Ethics: When is justifiable to violate the law?

In the republic that Socrates (Plato) envisions, harmony of personal and civic relationships is based on political education and desire for wisdom. In Plato, sovereignty is confined to the philosopher-king who is the highest and best expression of reason. When wisdom and reason of citizens are accomplished, political harmony will follow. There is also a moral foundation for the state, based on virtue, justice, wisdom, and guided by the just and virtuous psychology of its rulers. Plato (Socrates) refers to justice as "the power which produces states or individuals" who function according to their proper nature, having internalized the values of this perfect society:

[Justice] . . . is not a matter of external behaviour, but of the inward self . . . . The just man . . . sets his house in order, by self-mastery and discipline . . . . Only when he has linked these parts together in well-tempered harmony . . . will he be ready to go about whatever he may have to do, whether it be making money . . . or the affairs of state (Plato 141-2

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t to that project entails a willingness to take the consequences of the fact that the project has not been accomplished, as well as a trust in the ultimate vindication of a more perfect and just application of the laws. If Socrates unjustly suffers, then the injustice and moral squalor of Athenian law are inescapably exposed, and the whole of Athenian society will have been shamed into a project of revolutionary transformation. Although Socrates's revolutionary project did not succeed once and for all, his reputation, as well as principled and consistent Socratic logic, survived the Athenian structure of state. Socratic logic of the laws, which includes the idea of taking the consequences associated with violating their injustice, is in the background of ideas associated with civil disobedience. Therefore by this logic the protester must believe that it is better to go to federal prison for refusing to support the bad policy (or for burning a draft card) than to refuse support indirectly, by cheating on a tax return. Paying the tax and complaining about it is another option, but as far as Socratic logic is concerned, the only morally meaningful protest is one that directly contradicts the law. Thus if the tax protester (or thousa
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Approximate Word count = 3511
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)

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