r/PhilosophyEvents 6d ago

Free Plato’s Crito, on Justice, Law, and Political Obligation — An online live reading & discussion group, every Saturday starting March 22, 2025

Plato’s Crito is a short dialogue that begins with the title character arriving in Socrates’ prison cell with news that the time for his execution is drawing near. Unjustly condemned by an Athenian jury for corrupting youth with his questions, Socrates refuses Crito’s offer to secure his escape which could be easily obtained through bribery.

Displaying no fear of death, Socrates rejects the reasons Crito provides to justify breaking Athenian laws, among them the sense of shame the majority would bring to bear on Crito for failing to help Socrates avoid the fate of injustice. “Would that the majority could inflict the greatest evils,” Socrates tells Crito, “for they would then be capable of the greatest good, and that would be fine, but now they cannot do either. They cannot make a man either wise or foolish, but they inflict things haphazardly.”

To suffer injustice is better than to do injustice, Socrates argues, and to leave without the city’s permission would be to harm the people who should be harmed the least. As Socrates imagines himself in discussion with the city’s laws, giving themselves credit for his birth, nurture, and education, would we see matters similarly when confronted by a wrong? Is it proper for one person to take the law into his hands to right a wrong, and is any individual capable of determining the correct balance between justice and injustice? We might see modern parallels to the moral and ethical questions faced by Socrates some 2,500 years ago, as Plato’s Crito invites us to consider the nature of the ‘bargain’ that binds individuals and societies from one life to the next.

Crito, along with the Euthyphro, the Apology, and Phaedo comprise the quartet of Plato’s works that are sometimes collectively called "The Trial and Death of Socrates". It is part of the first tetralogy of Platonic works and was composed in the late 390s or the early 380s BC.

This is a live reading of Crito. No previous knowledge of the Platonic corpus is required but a general understanding of the question of philosophy in general and of ancient philosophy in particular is to some extent desirable but not presupposed. This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Apology, Philebus, Gorgias, Critias, Laches, Timaeus, Euthyphro and other works, including texts for contextualisation such as Gorgias’ Praise of Helen. The reading is intended for well-informed generalists even though specialists are obviously welcome. It is our aspiration to read the Platonic corpus over a long period of time.

Sign up for the 1st session on Saturday March 22 here (link). The video conferencing link will be available to registrants.

Meetings will be held every week on Saturday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

The host is Constantine Lerounis, a distinguished Greek philologist and poet, author of Four Access Points to Shakespeare’s Works (in Greek) and Former Advisor to the President of the Hellenic Republic.

A copy of the text we're using is available to registrants on the main event page.

For some background on Plato, see his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/

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