is like harming a car—you make it display the virtues of the sort of thing it is to a lesser degree.) Thus, as long as you keep your virtue, you are not harmed. This is why, for Socrates, it is better to bear an injustice than to manage one—by pain one, you manage not display yourself to be vicious (without virtue); by managing one, you do. (www.mlkonline.net)

2. Response to Argument #1: Socrates acknowledges the standard that one should not to damage ones friends. But we should recall what he entails by 'harm'. So long as Socrates does not lead his associates to consign an injustice, he is not harming them. Crito's use of the standard, “Don't damage one's friends,” just arrives too soon. We should first response the inquiry if get away ...