Note 17 — Chapter X · KRITON.

Xenoph. Mem. i. 1, 16. Αὐτὸς δὲ περὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπείων ἀεὶ διελέγετο, σκοπῶν, τί εὐσεβές, τί ἀσεβές· τί καλόν, τί αἰσχρόν· τί δίκαιον, τί ἄδικον· τί σωφροσύνη, τί μανία· τί ἀνδρεία, τί δειλία· τί πόλις, τί πολιτικός· τί ἀρχὴ ἀνθρώπων, τί ἀρχικὸς ἀνθρώπων, &c.

We see in Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 40-46, iv. 2, 37, in the Platonic dialogue Minos and elsewhere, the number of dialectic questions which Sokrates might have brought to bear upon the harangue in the Kriton, had it been delivered by any opponent whom he sought to perplex or confute. What is a law? what are the limits of obedience to the laws? Are there no limits (as Hobbes is so much denounced for maintaining)? While the oligarchy of Thirty were the constituted authority at Athens, they ordered Sokrates himself, together with four other citizens, to go and arrest a citizen whom they considered dangerous to the state, the Salaminian Leon. The other four obeyed the order; Sokrates alone disobeyed, and takes credit for having done so, considering Leon to be innocent. Which was in the right here? the four obedient citizens, or the one disobedient? Might not the four have used substantially the same arguments to justify their obedience, as those which Sokrates hears from personified Athens in the Kriton? We must remember that the Thirty had come into authority by resolutions passed under constitutional forms, when fear of foreign enemies induced the people to sanction the resolutions proposed by a party among themselves. The Thirty also ordered Sokrates to abstain from discourse with young men; he disobeyed (Xenoph. Memor. iv. 4, 3). Was he right in disobeying?

I have indicated briefly these questions, to show how completely the rhetorical manner of the Kriton submerges all those difficulties, which would form the special matter of genuine Sokratic dialectics.

Schleiermacher (Einleit. zum Kriton, pp. 233, 234) considers the Kriton as a composition of special occasion — Gelegenheitsschrift — which I think is true; but which may be said also, in my judgment, of every Platonic dialogue. The term, however, in Schleiermacher’s writing, has a peculiar meaning, viz. a composition for which there is no place in the regular rank and file of the Platonic dialogues, as he marshals them. He remarks the absence of dialectic in the Kriton, and he adduces this as one reason for supposing it not to be genuine.

But it is no surprise to me to find Plato rhetorical in one dialogue, dialectical in others. Variety, and want of system, seem to me among his most manifest attributes.

The view taken of the Kriton by Steinhart (Einleit. pp. 291-302), in the first page of his very rhetorical Introduction, coincides pretty much with mine.