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The Social Contract And Injustice In Plato's Crito

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The Social Contract Plato’s Crito depicts a conversation between Socrates and Crito. Socrates’ friends intend to help him escape from prison before he is executed. Their conversation touches upon subjects like justice, injustice and the appropriate response to injustice. Socrates argues that one must not answer to injustice with more injustice as that would be an injury to the laws and to the city of Athens. In Plato’s The Apology, Socrates has been declared guilty of corrupting the Athenian youth and in Crito, he is now awaiting his execution. Crito urges him to escape and presents him with different arguments as to why staying to be executed would be a disservice to various people. Socrates believes that escaping would mean breaking the social contract he was born into. Socrates declares that a person shouldn’t repay injustice with more injustice since no one should ever act unjustly. However, what must one do when the society that one has a contract with is also the reason injustices are committed against them? I will argue that while …show more content…

For example, the old slavery laws in the early days of the United States. Black people were literal slaves to their society and yet they were also forced to obey the social contract even though they were being treated unjustly by their own society. Black people did not benefit from their social contract as they received no sort of protection or any benefits for obeying the contract. Before the laws were officially abolished and the slaves liberated, there were people who questioned their government’s treatment of black people and there were black people who fought for their own liberty. If it hadn’t been for people who questioned and fought against their society’s decision on the matter, it might have taken much longer to abolish the slavery laws or it might not have happened at

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