My excessive procrastination in the two days prior1 stems from a question posed to me by a friend, which can be summarised, in the original questioners’ words, as follows: “If the laws are not based in what is just, do you have any obligation to follow them?” This is one of the fundamental questions of political philosophy: who must you obey, and why? I do not claim to have the answer to this, but what follows is an elementary account drawn from Socrates’ speech on the laws in Crito2 using Ann Congleton’s emphasis on the two kinds of lawlessness, and my own observations on legitimacy, authority, and the power of the law.3
Continue reading “On Crito and Lawlessness”
- That is not the only reason why I have been torn away from my studies — some aesthetic and functional changes were needed in my study to permit me to add to collection of books. ↩
- All quotes from Plato are from: Plato, Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). ↩
- Ann Congleton, ‘Two Kinds of Lawlessness: Plato’s Crito’, Political Theory 2, no. 4 (1974): 432–46. ↩