Discussing "Crito" By Plato

In this episode of Canonball we discuss "Crito," which is one of the dialogues of Plato, who lived in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

The cover art for this episode is Plato as depicted in a portion of the oil painting The Death of Socrates, which French painter Jacques-Louis David completed in 1787.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Context
• 2:27 The Majority Can Do Neither The Greatest Good Nor The Greatest Evil
• 5:29 True Principles Cannot Be Contingent On External Circumstances
• 7:23 "That Part Of Ourselves That Is Improved By Just Actions And Destroyed By Unjust Actions"
• 12:25 Socrates And Asceticism
• 16:06 The Only Question Is Whether One Is Acting Rightly
• 17:30 The Social Function Of Revenge
• 25:02 Defining Justice
• 26:02 Socrates' Trust In Athens
• 27:04 Proto-Social Contract Theory

Transcript

Today we're going to be looking at Crito, which is another of the dialogues in Plato. Last week we looked at the Apology, which was Socrates defending himself against charges of impiety, and now he has been sentenced to death. But his trial was one day after the Athenian state galley went on its annual religious mission to the island of Delos, and it was forbidden that any executions be carried out while the galley was on this annual mission. So for a month he's waiting in prison to be executed, and in this dialogue Crito comes running to the prison to tell Socrates that the galley has been sited, that it's coming, and that he will soon be executed. And Crito is trying to convince Socrates to allow him and his friends to bribe the jailkeepers, which apparently was sort of customary at the time and maybe even partially expected of Socrates' friends so that they could bring him away maybe to another country, but so he could avoid execution. And Socrates is arguing with him about why he's not going to do that. Socrates is not going to let Crito and the others help him escape, and instead he's going to stay and be executed. And one of the things that people point out about this one is that it is a very early exploration of what we today call social contract theory. This relationship between the individual and the state, or the individual and the collective, or the community. And those are of course by no means interchangeable, but they overlap and there are resemblances in how the individual relates to each of them. And what it comes down to is a debate about whether justice required that Socrates accept death under those circumstances. He had been searching for wisdom by asking people who were thought to be wise certain questions to try to see if they were wise. And in doing so, he made some enemies, some of whom then slandered him. He was charged and brought to trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. And under those circumstances, does justice require that he accept the verdict of the court and his execution? And so the ship is coming. That means that Socrates' execution can proceed. So Crito comes running into the prison to deliver this news and to try one last time to convince him to run away. And among other things, Crito says that people will think that he, Crito, could have saved Socrates but he was too stingy. He didn't want to bribe the jailers. And Socrates answers by telling him to disregard what the majority think. And Crito says that it's the slander of the majority that have brought on Socrates the greatest of evils, this execution. And Socrates says that the majority can bring on neither the greatest evil nor the greatest good. They can make people neither foolish nor wise. So Socrates says the greatest evil is making people foolish and the greatest good is making people wise and the majority can do neither of those things. He says what they do instead is, in this translation, it's written as, inflict things haphazardly. That's what the majority does. They're just random. They go this way and that way. They inflict things haphazardly. And a big part of Socrates' worldview appears to be that most people are not wise or that no one is wise, as we've seen. And we can only get at what is true by this type of investigation that he does, not by taking a poll and taking the result of the poll to be the best answer of the question. And this actually presents an interesting problem for democracy. You would never answer a math problem by putting it out to the general public and taking as true whichever answer got the most votes. You don't need a big crowd of people to answer a math problem and a big crowd of people won't answer it. What you need is the correct answer. And so then there's the question of how you go about finding the correct answer and making sure that the reasoning is solid all the way through. But you wouldn't answer this question democratically. And the same is true for any complicated question, not only physics and astronomy and biology, but carpentry and gardening and plumbing and welding and whatever else it might be. If you really wanted to get to the very best answer, you would not consult the general public. And government has a different problem, which is that deciding who the leader is going to be in a functioning democracy is going to affect the lives of all the people in it. So you get into dangerous territory when you start talking about governing without the consent of the governed. But if we take this phrase of Socrates to be true, that the majority is capable neither of the greatest good nor of the greatest evil, but that it inflicts things haphazardly, then that would mean that even a politician trying to operate in a democracy, trying to unseat some established power, would need to work with this awareness. That the majorityeven if you are working with its consent, is something that needs to be directed and guided. You can't just be its representative and sit on top of this big force that's swaying back and forth. And if that makes Socrates and Plato sound a bit undemocratic in their outlook, that's because, as we'll see if we ever get to the Republic, they are a bit undemocratic. Or their view of democracy was