Political Obligation Theme Analysis

Socrates’ account of the virtuous life is based on a version of what later theorists will call social contract theory. According to this theory, living in a politically organized community is like signing a contract consenting to follow the rules that govern it. For Socrates, there is no real alternative to this contract––the disconnected life of the exile is, from his point of view, hardly a life at all. This contract serves as the basis for his views on morality: because one owes obedience to one’s community, its collective good must always serve as the standard for evaluating right and wrong actions.

Midway through the dialogue, Socrates adopts a new register of speech, pretending to speak as the personified “laws” (nomoi) of Athens. However, the Greek word rendered as law, nomos, is significantly broader than this translation indicates. Though it does refer to the city’s laws, the word can also mean “custom” or “institution” more generally. In line with this broad definition, Socrates gives the “laws” credit for virtually all the goods he has enjoyed in life, up to and including his own biological existence. He does this by stressing every individual’s dependence on community norms: his mother and father, for example, conceived him within a legally sanctioned marriage. Because his parents could not have married if the institution of marriage did not exist, he goes so far as to claim that one can think of the state as his real parent. He likewise credits the state for the care and education he received as a child. Although he was privately educated, he claims that the fact that the state “instructed” his father to educate him––presumably through the social expectation that men of good standing educate their sons––mean that the state was ultimately responsible for that instruction. Once again, Socrates’ education cannot be chalked up to the written laws themselves; it ultimately came down to the choices his father made (and the resources at his disposal). However, the broadness of the word nomoi stresses the fact that even private affairs like marriage and education are unthinkable without the organizing social framework the state provides.

This conception of social existence seems to be why Socrates so intensely denigrates the possibility of living in exile. Still speaking as the voice of the law, he mocks the idea sharply: “will you,” he asks himself, “avoid cities that are well governed and men who are civilized? If you do this, will your life be worth living?” Though he does not elaborate on this statement, it is reasonable to assume that Socrates considers life meaningless outside of a “well-governed” city because it entails losing access to not only a just set of laws, but also to the customs and institutions important to living a good life.

Socrates’ explanation of the importance of “the laws” becomes the first step of a three-step argument in favor of total loyalty to the state. First, the benefits one receives from the state, like education and marriage, entail a reciprocal obligation to obey it. Second, he qualifies the first step by showing that a person is not obligated to obey the state uncritically: Socrates stresses that democratic institutions like the courts provide the opportunity to convince the state that it is acting wrongly. The state might ultimately act wrongly all the same, as in the case of Socrates’ guilty verdict. However, he blames such cases on individual actors, like his jurors, rather than the institutions themselves, which retain their moral authority. Finally, his third step adds that citizenship is always consensual. Still speaking as the law, Socrates stresses: “not one of our laws raises any obstacle or forbids [an adult male citizen], if he is not satisfied with us or the city, [to go] ... anywhere else, and keep his property. We say, however, that whoever of you remains ... has in fact come to an agreement with us to obey our instructions.” Any adult male citizen can leave if he decides he doesn’t like the city’s laws. However, if a citizen decides to stay, he implicitly consents to obey them. This triple obligation amounts, for Socrates, to a binding contract of loyalty. No matter what the state orders a citizen to do––to go to war, to go to prison, to face execution––there is no moral choice but consent. For that reason, obedience to the state outweighs all other interests.