Plato’s Crito

Week 8: Review and reflection, with a dissenting view — Plato’s

In view of the discussion of one’s duty to the laws that takes shape in the Crito, it is worth offering some kind of perspective from Plato’s own later career: in a letter addressed to Dion and friends (generally known as the Seventh Letter, though perhaps the only one of the letters attributed to Plato that has much chance of being genuine), he takes a very different approach. Apparently rather late in his life (and hence well after the composition of the Crito, which comes from the earliest days of his career), he wrote a letter reflecting on the validity of law and the governance of the various states (including Athens) that he has examined.

How does this curious discussion reflect what the personified Law of Athens says in the Crito?

Here is the text at the MIT CLassics site. The translation is somewhat old, and the e-text has a handful of manageable errors; if there is anything that puzzles you about it, let me know.

Here is the text at the Perseus site, in Greek, with a (different) translation available (just click on the "show" link in the block to the right for English [1966]).

If you’re reading along in Greek, cover 53a8-54e2.