How do you think the general population would respond if you were to ask what purpose do the laws of our society serve? Most would likely answer that laws serve as the fundamental guidelines to what is accepted in society, and are designed to protect our basic rights and freedoms as human beings. If you were ask this same group of individuals what makes the laws that we follow “just,” do you think the response from this group would be as uniform as that of the question prior? While the laws that we follow are in theory created to benefit all individuals equally, justification for laws becomes muddy when the concept of unjust laws is brought forward. Plato’s Crito provides us a viewpoint of this concept for what law is “just” from the perspective of Socrates, and the internal struggle he faces with the decision to obey the law, even when that law, in more ways than one, is unjust in its existence. …show more content…
Even though it would appear that the enforcers of the law in Athens are using said laws to unjustly convict Socrates, the reaction and overall attitude Socrates possess in this state of utter disorder is quite different from what would be typically expected from such an individual. There is no act of violence taken against others, nor is there even a single moment in time where we find Socrates attempting to get revenge on those who have wrongly misjudged him. Instead, what we are presented with is a man not consumed by the idea of being unjustly punished, but instead a man absorbed in thought concerning the decision to obey unjust laws, and even to accept undeserved punishment for laws that we have not broken at