Topics Philosophers

Question After discussing Socrates and his views on the state in Crito, a question came to mind. How would Socrates behave in 1930's Nazi Germany when the time came to join the military? Would his sense of right and wrong win out over his loyalty to the state? Or would he feel too great a responsibility to the state, as he clearly seems to in Crito, to put his personal choices and morality over it? Thanks, Jan-Erik

Accepted:
September 20, 2008

Comments

The question you pose continues to be debated by Socrates/Plato scholars, so you should probably regard the answer I will give as a controversial one. On the one hand, as scholars who wish to resist the "authoritarian" reading of the Crito insist, Socrates clearly says that it is unjust to harm another, and that one who commits injustice actually harms himself most of all. But this can only serve to avoid the authoritarian reading if we beg the question of whether Socrates would believe that refusing to serve an unjust regime was what justice required.

Here is something else we know about Socrates: He actually did serve--several times--in the Athenian army during the Pelopponesian War. On at least one of the campaigns we know he was a part of, Athens was attempting to kill all of the inhabitants of Potidaia. One might expect a moralist like Socrates to have some qualms about genocide!

Socrates plainly recognizes that many things decided by the Athenians--including in particular decisions made by due process according to Athenian Law--were wrong. But the view he argues in the Crito seems to be that as a citizen he should obey the law (although he gives some indication that this is binding only provisional upon the legal system being one that one has antecedently accepted, and where one has also decided not to leave the state). The only way I can think he would regard such obedience as consistent with his prohibition against ever doing injustice is if he thinks that it is never unjust to obey a valid law of a constitutional state, even when the law itself commands what is unjust. presumably, the way this works is that the responsibility for the injustice, in such cases, does not lie with the citizen who obeys, but rather with those responsible for passing the law.

So, all this seems to indicate to me that Socrates would have been a good citizen--like so many of the German people who were not happy with the Nazis, but who served in the military anyway, because they supposed it was their civic responsibility. At some point, of course, we might also expect Socrates to find the increasing roguishness of the Nazi regime to force hin to reconsider his "agreement" with the state, in which case, he would think it better to leave than to continue to obey.