Plato's The Crito Argument

In todays society we find many experts is the fields that they have studied in. You can find an expert in mathematics, science and an expert harpist. In order to prove that they are an expert one must only perform these tasks in such a way to show that they possess expert skills or knowledge. In order for them to gain such knowledge they often will train, study and learn such tasks from teachers, scholars or such experts in the field. In Plato’s work, The Crito, Socrates explores such a question and asks if there is an expert of the human soul. In the opening dialogue of the Crito, we find Socrates in a prison prior to his execution.
Socrates awakens to find his old friend Crito sitting outside his cell “I have been marveling at you, when I see how peaceful you’ve been sleeping” (43b). Crito has come to convince and persuade Socrates to escape his his sentence of execution “I think that if you die it won’t just be one misfortune”(44c). Yet Socrates presents many arguments and lays out the principals that he has chosen to live his life by. One such argument Socrates presents is if “there someone who has knowledge”(47d) or is there an expert of the …show more content…
Socrates is suggesting here that if we do not listen to the one who has knowledge of the soul, then we are destroying our soul with injustice. An example of this would be if we do not pay attention to our bodies then then we are simply “destroying that part of us which is improved”(47d). If do not care for our bodies we are in a way destroying our bodies, if we do not listen to an expert of the human soul then we are in a way destroying what is just for our soul. Socrates sugests that we must pay attention to the “one who knows about just and unjust things”(48a). For the one who has knowledge of the soul surely must have knowledge of what is just and