Socrates Apology And Crito

Laws are not standard. They change from state to state and obviously from country to country. Athenians judicial system condemned to death a man for having different beliefs than theirs. The accusations held against him were corrupting the youth and undermining Athenians religious and political authorities. Socrates tried to prove himself innocent but failed. Later, he was given the death penalty because Athenians saw death as the solution to stop the spread of his philosophical beliefs. Socrates accepted this verdict and evaluated the implications of fleeing with his friend Crito. Based on the dialogues Apology and Crito by Plato I claim that Socrates’ acceptance of death under a failing judicial system is unvirtuous although he tries to frame it as virtuous and civic. The virtue of obeying the trial’s outcome is undercut as resistance would have been a better way to fight back the system that condemns Socrates unjustly. …show more content…
During trial Socrates declares “I will certainly not stop philosophizing, and I will exhort you and explain this to whomever of you I happen to meet” (Apology 29c). Socrates firmly states that he will continue philosophizing to whomever he meets, but we never see him doing this because he did not want the precarious future that fleeing would imply. Socrates could have continued the spread of his beliefs as fugitive to those people from different places he could have met if he had decided to flee. But once again, his actions did not coincide with his words. As an old man he knew that life out of Athens would have turned out to be despicable and chose death rather than philosophizing somewhere else. Becoming a fugitive was never an option because his sense of self could not stand being targeted as unvirtuous and because he feared a bad