Rebecca Bond - Studying Crito - Essay Questions & Philosophical Analysis PDF

Becca Nov. 30th 2024 Essay question examples: - How is virtue an essential part of dialogue and acting justly? - Platonic Dialogue - Depicts Socrates (his teacher) in conversation with other characters, sh...

Becca Nov. 30th 2024 Essay question examples: - How is virtue an essential part of dialogue and acting justly? - Platonic Dialogue - Depicts Socrates (his teacher) in conversation with other characters, sharing his perspective - In Plato’s Socratic Dialogues, it isn’t straightforward to determine what Plato’s philosophies were on things, as sometimes Socrates doesn’t make a convincing argument, or the idea is written to be inconclusive. - Mimics literary drama in the sense that he doesn’t write word for word what was said, and a deeper analysis of the text is sometimes necessary. - Plato wrote all of his works in dialogue. Greek Tragedy - The Greek believed that their fate was determined by the gods. Greek Tragedy was central to their religion. - The Greek believed that there was no escaping our future, it was all already mapped out in advance, and that the gods took pleasure and entertainment watching tragedy and/or suffering occur in human lives. Delphic Maxims - Greek Tragedy plays would often operate around the Delphic Maxims, truths that the writers would use as a means of bringing tragedy to the characters when they did not recognize the truths. - Know Thyself: knowing your place, knowing self/fate + accepting your fate/self, knowing that you are capable of death - Nothing in Excess: not indulging in physical pleasures, desires, actions - Surety Brings Ruin: be careful of seeking out control, be careful of what you think you know, being “sure” might destroy you Oedipus Rex - In the Greek Tragedy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is abandoned by his father because his father receives a prophecy that his son will kill him. A servant was meant to kill him, but instead he is abandoned, and someone brings him to another kingdom, where the king and queen who had wanted a child took him on as their son. When Oedipus grew up, he wanted to know his fate, so he went to an Oracle, and learned that he was fated to kill his father and make love to his mother. Thinking that his adopted parents were his real  parents, he ran away from them, and ended up killing his real father (a king) running into him on a path to his old kingdom. He saves that kingdom from a sphinx, and then marries and makes love to the queen, who he doesn’t know is his mother. A plague comes over the city, and the reason is because of the death that occurred to the King. In the end, he finds out that his wife is his mother, and that he killed his father, so he gouges his eyes out, and his mother hangs herself. - In this Greek tragedy, the Delphic maxims come into play because he refuses to “know himself”, he runs away from his fate and ends up running into it in the process, and he engages in an excess of lustful and angry behavior. - Know thyself: In Oedipus’ case, he rejected the prophecy, tried to deny the fate that the oracle described to him, ran away from who he thought was his mother and father, straight into his biological father and mother, sealing his fate in the process of trying to avoid it. - Nothing in excess: Oedipus throughout the movie version of the tale was very angry and acted violently and irrationally, without any thought to what he was doing. He was also very lustful, sensual. - Surety brings ruin: Oedipus was sure that by avoiding the parents he grew up with, he would be able to avoid the prophecy coming true, but that was not the case. - By trying to control his fate, he sealed it - In the same way, his father thought that by sending his son off to be killed, that he would not be killed by his son. The Crito - In this lecture, we discuss how Plato seeks to portray the Delphic Maxims in another light through Socrates’ dialogue with Crito. - The Crito is a Socratic dialogue which takes place while Socrates is in prison following a court trial that he lost, and therefore is waiting to be executed. When Crito visits him, he experiences an excess of fear, and is trying to convince Socrates to escape. Socrates, however, explains his morals to Crito so that he is brought back to his senses. - In Crito, “Know Thyself” is portrayed in how we are able to use thoughtful reflection to know ourselves, by using that reflection to know what is moral and just in any situation. - We assess from situation to situation what the just act would be, it may vary in any scenario, but it will never stray from being good and true. - Socrates explains to Crito that when we act unjustly towards others, we are damaging our own souls, and will die a spiritual death. Just like when we treat our body badly by eating a bunch of crap, when we do bad things, we treat our soul, and the souls of others like crap. - Without knowing thyself, you risk committing spiritual suicide. Socrates knew that if he were to exile himself, he would be committing spiritual suicide because he knew it contradicted his morals. - In Crito, Socrates must apply “Nothing in Excess” due to how Crito is acting. Crito is acting out of an excess of fear, and telling Socrates that he needs to run away because he is afraid of what the many will think of him. - Avoiding a fall to excess requires prudence, aka self-discipline, because it is through prudence that we are able to align ourselves with goodness, truth, and beauty (harmonia), and orient our actions towards these. - In Crito, Crito acts to an excess of anxiety. Because he is so fearful of Socrates’ death tarnishing his OWN reputation, he is not able to reason and act towards the good. His mind is clouded by childlike fear - In reply, Socrates tells Crito that while he claims to be concerned for what the many will think of Crito and of Socrates for not escaping, he is actually really only concerned for himself. - By having a dialogue with Crito, reasoning through the moral action, Socrates is able to bring him back down to earth to understand the moral action in that scenario. - Socrates demonstrates virtue to Crito by deciding not to escape even in the face of an unfair decision, firstly, because it is never permissible to retaliate with harm to harm (a common ground Crito agrees to). We must repay injustice with justice. - Through “Socratic Therapy” aka, a level, honorable dialogue, where we recognize that each person in the dialogue is an equal, and we are aspiring to educate each other. By talking out Crito’s excess of anxiety with him, Socrates helps Crito distance himself from his childlike fear and reorients Crito towards the true, good, just actions, rather than reacting out of fear and impulse. - Rather than reacting with the first action our mind tells us to, we must reflect on where we may be in excess, and afterwards, reconsider whether that action was just, or out of fear. - For Socrates, having a sound mind, and based on the common ground that you may never repay an injustice with another injustice, he decides that the moral and just thing for him to do is to continue to align with the city where he was able to practice philosophy and become friends with the citizens, as he could have left at any point if he did not agree with the laws. However, now that he is under penalty of those laws, it would be contradictory of him to run away when they affect him. In the end, he loves the city, and it was the people who executed him, not the city. - In the Crito, “Surety Brings Ruin” is demonstrated through Socrates’ belief that we can’t control the situations we are in, or the world, but we do have control over how we react in  those situations, by orienting ourselves towards the good. So long as we act well, all we can do is hope that we chose the best/good outcome. The Virtue Central to the Crito - FRIENDSHIP!!! Friendship emerges in good, healthy, dialogue, as dialogue should be seen as an opportunity to collectively reach a common ground, and mutual education on a topic. These conversations (Such as the one between Crito and Socrates) are healing, and lead each other back to the good in order to help the other grow. - Socrates acts out of friendship towards Athens, because he knows that if he were to escape, every moral he had been teaching would likely be thrown out the window, because if he’s a hypocrite, then everyone can be too. The Comedy of the Crito - The Crito is geared towards a comedy rather than a tragedy because Plato inverted the Delphic maxims towards acting justly in our lives. It concludes that death is not a tragic thing, not if life was lived justly. - Know thyself: know that the soul desires to align itself with what is good and true - Nothing in excess: know where virtue stands, and identify where we may fail to meet that virtue out of fear within yourself - Surety brings ruin: understand that we can never be certain what we are doing is the right thing, we must act with the best information we have, and hope it is the good.