Why Socrates Stayed

In 399 BCE Athens condemned Socrates to death for impiety and corrupting the young. In Plato’s Apology he refuses to stop questioning people, even to save his life. In the Crito, his friend Crito arrives at the prison with a plan: the guards are bribed, a ship is ready, and Socrates can escape.

Socrates refuses. He imagines the Laws of Athens speaking to him. They raised and educated him, they say, and he chose to stay in the city all his life, free to leave or to persuade them to change. To break them now would repay that with harm, and one must never do wrong, even in return for wrong.

Readers still debate the dialogue. Did Socrates hold that citizens must always obey, or only that he could not escape without betraying his own principles?

The unfair fine

Jamal’s club fines him for a rule he thinks is unfair. A friend suggests he simply never pay and quietly avoid the treasurer.

Jamal decides instead to pay the fine and raise the rule at the next meeting, openly. Like Socrates, he will not dodge the system he chose to join, but he will argue in the open for changing it.

Try this today Think of a rule you disagree with but still follow. Write down why you follow it, and what would make you stop.