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?
