Plato’s Crito; Why Socrates choose to die?

Plato’s Crito discusses whether Socrates should have fled before his execution. Was Socrates’ decision to stay and die just?

The Death of Socrates, Jacques Louis David, 1787. Source: The Met Museum

In Plato’s Crito, the Philosopher Socrates is in prison. In 399 BCE, Socrates was found guilty of two crimes.

1. Impiety (He was not respecting gods)

2. Corrupting the youth of Athens

In this dialogue, Plato introduced his teacher Socrates and Crito, a friend of Socrates who asks him to help him out of prison. The only difficulty was that Socrates did not want to go. Socrates, who spent most of his life studying the nature of justice, argues that we should not disobey the law, even if the laws appear to be unfair.

Here I am sharing with you the summary of Plato’s Crito and my own analysis on the dialogue. I focused on the arguments of both Socrates and Crito but the dialogue is much like a play and we need to pay much attention to the context and setting of the actions to really understand what’s going on.

The dialogue starts when Socrates wakes up and finds Crito sitting within his prison cell. Crito has come earlier and waited for Socrates to wake up. The question her is why didn’t Crito wake up Socrates, if he really wanted him out of orison? Well you will the answer to this question in the later paragraphs.