Exit out of Athens? Migration and Obligation in Plato’s Crito

Abstract

A prevailing theme of the scholarship on Plato's Crito has been civil disobedience, with many scholars agreeing that the Athenian Laws do not demand a slavish, authoritarian kind of obedience. While this focus on civil disobedience has yielded consensus, it has left another issue in the text relatively unexplored-that is, the challenges and attractions of leaving one's homeland or of "exit." Reading for exit reveals two fundamental, yet contradictory, desires in the Crito: a yearning to escape the injustice of the homeland for self-preservation and freedom (voiced by Crito) and a deepseated need to honor one's obligations and attachments to the homeland (voiced by the Laws). By exposing the conflicted nature of leaving one's native land, Plato's Crito enriches an understanding of the meaning and consequences of an exit for the individual.Sometime in the 1960s, Socrates and the Crito became associated with civil disobedience. For those thinking about how to effect political change through disobedience, Socrates' defiant assertion in the Apology became a touchstone: "I, men of Athens, salute you and love you, but I will obey the god

Obedience and Disobedience in Plato’s Crito and the Apology: Anticipating the Democratic Turn of Civil Disobedience

“…Vaunting the freedom afforded to citizens wishing to emigrate, the Laws depict participation in Athenian affairs as a matter of free choice. To be sure, it is contentious whether the choice to leave one's state is ever, or indeed was for Athenians, tenable, given the extraordinary costs associated with severing deep family ties and friendships normally attached to the exit option (See e.g., Kirkpatrick 2015. Also Hume 1994Simmons 1979, Ch.…”

Ne Me Quitte Pas: The Laws’ Argument in Plato’s Crito and Migrants’ Obligations to Their Political Communities

“…The so-called migration aspect of the Crito is a subset of a broader conversation about civil (and uncivil) disobedience of laws whose exact relationship to justice we cannot easily assess. In fact, this is how the Crito has been read by most scholars in the field up to now (Miller 1996; Rosano 2000; Strauss 1983, to name a few) although more and more scholars are approaching ancient philosophy from the angle of migration theory (Kasimis 2013) and even the Crito specifically (Kirkpatrick 2015).…”

“…The specific context of the conversation between Socrates and the Laws is Socrates’s potential escape from jail and subsequently his death sentence. The Laws’ argument, however, taps into a philosophically richer point: that of citizen-to-state obligation (Allen 1980; Gorman 1992; Kirkpatrick 2015; Rosen 1973). Athens’ Laws argue that by fulfilling three specific conditions, they created an environment rich for the flourishing of citizens, and that this, in turn, implies a moral obligation from citizens to obey and submit themselves to them in situations of potential conflict.…”