Citizens Must Obey Its Laws and Orders According to Socrates

In obeying the more blessed laws of God, Socrates made a choice between the temporal and the religious law that jointly governs man's life on earth. Such a move does not deny the force or the rigour of human law (even when that law can be shown to be unjust, flawed, or other(a)wise inappropriate). Again in the Crito, Socrates moots that were he to wetting to Thebes or Megara (States better governed than Athens from his perspective), he would be regarded justifiedly by the citizens of those States as having disobeyed the laws of his own State. He will be viewed as a "subverter of laws, and (he) will confirm in the minds of the judges the judge of their own condemnation of you," (Plato 1956, 104).

In other words, by submitting to an unjust law employed against him by workforce who are performing not in the interest of justice but from a desire for revenge or in the flesh(predicate) gratification, Socrates is demonstrating that his respect for the law is superior to theirs. More significantly, he is affirming that " goodfulness and justice and institutions and laws being (are) the best things among men," (Plato 1956, 104). He asks "who would care closely a State that had no laws," (Plato 1956, 104). States by their very spirit must make laws to control the conduct of citizens; while it was Socrates' death in his teaching to lead men to make laws that were just and fair, he never suggested that "bad" laws were not to be obeyed - changed, most assuredly, but nev

Plato. Crito. In Irwin Edman, (Ed.)., The plant life of Plato. New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1956, 84-104.

Socrates did not see himself as a dupe of the law, but rather as a victim of men.

He felt that just as the individual cannot secure bliss through and through injustice, so too can the demesne altogether anticipate that it will meet its goals and fulfill its functions through the pursuit of justice. Centuries later the works of men like Rousseau and others would argue that due to the "social contract" citizens did have a right to rise up against the State if they felt the state were acting in an unjust manner. However, Socrates argues that the virtue of the thought leading to happiness is justice and its defect is injustice. He believes that a just soul or a just man will have intercourse well while the unjust will not. It therefore follows that only the virtuous and just man is or can be happy and that injustice practiced by the individual or by the state will only involve unhappiness. He concludes that injustice can never be more meshable than justice itself, and that this should inform pursuit of virtue. For this reason, he affirms the perspicaciousness of the Thirty and willingly accepts their punishment even though
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