Socrates' Noncooperation with Illegal Injustice

Thinking a bit more about Plato's Socrates in the Apology, it strikes me that there is a principle of noncooperation with injustice in the philosopher's refusal to try the Athenian generals illegally after the battle of Argusinae. He tells his Athenian judges: “I thought I should run any risk on the side of law and justice rather than join you, for fear of prison or death, when you were engaged in an unjust course” (32b-c).

This same principle of noncooperation underlies his disobedience to the oligarchs' orders to arrest Leon of Salamis in order to execute him unjustly: “They gave many such orders to many people, in order to implicate as many as possible in their guilt. Then I showed again, not in words but in action, that...death is something I couldn't care less about, but my whole concern is not to do anything unjust or impious” (32c-d).

Socrates does not start a resistance movement, but he does resist individually. This may be in line with Thoreau's idea that a single individual who conscientiously resists injustice can initiate a moral revolution: “Action from principle — the perception and the performance of right — changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was.” I am calling it a principle of “noncooperation” borrowing Gandhi's term.

Note that Socrates resists the unjust breaking of law. Now the question is: What if the law is unjust? For that, I might turn to Plato's dialogue Crito.

Note: Text cited from Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates, Trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1975).