different from the dominant one in North America, Europe, and Australia today. It's definitely very different from that. But so back to the text, Crito says that it's unjust for Socrates to leave his sons to their fate. So now Crito is trying to argue using Socrates' interests, his own position. He's not saying, oh, it would be better for you if you got out of prison, or we'd have more fun if you lived another 10 years and we kept talking about philosophy. He's saying it would be unjust, this thing that you're trying to defend, your justice, by accepting your execution. It's unjust to abandon your sons who need you. And I don't think he specified how old the sons are, but presumably they're pretty young. They're not adults. And Socrates says, quote, not only now, but at all times, I am the kind of man who listens to nothing within me, but the argument that on reflection seems best to me. I cannot, now that this fate has come upon me, discard the arguments I used. They seem to me much the same. I value and respect the same principles as before. And if we have no better arguments to bring up at this moment, be sure that I shall not argue with you, not even if the power of the majority were to frighten us with more bogeys as if we were children, with threats of incarcerations and executions and confiscation of property, end quote. So he says, I'm somebody who only listens to the arguments that seem the best to me when I think about them, on reflection, that seem the best to me. And he says that just because this has now gone badly for me, or it has gone in such a way that some people would perceive as going badly. The principles haven't changed. The arguments haven't changed. And so even if there were all kinds of threats of incarceration, execution, and confiscation coming at me, insisting that I leave prison, I still wouldn't abandon these positions to which the strongest arguments have brought me. And he gets into a bit more of what we were talking about earlier. He talks about trusting the opinion of the many or the one who knows, the wise one, whose opinion should you trust on a given topic? And he refers at one point to quote, that part of ourselves that is improved by just actions and destroyed by unjust actions, end quote. And referring to it, he says that life is not worth living with that part of ourselves corrupted. And there, and more in the next dialogue, we're getting into some of the spirituality of Socrates and Plato, because we're getting at the edges of a concept of the soul, that part of ourselves that is improved by just actions and destroyed by unjust actions. This is what Socrates says you should care about. Not money and status and fame, but this part of yourself. It's invisible, but it's there. He says that when you do something righteous, it becomes a little bit more refined and noble. And every time you do something wicked, that part of yourself is either destroyed or harmed or cheapened or coarsened in some way. And whatever your religion, if you follow one, that's something that fits pretty comfortably into almost any outlook, including an atheistic one. And it's a thought that is useful, even if we can't exhaustively demonstrate that it's true. To imagine that you benefit when you act rightly, and you are harmed when you act wrongly, obviously encourages the individual to act in a way that's beneficial for the collective. And if everybody did that, the collective would be much better off. But more than incentivizing rule following and keeping people in line, an interest in the maintenance of and tending to this unseen part of ourselves is a test of our addiction to the world. If your concept of yourself is all tied up in the outcome of a given status game of one kind or another, what your salary is, how many Twitter followers you have, what your lifestyle looks like on social media, you are not going to be very interested in this other part of yourself. You're not going to have attention to give to it because it doesn't tickle the appetites. It doesn't stimulate that baser part of ourselves in the same way that attention and praise and admiration can in certain people to a very high degree and in pretty much everybody to a limited degree. So being really emotionally tied up in those games is going to block your ability to care about this other thing, which Socrates maybe thinks is the most important thing. He doesn't say that here, but he circles back at various points to the importance of the soul. We saw it at the end of the apology last week, and we see it here, and we'll get into it more next week. But so being tied up in the world obstructs this, but then also turning your attention toward it can cause you to lose interest in those other games.names, because they seem less important than this spiritual maintenance. But also, you distancing yourself from them will leave space in your mind for this to come through more strongly. And if you're not motivated by a concern about morality or ethics, it's worth remembering that a strong sense of justice must be a load-bearing pillar of any definition of this ineffable but indispensable concept that we call honor. And by the way, I'm not talking about any particular definition of justice, and I reject the effort of any social, cultural, political project to monopolize this term. Wherever you are, culturally or politically, you should be concerned about getting to the bedrock of justice and applying what you find there in your life, as Socrates and Plato certainly were. But to make sure I was able to convey what I meant there, when I say that a concern about that part of ourselves that is improved by just actions and destroyed by unjust actions is a cause, effect, and test of our distance from worldly pleasure of one kind or another, what I mean is that turning your attention toward that part of yourself will naturally lower your interest in those pleasures, including status-seeking. But also that the reverse is true, that lowering your interest in those pleasures will make this aspect of yourself more prominent in your thinking. It's kind of like it's a really smart guy