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Crito Outline Notes
1. Setting / Context and Main Issue: Socrates has been sentenced to death.
Crito at the bedside of Socrates, who says, Well, really, Crito, it would be hardly suitable for a man of my age to resent having to die.
The boat from Delos is arriving soon . . . . . The dream of Socrates.
But my dear Crito, why should we pay so much attention to what ‘most people’ think? . . . They cannot make a man wise or stupid; they simply act at random.
Crito suggests an escape and offers to help; offers reasons: sons, disgrace to friends Please don’t be unreasonable.
Main issue: Is it right for the prisoner convicted by the Court to escape the sentence?
2. Principle of Reasoning (not feelings): use reasoning, not opinion: not all opinions deserve respect; follow wisdom, not opinions, and maintain foundational moral values. (Is life worth living with a ruined soul / character / self?)
3. Principle of Morality: we say that one must never willingly do wrong. ? retaliation? harm to the soul?
4. Apply Principles to the issue of escaping: Reasoning with the Laws: breaking the law? undermining the court? Is it better to suffer or to do injustice? What does Socrates owe to the Laws? Loyalty due to long consent; could have left Athens earlier. Certainly he does not owe Athens the undermining of a fair agreement and his rightful duties to the Law.
Extended account by the Laws arguing for Socrates’s obligations and duties to the Laws and Athens.
Conclusion:
Laws: Do not take Crito’s advice, but follow ours. Socrates: That, my dear friend Crito, I do assure you, is what I seem to hear them saying, just as a mystic seems to hear the strains of music, and the sound of their arguments rings so loudly in my head that I cannot hear the other side. I warn you that, as my opinion stands at present, it will be useless to urge a different view. However, if you think that you will do any good by it, say what you like.
CRITO: No, Socrates, I have nothing to say.
SOCRATES: Then give it up, Crito, and let us follow this course, since God points out the way.
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Is Socrates a consequentialist or a deontologist?
A consequentialist holds that right and wrong depend on the consequences.
A deontologist holds that what is right depends on what I ought to do in accord with moral reasoning and moral law. This person does what is right because it is what one ought to do, irrespective of consequences.