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Originally Posted by martinguerre
i don't think the text of Crito adequatly deals with the issue of indivual moral agency. Socrates assumes that his example will be binding, and that the obsevers will not perform a moral analysis, but simply mimesis.
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I see this as a sign of Plato's idealized (and highly unrealistic) vision of government in general. The Athenian government was right about most things most of the time, or so I believe Plato would say. If the regime is inherently just, then it is easy to see why Plato would be opposed to actions that would destasbilize the regime, such as civil disobedience.
Perhaps, then, Socrates is actually failing to deal with the possibility of an immoral regime, rather than neglecting moral analysis in general. Alternatively, perhaps Socrates' comments about the importance of following the laws apply only to generally moral regimes such as Athens and would not apply at all to fundamentally unjust regimes. Interesting...
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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