who's really quiet, and so when there's a bunch of idiots in the room making a bunch of noise, you can't hear him. But then when they leave, you can hear him. It's sort of like that. And then in between those two things, these can be a test of each other. In a way, they're in a zero-sum battle for the territory of your mind and your personality. If you feel one very prominently, the other is probably absent. And the more you cultivate and feed one or spend mental time in it, the stronger it becomes, the more accustomed you are to easily slipping into that mode without having to do so deliberately. And here, Socrates is at least verbalizing that this concern with justice was totally sovereign in his personality, and he had completely subjugated the concern with worldly pleasures of any kind, including life itself, much less social standing or food or drink or sex or a comfortable physical environment. And Socrates was basically a quintessential ascetic. He rejected all of this stuff completely, and he focused entirely on what he viewed as his soul. Now, the one caveat there is that there are many ascetics who go out in the woods and just contemplate God, whereas Socrates was very interested in human life. But he himself had no money, had basically no social standing in the traditional sense. He had something because we're still reading his thoughts 24 centuries later, but enough powerful people thought of him as, at best, a kind of a weirdo, and at worst, a seditious threat who needed to be executed. And I like the ascetic ideal for probably the same reason that some people have liked it for thousands of years, which is that it seems to reflect some kind of inner strength to be able to stand alone without these various supports that people cling to. But there's a problem with that kind of quietism in general, which is that if you cede power, if you don't try to have any influence or any power or any money, then all you're doing is guaranteeing that people who are more caught up in the games of the world are going to take it. You're going to make it easier for them by removing yourself from the competition. And the end of that road is not just being like Socrates, a wise man executed by dummies. If it were just that, we could say, well, everybody has to die someday, and isn't that a noble death, dying, sticking to your principles? But that's only what it is at the individual level. If you iterate the Socrates situation 10,000 times so that all the dummies execute all the wise men, then what you end up with maybe is the overquoted, but very relevant, 1984 bootstamping on a human face forever. So that's why I think about this at the individual level as a kind of split-level game. In international relations, they talk about the split-level game, which is how a country has its domestic policy and its foreign policy, and the two often affect each other, but they have to be thought about sort of separately. And I really like asceticism in the individual sense, recognizing your mortality and the consequences of that, and seeing that both the pleasures and the pains of this world are ephemeral, and you don't need to take either category of stimulations very seriously. But then at the collective level, we can have goals and objectives for society and culture in the short, medium, and long term, and that doesn't contradict the first part of the outlook. In fact, it might be a natural outgrowth of it, because as we've talked about, becauseyou are bound to die, your community becomes more important, not less important. This is the weird thing about nihilism. People say, well, we're all going to die someday, so why don't we just wring as much pleasure out of this short life as we can? That doesn't logically follow at all. You could just as easily say, we're all going to die someday, therefore let's eschew our own pleasure and put our noses to the grindstone building a robust and vigorous civilization that future generations can enjoy. We are born into this strange set of circumstances that include consciousness, awareness of pleasure and pain, awareness of the passage of time, and certain death. Thinking, speaking, and acting with a recognition that pleasure and pain are as evanescent as death is certain is a rational or perhaps the rational way to confront these circumstances. But that recognition does not require that socially and collectively we cede the field to cretins who are driven around by their appetites. In fact, it may require the opposite and it certainly permits the opposite. Anyway, let's get back to the text. Socrates says, quote, you were wrong to believe that we should care for the opinion of the many about what is just, beautiful, good, and their opposites, end quote. And later he says, quote, the most important thing is not life, but the good life, end quote. And that expresses very simply why he's willing to die, is that he's not trying to extend his life because just life by itself is not the point, but the good life. If he were to extend his life now, according to him, it would not be good life, it would not be just living. And maybe it would tarnish the life that he had lived up to that point. So not only in his view would he not gain anything by living longer, he might lose something that he values very highly. And in being poor, again, it's not that Socrates doesn't value anything, but his values are very different from most people's. And he says it himself, he says that money, reputation, and child rearing are the concerns of the many, but the only valid consideration is whether one is acting rightly in bribing the jailers. He says, quote, if it appears that we shall be acting unjustly, then we have no need at all to take into account whether we shall have to die if we stay here and keep quiet or suffer in another way rather than do wrong, end quote. So he says the only question is whether it's just or not. Everything else is superfluous. It doesn't matter if you're going to suffer, it doesn't matter if you're going to die. The only question is which action is just. And expanding on that, Socrates says, quote, do we say that one