Dominant interpretations of Plato's Crito attempt to reconstruct the text deductively, taking the arguments in the famous Laws’ speech as consisting solely in the application of general principles to facts. It is thus conceived that the principles and facts are grasped independently of each other, and then the former are applied to the latter, subsequently reaching the conclusion that Socrates must not escape. Following the lead of Cora Diamond, who argues against this ‘generalist interpretation’, I argue that the Laws’ speech (...) essentially involves an exercise of our moral imagination through which both principles and the facts to which they apply are grasped. This is not to say that a deductive argument is absent from the Laws’ speech. Rather, for the first time, we understand how the deductive arguments in the Laws’ speech can function through imagining a life in which these arguments make sense. The Crito is an attempt to exercise the readers’ imagination, thereby presenting ethics that is both personal and objective. Understanding the Laws’ arguments essentially requires the readers’ imaginative involvement with Socrates’ personal story, but they still have objective import. (shrink)

The Greeks knew a virtue term that represented the ability to determine which norms deserved commitment, a virtue term usually misunderstood as “prediction of likely outcomes” or “being hesitant”:promêtheia. Plato’s uses of this term, almost completely ignored by scholarship, show a sensitivity to the prerequisites for the capacity for rational agency. We must add this virtue term to the usual suspects related to acting as a rational agent:sôphrosunê, dikaiosunê, phrônesis, andsophia.Promêtheiastands out for its importance in times of ignorance of the (...) future. (shrink)

Speeches and persuasion dominate Plato’s Crito. This paper, paying particular attention to the final passage in the dialogue, shows that the focus on speeches, persuasion and allusions to many other elements of rhetoric is an integral part of Plato’s severe criticism of democracy, one of the main points of the Crito. Speeches allow members of a democracy – represented in our dialogue by Crito – firstly to break the law for self-interested reasons while considering themselves still to be law-abiding citizens, (...) and secondly to feel that they are in a tolerant society preferring logos/persuasive speech above bia/compulsion. Socrates counters Crito’s speeches with speeches of his own, not only to defeat him at his own game, but also to make him aware how dangerous the game is. Real knowledge is preferable to speeches, but a democracy without speeches and rhetoric is doomed. (shrink)