Question 1: 'In the Apology, the Crito and the Republic, despite his protestations to the contrary, Socrates offers an important and inspiring model of citizenship that places greater emphasis on moral and intellectual integrity than patriotism, participation or piety.' Discuss. Do you agree or disagree? Provide examples and arguments from any or all texts mentioned to support your argument.
While Socrates never comes right out and says so, which is typical of the Socratic dialectic method, it is true that his model of citizenship relies more on moral and intellectual integrity than it does on patriotism, participation or piety. This comes about most clearly in the way that Socrates distinguishes civic and philosophic virtue in his discussion of the perfect state or society.
In several places in The Republic (401e; 430c5-6; 497a, 500d), Socrates shows how the so-called civic virtue, as important as it may be for molding a citizen, does not compare to philosophic virtue (518d-519a; 520c; 619c-d). The question then becomes: what makes the virtue of the philosopher more noble, valuable and true than that of the non-philosopher?
In section 429 of The Republic, Socrates describes the difference between courage as defined by the state and courage for individual citizens: "Why, I said, every one who calls any State courageous or cowardly, will be thinking of the part which fights and goes out to war on the State's behalf à The rest of the citizens may be courageous or may be cowardly, but their courage or cowardice will not, as I conceive, have the effect of making the city either one or the other." He goes on to say that to have civic virtue in this sense is to act according to the way the laws have been inculcated into the citizens; the nobler virtue would be to come to a similar understanding through the powers of reasoning and working things out for oneself, in the way a philosopher would.
Socrates makes this most clear in...