must never in any way do wrong willingly or must one do wrong in one way and not in another? Is to do wrong never good or admirable, as we have agreed in the past, or have all these former agreements been washed out during the last few days? Have we at our age failed to notice for some time that in our serious discussions we were no different from children? Above all, is the truth such as we used to say it was, whether the majority agree or not, and whether we must still suffer worse things than we do now, or will we be treated more gently that nonetheless wrongdoing or injustice is in every way harmful and shameful to the wrongdoer? Do we say so or not? Crito says we do. Socrates says, so one must never do wrong. Crito says certainly not. Then Socrates, nor must one when wronged inflict wrong in return, as the majority believe, since one must never do wrong. That seems to be the case. Come now, should one do harm to anyone or not, Crito? One must never do so. Well then, if one has done harm, is it right, as the majority say, to do harm in return or is it not? It is never right. Doing harm to people is no different from wrongdoing. That is true. One should never do wrong in return, nor do any man harm no matter what he may have done to you. And he emphasizes the point of this. And Crito, see that you do not agree to this, contrary to your belief. For I know that only a few people hold this view or will hold it, and there is no common ground between those who hold this view and those who do not. But they inevitably despise each other's views. So then consider very carefully whether we have this view in common and whether you agree. And let this be the basis of our deliberation, that neither to do wrong nor to return a wrong is ever correct, nor is doing harm in return for harm done. Or do you disagree and do not share this view as a basis for discussion? I have held it for a long time and still hold it now. But if you think otherwise, tell me now. If, however, you stick to our former opinion, then listen to the next point." So there are a few things going on there. He starts by emphasizing this thing that they've brought up in their past debates. He asks, is it true that we should never do wrong ever? Or is it okay to do wrong sometimes? Because if it's okay to do wrong sometimes, then in the past when we thought we were having serious discussions, we were just like children. We weren't having serious discussions. We were just playing. And Crito agrees with that. And so then Socrates goes from there and says, then you can't do revenge. You can't return a wrong with a wrong because it's justas wrong to return a wrong as it is to do one initially. Both of them are acting wrongly. And you heard it, Socrates really drills down on that point because he says, people really disagree about this. Only a few people hold my opinion. And if we don't agree on this, then nothing else that I talk about next is going to make sense. So do you agree with this? He asks Crito and Crito says, yes. And I have to say that I disagree with that. And maybe someday I'll be wiser than I am now. And I'll read this again and I'll say, no, now I get it. Socrates was right about that. But to me right now, it still looks like a problem of the individual and the collective. And hopefully next week, we'll be looking at Fido. And there we get a lot more into either Socrates or Plato's view of what they call the soul. That one is sometimes called on the soul. And scholars will talk about this one looks like it has more of Plato's influence. That one looks like it has less. And so maybe Fido is more Plato than Socrates. That's hard to distinguish. But there, one of the two is very concerned about the soul and the condition of the soul. And in light of that, this kind of absolutism makes sense. You develop a rule, you follow it, no matter what the consequences are from the external world, even if it means death, because what really matters is the condition of your soul, as we were talking about earlier. But to me, that seems to be only following the consequences of your actions a certain distance. If all wise and moral people forbid themselves revenge, returning a wrong done to them, then all that means is that in the aggregate, I've tinkered in the past a little bit with what's called agent-based modeling. And this is a kind of computer program where you create a little simple virtual aquarium, a little environment, and you can create a certain number of agents of little digital beings. They're just dots essentially, or they can have whatever traits you want them to have. And you can program the environment to have any rules that you want it to have. And you can have different categories of agents and you can have them interact with each other in a certain way. And you set the whole thing up and then you hit go and you run the little simulation and you see what happens. And this kind of modeling is useful and interesting in a certain way. It's limited in other ways, but it's very cool. And it's very fun to tinker with, especially if you're interested in politics and society. But if we were to build a model that says there's going to be a category of people called wise people or moral people or just people, and they can never return an injustice done to them, unless the entire population of the model behaves that way, then all that means, even if there is one unjust person, we then drop into the environment, one agent who doesn't have this restraint. He is able to behave unjustly and he can return a wrong. He wouldn't have this problem because nobody would ever do anything wrong to him because he's the only unjust person in the environment, but he's able to behave how he wants. The others cannot even respond in kind to his wrongdoing. He'll just eventually get everything. He'll just kill all of the wise people and none of them can kill him. And then he gets everything. And that doesn't even reflect the situation that we're in because in the actual world, there isn't 99 wise people and one unjust person. There are very, very few wise people and a huge majority, pretty much everyone