Abstract
This paper gives a novel reading of the argument addressed by the Laws of
Athens to Socrates in Plato's Crito. Many philosophers have suggested that
the argument of the Laws is merely a weak 'rhetorical sop' to Crito.
However, I offer an interpretation of that argument that brings out its
plausibility, particularly in the context of the post-Oligarchic demos of
early fourth-century Athens. For on Crito's plan, Socrates would have
undermined a critical form of civic trust in Athens, not by merely
disobeying the sentence imposed on him by the jury, but by openly displaying
the legal impunity of the rich.
We can call this 'legal trust.' By
that coinage, I mean citizens' faith in their fellow citizens' willingness
and ability to collectively defend the law---to enforce it against the
powerful, and refrain from acting to undermine that capacity. When the
members of a democratic political community recognize one another's
commitment to their legal system, they are able to defend the laws that hold
their democracy together; in such a state, the laws are both conceptually
constitutive of democratic authority and practically necessary for
democracy.
Taken in the context of the strategic structure of the
Athenian legal system, in the appeal to the filial loyalty Socrates owed the
Laws we can see just such an account of the interweaving of law, trust, and
citizenship in the preservation of a democracy. The Laws demand that
Socrates be trustworthy, and thereby refrain from undermining his fellow
citizens' trust in them, where that trust is necessary for the citizens'
collective defense of the democratic legal system; they make this demand on
Socrates in virtue of the Laws' role in Socrates's identity as citizen.