Comparing Plato's Crito And Apology

The issue at hand is the consistency of the relationship between citizens and the law. It is in the common sense that laws should be upheld and citizens should obey them to maintain social order. However, in the instances that laws are unjust, obedience to them could result in harms to innocent citizens, the case which is brought up in Plato's works Crito and Apology, where Socrates was wrongfully accused of corrupting the youths of Athens and had to suffer the death sentence. Therefore, it is important to analyze the appropriate extend to which the 'rule of law' should be upheld in the cases that laws are unjust. This essay will analyze both extremes of the argument, those who insist on obeying the unjust rules and those who choose to disobey.
In Politics, Aristotle not only stresses the importance of law but also warns against the assignment of law as the absolute sovereign, since it could end up creating oligarchy or democracy, which in his respective interpretations are less virtuous forms of government. This is due to the facts that these unvirtuous regimes have the wrong political goals in mind. Oligarchy divides up people and devalue them based on wealth and as a result creates a wealth-based society, while democracy puts law at the risk of tyranny of the
When will laws become so unjust that they shouldn’t be obeyed at all? To this I argue that it is when the existence of the laws has missed the purpose of tending for the goodness of citizens, and instead exist to exploit the people in order to serve the small benefit of only a fraction of society. Plato and Aristotle build their virtuous states on the goal of bringing a good life to people, surround the principle of ‘Eudaimonia’, a virtuous happiness and existence for citizens. In Virtue & Reason in Plato and Aristotle, A. W. Price interprets this principle to be that having Eudaimonia as the “ultimate and abstract goal of [all] deliberate human actions”. Thus, on this line of interpretation, any legitimate law should exist under the condition that it is intended to create a good life for those under it. This does not mean that the law will bring good benefits to every single member of society, but should focus on the collective