who's not Socrates, are unjust. And then there's some kind of bell curve among the unjust people of cowardice and aggression. So if you had a whole population of unjust people and you imagine a bell curve where the middle is some kind of median amount of cowardly and aggressive, there's one end that's very cowardly, and then there's one end that's very aggressive. They're not afraid of anything and they are very unjust and they are just going to pursue their own power. And a lot of them are going to get killed in one way or another in the pursuit, but some of them are going to get control of the society because the others are just not as aggressive as them, though they are as unjust, or they might also be a little bit more just, but they're not perfectly just. We can have some nuance there. So it becomes a question of how far you have to follow the moral consequences of your actions. Because if your prescription, a just person, can never ever act unjustly, even to return an injustice, if the consequence of that is simply an unjust tyranny where all kinds of people face all kinds of injustice continuously, and that could have been avoided if not for your prescription, if people retaliated against injustice against them, then that prescription isn't just, or it can't be argued to be the most just position. It might only look that way because he has drawn the boundaries of the consequences that he cares about as being limited to his own life. He says, I'm willing to die for this and I'm not able to do wrong in order to prevent my own death. Fine, that's something that only has to do with you and you have dominion over your own existence. But what about the ripples that go past the edge of your existence and start to affect other people's? If we follow those further, I thinkSocrates's argument gets into a little bit of trouble here, but also we haven't yet clearly defined What is justice and I'm confident that somewhere in this giant book of Plato? We're gonna get at some very nice lines about what justice is but I feel like I've read somewhere in Plato in the past that it has something to do with giving people what they deserve or Settling accounts and since I don't have a nice quote I can't say Oh Socrates says this over here Plato says this over here and now he's saying that there I'm just giving a vague memory that I have of something like that But we could say maybe you don't have to even go out to the societal level to show the problem with this Maybe you could say no justice is Balancing it's returning in kind just as it would be unjust to Fail to pay somebody for work that they did because it would be an imbalance Somebody did you a good and you did not give them good in return? It could be argued that it would be unjust to not repay wrong in a balanced way But then we'd have to figure out what our agreed-upon definition of justice is But so here Socrates is saying that justice is never doing wrong or that the just man can never do wrong And again, there's a vulnerability there because we could argue as we just did and say that it wouldn't be wrong to respond in kind It would be just anyway, I've lingered on that point for a while. I'm sure you understand what I mean So I'll move on later He says quote do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force? But are nullified and said it not by private individuals and quote and I think a line like that shows a bit why? Socrates had this view which is that it seems from this dialogue and other passages from it that I think we're gonna get to That he and or Plato really loved and trusted Athens He viewed it generally as a just system He didn't say this thing is rotten all the way to the core All the judges are corrupt the jury were bought out or anything like that He generally has a good view of the system and he doesn't want to harm it by going against the verdicts of its courts Socrates says quote if we leave here without the city's permission Are we harming people whom we should least do harm to and are we sticking to a just agreement or not? Crito I cannot answer your question Socrates I do not know Socrates look at it this way if as we were planning to run away from here or whatever one should call it the laws in The state came and confronted us and asked tell me Socrates. What are you intending to do? Do you not by this action? You are attempting intend to destroy us the laws and indeed the whole city as far as you are concerned Or do you think it is possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force? But are nullified and said it not by private individuals What shall we answer to this and other such arguments for many things could be said especially by an orator on behalf of this law We are destroying which orders that the judgments of the courts shall be carried out Shall we say an answer the city wronged me and its decision was not right. Shall we say that or what Crito? Yes by Zeus Socrates. That is our answer Socrates then what if the laws said was that the agreement between us Socrates or was it to respect the judgments that the city came to and If we wondered at their words, they would perhaps add Socrates do not wonder at what we say but answer since you are accustomed to proceed by question and answer come now What accusation do you bring against us in the city that you should try to destroy us? Did we not first bring you to birth and was it not through us that your father married your mother and begat you? Do you find anything to criticize in those of us who are concerned with marriage? And I would say that I do not criticize them or in those of us concerned with the nurture of babies and the education that You two received were those assigned to that subject not right to instruct your father to educate you in the arts and in physical Culture and I would say that they were right very well They would continue and after you were born and nurtured and educated Could you in the first place deny that you are our offspring and servant both you and your forefathers if that is so Do you think that we are on an equal footing as regards the right and that whatever we