Socrates' fatal error in the Crito

In Plato's Crito, whose dramatic setting is just after Socrates has been convicted and sentenced to death, Crito tries to convince Socrates to escape.  In response, Socrates argues two things:

1. that since living well (morally, justly) is of primary importance, all of the reasons Crito uses to try to convince Socrates to escape and save his own life (concern for the reputation and wellbeing of his friends; concern for his children's wellbeing) are ultimately meaningless if the act of escaping is itself unjust, and
2. the act of escaping is unjust because in doing so Socrates would essentially be going back on his word to live according to the laws of Athens (i.e., he would be breaking "the implied contract" [Jowett's translation] he had agreed to).

The first point is familiar Socratic fare and he uses familiar means to argue for it, including invoking the notion of expert knowledge, claiming that moral knowledge is analogous to other domains of knowledge (such as health) in that there is expertise to be had there, and that "the many" do not have expertise in moral knowledge (and that therefore we should not regard their opinions).  Thus, Socrates argues that Crito shouldn't care if "the many" think that he (and Socrates' other friends) was cowardly for not helping Socrates escape, because the many do not know what they are talking about.

The second point is more unique to the Crito--the idea that being a citizen requires consenting to be ruled by the laws of the land--come what may.  That is, Socrates seems to think that we have an absolute duty to obey the laws and that by having lived under them throughout one's life, one has given implicit consent to live by them in all of their manifestations.  This is a strong claim; not even Hobbes thought that our duty to the social contract was that absolute.  (For Hobbes, what backs the social contract is ultimately our rational self interest, so if the following the contract is no longer in our self interest--as it could be if the Leviathan were enforcing the law in an unfair way--then Hobbes thinks that our reason/self-interest no longer compels us to follow it.)  

How does Socrates defend this claim?  In 50b-54d, Socrates anthropomorphizes the laws and has a conversation with them.  The first point "the laws" make is that in disregarding them, Socrates is attempting to overturn and destroy them (a very Hobbesian point; excuse the anachronism).  The second point the laws make is that they have made him (Socrates) what he is (and his ancestors before him) and that, therefore, he is not on equal terms with them (the laws) but is, rather, their slave/child.  Thus, just because they deem it right to destroy him doesn't mean he has the right to destroy them (assuming the standard master/slave parent/child understanding of Socrates' time).  The third point the laws make is that Socrates had willingly entered into the contract--had he not liked the laws, he could have gone somewhere else.  Thus, there is no fundamental unjustness in the contract Socrates has entered into with the laws since he did so willingly. Finally, the laws say that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil, not the least of which because one will be better treated in the afterlife.  (The laws above have "brethren" below, they say, and these brethren below will treat Socrates well if he has lived well--a far cry from the Homeric conception of the afterlife, where death reduces all to nothing, regardless of earthy merit.)  

Both here and elsewhere, Socrates idealizes too much.  He imagines that the laws are an austere thing, that justice is blind (to use a modern metaphor).  But even if we grant that the laws themselves are austere and blind, there are people and entities who enforce the laws and these are definitely not blind (nor austere).   They are driven by self interest (broadly defined) and do not particularly care about those trammeled en route to their particular view of the way the world should be.  More importantly, propaganda, which shapes our thoughts and values in a non rational way, permeates not only the carrying out of laws but the laws themselves.  Any constitutional democracy will change its laws through time and the crucial question that Socrates leaves unasked is: what forces shape the creation and application of the laws?  In the Crito, the laws "tell" Socrates that he has benefited from them and they have shaped him into the person he is today.  This may well be, but one wonders what Socrates would say about an individual who has never benefitted from the laws?  More importantly, however, one wonders how Socrates would deal with the question of bias in the application of the laws and in the laws themselves?  After all, just because Socrates has benefitted from the laws thus far doesn't mean that the laws are just.  To Socrates' Hobbesian (or Kantian??) point that he has made an agreement with the laws that he can't go back on, what one wants to say to him is: If the laws can be bent by this or that unjust human purpose, then why should our duty to the law be absolute? Surely, our duty is only to uphold laws (and their application) that are just and not just any law!

Real life is messier than perhaps Plato desired it to be.  Nowhere is this more true than in politics and in the creation and maintenance of laws.  Much more than the Socratic view of laws, I tend towards the John Godrey Saxe view: "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."  In any case, it is certainly hard to see how anyone with an understanding of politics and governance in the United States today could hold any other view on the topic.