One word that jumped out at me in the Crito was the word “persuade” when Socrates was talking about the laws speaking to him. I have a hard time with this notion of somebody persuading the law. I think they make light of it in this text, essentially either you obey our laws or you convince us to do something else. While I do think it’s important that Athens acknowledges that its citizens have power and should have a voice in their government, I do not think changing a law is as simple as persuasion. If one simple trial takes a 500 person jury, I can’t imagine the process to actually change a law. This stood out to me so much just because of the casual nature of it.
Another word that stuck with me is one Socrates used many times in his trial, and that word is “advice”. He believed he was simply giving advice to the people of Athens about wisdom. Similar to my first word, I remembered this because of the casual nature of it. Would Socrates really be on trial for simply giving people advice? Of course, to him he thought he was just counseling people to live a better life. He was trying to tell them they are not as wise as they think they are, and it would be a good idea if that recognized that sooner than later. But this “advice” clearly did not go over well with the many citizens of Athens. I understand that nobody wants to be told that they are unintelligent in one way or another, but if it was just advice as Socrates claims, did people really need to get so offended?
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