In PlatoÆs Crito, Socrates argues that the authority of the city reigns supreme and citizens must obey its laws and orders. Socrates tells Crito that he should answer the following question as if it were the State asking it of him: ôAre we right in saying that you agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not in word only,ö (Plato 1956, 103). CritoÆs answer is affirmative and in so being he agrees that a ôlittle more lifeö is not worth transgressing the ômost sacred lawsö of the state that he has agreed to obey, (Plato 1956, 105).
In the Crito, a friend of SocratesÆ comes to ask him if he would like to escape from the sentence of death that has been handed down by his judges. Socrates remains adamant that one must follow oneÆs own path to the end and refuses the assistance of Meletus. Having disobeyed the laws of the Thirty, Socrates is now unwilling to disobey the sentence of death that he must shortly face. Throughout his life, Socrates has been willing to suffer the consequences of his own actions, even if they are painful or in this case final. Socrates is mature, experience, and wise enough to know that when he rejected the mandates of the Thirty and continued to teach his own ideas that the consequences of his actions included the likelihood of being sentenced to death. He knew that as Athenian State law was constructed, his insistence on such a course of action placed him in jeopardy of his own death. He still followed his own conscience and his God, which he deemed a higher authority than state law.
In obeying the more sacred laws of God, Socrates made a choice between the temporal and the spiritual law that jointly governs manÆs life on earth. Such a move does not deny the force or the validity of human law (even when that law can be shown to be unjust, flawed, or otherwise inappropriate). Again in the Crito, Socrates argues that were he to escape to Thebes or Megara (States better govern...