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A Letter From Birmingham Jail Summary

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Michelle DeLude Contrast the views of Plato in Crito and Martin Luther King, Jr. in “A letter From a Birmingham Jail” on law whether one may permissibly disobey an unjust law or an unjust use of a just law. Explain both positions and evaluate, giving reason, which view you think presents the better argument. To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of one’s State or Country. Political activists and Philosophers alike have struggled to evaluate the conditions under which people are morally entitled to disobey the law or an unjust use of a just law. A person’s decision whether they will or will not obey an unjust law will be determined by their moral beliefs. And a person’s moral beliefs is created or centered …show more content…

Crito thought that it would be a great disgrace if the people thought that he could save Socrates by giving money for his escape, but didn’t. He believed that the people would judge them wrongly if it looked like Crito and the followers did not help Socrates. Socrates asks Crito “My dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of many? Good men, and they are the only persons who ae worth considering, will think of these things truly as they happened.” (Plato). Socrates seems to be referencing that some opinions are right and some are wrong. And that it is not a matter of just opinion, but of the correct opinion. Socrates seems to use this analogy to introduce a distinction between true opinions and false opinions. By Crito entertaining the opinions of the many he seems to be engaging in the Ad Populum Fallacy. “Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say. And therefore you begin in error when you suggest that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable.”

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