do to you? It is right for you to do to us You were not on an equal footing with your father as regards the right nor with your master if you had one So as to retaliate for anything they did to you to revile them if they reviled you to beat them if they beat you and so With many other things Do you think you have this right to retaliation against your country and its laws that if we undertake to destroy you and think it? Right to do so you can undertake to destroy us as far as you can in return And will you say that you are right to do so you who truly care for virtue and quote and regrettably? I don't read ancient Greek. So I'm just reading this in English, but I tried to find out what ancient Greek term Plato is using here to refer to the state and I got two answers Some say polis or polis which seems to be a more simple term like state in English But I also saw the term politea politeia a source was saying that that term is used in this dialogue in the original text and thenAnd that term can be interpreted more broadly to refer to a political community or political order. And the reason I tried rather unsuccessfully to pin down exactly what term he was using and exactly what he meant was because there is certainly something to the view that a human exists as a function of the community that they exist in. Not only are they conceived by their parents and birthed by their mother and raised usually in the most close way by their parents, but they also get a lot of their ideas and their personality from the culture that they grow up in. Not only their religion, but their etiquette and their views of themselves and the world and the other people around them. If you just drop a newborn off in the woods, first of all, it's just going to die. But let's assume that it didn't. Let's say that a newborn could fend for itself kind of the way that a baby rabbit does to a certain extent. And as long as it avoids getting eaten, it could reach maturity without the help of an adult from its own species, which a baby human cannot do at all. That person would be radically different than a person who grew up in a community. So much so that I think it would be impossible to argue that they would even be the same person. It's not that you could argue that they would be a different person. I'm saying that you couldn't argue that they would be the same person. Because all of the things that make up their personality wouldn't be there. Keep in mind that there are these unusual cases in history of children who were locked in dark rooms or didn't get enough human interaction when they were very young, and they pretty much never recover because they didn't develop language at a certain age. Their brains don't develop in a certain way. And even as adults, as people who are 25 years old, they are essentially severely disabled. A person who doesn't grow up in a community doesn't even have that, much less all of the other cultural assumptions and expectations that get front-loaded into your brain in your childhood and adolescence. So the individual definitely owes something to the community, because they wouldn't be who they are without the community. And in some cases, they might have a debt of wrong to the community. You have to be cautious with that idea, but we can leave some room for it. And the state, according to a certain view and in maybe an ideal context, is a sort of concentrated instrument of the community, of the nation. The community gradually realizes there are these different things that they're trying to do. They're trying to share their wealth. Maybe they're trying to institutionalize certain social relations. Maybe they're enjoying a collective identity. And so the state emerges as an outgrowth of the community trying to do these things for itself. This is one possible explanation of where a state comes from. It's not an anarchist explanation, but I'm not an anarchist. So you can see where Socrates gets his view that the state has been so instrumental to your life up to this point, or the politeia or the polis, that you can't now reject it because it's made a decision that you don't like, because it has already done so much for you and you enjoyed it then. So you can't break that contract now. He doesn't use the term contract, but this is the passage and the ideas that people talk about as being related to social contract theory, and Rousseau can be seen as a descendant of Socrates in this way. But this again seems to show Socrates's view of Athens as a kind of ideal state, because this view that he's expressing here seems to leave very little room for revolt. He's saying, I'm 70, I've lived my whole life here, and he says later, you were free to leave if you didn't like the system, you didn't have to stay, but whoever remains has made an agreement. And Socrates left Athens only for his military service. So that shows that he supported the system. But let's say that when you were 30, you decided, well, there's something unjust about this system and I'm going to try to talk to people about changing it. Would Socrates make the same argument? I'm not sure. Maybe he would say, well, when you're 30, if you have some objections, you can voice them. But I'm 70, I've been here this whole time, I can't now at the very end of my life go against this system. But it still does seem a little bit that he has an idealized view of what the state is relative to the community. But he was a very wise man who was living there at the time. So maybe he saw it as being very just because it was, but I think then it would be a mistake to apply that view of government to one that had become very corrupted, that it wasn't that it was very just at every step of the way and you suddenly turned against it. But it does maybe give us a vision of what a government ought to be. Something that serves the needs of a community or a nation of people such that a person can't object to it, even if he's being put to death, that he would have to morally answer this question the same way that Socrates did. And I'll leave it there for now. Farewell until next time, take care, and happy reading.