Comparing The Crito And Letters From A Birmingham Jail

While reading “The Crito”, By Plato, and Martin Luther King’s, “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” I will use these two pieces of literature as a springboard to answer whether it is moral to break a law that you consider unjust. I will start first by analyzing Plato’s dialogue “The Crito”. The conversation takes place in a prison; where Socrates is awaiting his execution, and is serving out the last days of his life. Socrates is visited by Crito, an old loyal friend, a generous friend who lacks ethical teaching and has questionable morals. His reason for visiting is as simple as persuading Socrates to escape. He is willing to risk everything to help out his mentor. He throws argument after argument at Socrates, hoping that he will be able to

What this suggests is that Socrates would be supporting the wrong-doing of his adversaries in following through with their commands. But Socrates argues that laws are just and one should never do wrong. No matter how much one thinks the act was just. He explained that he could not break the law, just because he believed the reason he was being punished was unjust. He was a man that lived his whole life following the Law of the Athenians. He considered himself a good man, and by escaping, he would refute a life of being a law abiding citizen. This single act of escape, towards the end of his life, would wipe out the values that he has lived by. Now take in to account, when reading this dialogue that Plato has written, as we will assume that Socrates was wrongfully convicted and unjustly sentenced to death. As I was analyzing the dialogue between Crito and Socrates, I was compelled to view Socrates as an innocent person to all charges against him. By looking at it in that way, if Socrates did plan on escaping from prison it would indeed be the first time that he had violated the law of agreement with the City of Athens. By viewing Socrates as guilty it would make the escape much less interesting,

First of all, I side with the views of King. If you feel that something is unjust, and you aren’t harming anyone why must you follow it? You have a responsibility to all of society to challenge what you feel is wrong. I agree with King when he says “The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (MLK). An example would be gay rights laws. For much of time it has been illegal for people of the same sex to marry one another. Although this is a law, many people and even the United States Constitutional courts ruled that two people of the same sex should share the same right as anyone else to be able to share a love together and establish a bond such as marriage. In this sense breaking the law, to choose to love someone, regardless of their gender is moral because no law should have the ability to tell you who you can and cannot marry When reading Plato’s “The Crito” I see his point of view that no matter how unjust the law may be, one must not break it. I believe that the problem in this as being able to make a conscious educated decision whether or not that you think that in your heart that you feel that the law is unjust or