Overview

Many people read the Crito primarily as a companion piece to the Apology and as one of Plato's statements on the nature of politics and the citizen's relationship to the state. This book challenges both of those assumptions and shows, by close analysis of the characters, the argument and the dramatic features of the dialogue, that it is best read as an exploration of the nature and significance of Socratic moral reasoning. It shows that there is a single argument throughout the dialogue and that the 'Laws of Athens' are best understood as supporting Socrates' attempt to convince Crito that a commitment to the currently best rational argument justifies his submission to the death penalty, despite the injustice of his sentence. The importance of the Crito for later political and legal theory is great, but the reception of the dialogue should not blind us to its original intention and significance.

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9781009754569

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Brad Inwood is William Lampson Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Yale University. He is the author of numerous works, including: Ethics and Action in Early Stoicism (1985), The Poem of Empedocles (second edition 2001), Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (2005), Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters (2007), Ethics After Aristotle (2014), Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction (2018), and Later Stoicism 155 BC to 200 AD (Cambridge, 2022).

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