Plato’s Crito is a short and dramatic dialogue. It starts out with just two interlocutors, Socrates and the Crito who the dialogue is named after. Socrates’ execution had been postponed due to a religious ritual, but now is slated to happen, and Crito has bribed the guards in preparation for spiriting Socrates away to a different Greek city. And then Socrates says: let’s think this through. . . .
In the process of addressing Crito’s arguments in favor of leaving, Socrates will do something rather unexpected. He introduces a new interlocutor, the Laws of Athens, and stages an imaginary dialogue in which those Laws accuse Socrates of injustice if he should violate them, and flee Athens.
Is this something that we could do with our own political communities’ laws in this late modern age? Would that make sense for us? What would it mean to personify and give voice, even intellect and argument to, whatever moral norms that might be analogous to these Laws? Those are just a few of the issues raised in this episode
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