Crito
In a prison cell, Socrates' oldest friend arrives with a plan for escape. Crito has arranged everything, paid the bribes, secured the path to freedom. All Socrates must do is accept. Instead, the philosopher begins to ask questions that will outlast both his jailers and his judges. What follows is one of philosophy's most uncomfortable arguments: that to escape would be to become the very thing Socrates spent his life opposing. He personifies the Laws of Athens themselves, arguing that a citizen cannot accept a society's benefits while rejecting its judgments. Injustice, he insists, must never be answered with injustice, even when the injustice is your own death sentence. Written shortly after the real Socrates drank hemlock in 399 BC, Crito preserves the voice of a man who believed that how you die matters as much as how you live. It remains essential reading for anyone who has ever asked: what do I owe to laws that have wronged me?
Editions
X-Ray
“for the unexamined life is not worth living.””
— Plato
“for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.””
— Plato
“the most important thing is not life, but the good life.””
— Plato
“Men of Athens, I honor and I love you, but I will obey the god rather than you and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet.””
— Plato
“no man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time””
— Plato
“I am speaking like a book, but I believe that what I am saying is true.””
— Plato
“The next thing I want to do is to make a prophecy to you, the ones who voted against me; I’m now at that moment when human beings are most prone to turn prophet, when they’re about to die. I tell you, you Athenians who have become my killers, that just as soon as I’m dead you’ll meet with a punishment that – Zeus knows – will be much harsher than the one you’ve meted out to me by putting me to death. You’ve acted as you have now because you think it’ll let you off being challenged for an account of your life; in fact, I tell you, you’ll find 39d the case quite the opposite. There’ll be more, not fewer, people challenging you – people that I was holding back, without your noticing it, and they’ll be all the harsher because they’re younger, and you’ll be crosser than you are now. If you think killing people will stop anyone reproaching you for not living correctly, you’re not thinking straight. Being””
— Plato
“if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his action, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting life a good or a bad man.””
— Plato
“فلا ينبغي لأحد ان ينساق لرأي الناس إن كان مخالفا للعقل””
— Plato
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddee"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Crito by Plato free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddee)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddee][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Crito by Plato free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddeeCite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Plato. Crito. Lex, lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddee.Plato (n.d.). Crito. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddeePlato. Crito. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/crito-070d6907-b1e0-4d5e-93eb-5b183829ddee.
