Socratic food for thought: Anarchy is uncool
Courtesy photo: Wikimedia Commons
Opinion – Death of Socrates
December 11, 2010
A new norm I have found through my adventures on campus is that many college students seem to be trying their best to ignore certain laws. For example a few days ago I saw one or two people by the library preaching anarchy; that we should ignore laws. I could not help but talk about this and explain to you boys and girls the problems behind this.
This issue has already been thoroughly explained in philosophy. It was explained by a man name Socrates. In Athens, his philosophical speech was not very popular; in fact it was incredibly annoying because he was constantly correcting everyone. He was finally sent to trial to try and get rid of him. The people of Athens really wanted to exile him, however, he chose to be poisoned. In Socrates’ “Crito,” his friend named Crito comes in to the jail and attempts to convince Socrates to break out of jail and leave. However, Socrates presented an argument that he should not break out because of this very same concept about laws.
Some of you boys and girls may be wondering to yourself “why do these laws need to be followed?” Some people say that a number of laws are completely useless and therefore should not be followed. Another thought is laws should not be followed because people feel the background behind it is stupid, and because people do not want to obey anything. Although these can at certain points be true, they must be followed anyway.
When in jail, Socrates does admit that he feels that his death sentence and imprisonment were unjust. However, he states that he must follow no matter what he thinks about it.
Since Socrates speaks in a somewhat strange matter, I will try to make his points as simple as possible. He basically states that we need to obey all laws because of what society offers you. For example, nobody is really too energetic about paying taxes, but these taxes go to fund stuff like roads and schools that do more good than paying taxes does bad.
His biggest point is about benefits you receive unconsciously, through an idea commonly known as a social contract. For example, we receive a benefit like national security: If an invading country is attacking your city then the government will send the military to protect you. His main point from this example is that when you live in a nation, no matter what economic status you have, you are still protected in many ways. Socrates points out that by living in a nation or city, you are consenting to follow their rules because of the indirect benefit you receive.
All of you boys and girls who believe that laws should be ignored need to think again. Think about all the benefits you are receiving. You have a police and fire department, and even a hospital; all benefits you receive just from living in an area.
So next time you are analyzing a law, think about whether you would be better off following these laws or going on without some societal benefits.
Randy | May 8, 2024 at 11:56 pm
Interesting take I suppose; but it has nothing to do with anarchy. Another thing is that Social Contract theory comes from Immanuel Kant, not Socrates, and Kant wouldn’t come along for a long time, nor was he Greek. I do consider myself an anarchist even if I know I certainly still have plenty to learn, about Anarchism too even (the good thing about Anarchism is the basic principle of not being ruled nor ruling yourself and also a rejection of hierarchy is all that is needed and anarchism is always adapted to each individual based upon thought and idea), but I do have some things to say here.
Is the law important? Yes and no. It is important because it governs a society (whether for better or worse) and you will often receive punishment for failing to follow it. No in the terms of, some laws are arguably either stupid or flat-out wrong. I know the thought process; without laws, what will we do? At the same time, one must examine law and context.
Socrates had his own beliefs, he wanted to stay true to them, and I do feel a bit sorry for the guy but not really entirely. For some context, Socrates is thought to have contributed as a precursor to anarchy as a philosophy, and some of his ideas were partially anarchist in nature, but really most of it wasn’t that connected, but he displays an extreme skepticism to authority and government and often would ask his students about who would be qualified to say build a ship and they would say a shipbuilder. Then he would ask who is qualified to govern, there was no answer and thus the answer is nobody, which goes along with this one anarchist quote which is something along the lines of “if very few are fit to rule themselves, even fewer are fit to rule others”, but he was not an anarchist entirely, he viewed democracy as a form of contradiction as both anarchy and state, authority and lack there of, in which everyone has the same amount of power, the problem we run into is rule by the majority and oppression of the minority, so he wasn’t a entirely a statist nor entirely an anarchist, and was highly skeptical of the state and even of government and authority figures and encouraged such views in his teachings however, he believed in rule by the majority and submitting oneself to that rule, of course many of his students also ended up becoming statists in the end so, history is certainly peculiar. Apparently one of his students, Aristippus considered the father of hedonism, or ethical hedonism to be technical, made the statement that he did not wish to rule neither to be ruled, however he spent a lot of time bootlicking for the sake of comfort and indulgence, so there are two possibilities there; either he was fine with there being an overarching structure of state and was in support of it as long as it helped him, or he viewed himself as a parasitical leech simply benefiting off of whatever he could for the sake of living to the fullest. It’s not like we have a time machine to go ask him anyway. That view on authority that originated from Socrates’s teachings also seems to have been rather prevalent down the line, as a student of one of his students named Diogenes, often considered the father of cynicism, challenged societal norms and government even, and apparently he also defecated in front of a classroom but like I said, history is odd, point there is that he was skeptical of it and even challenged it, so he took it a bit further than Socrates and unlike Aristippus he wasn’t all talk and no action, after all, Diogenes believed in action over words. Cynicism is also a rather common thing among anarchists, which is ironic as it’s existent alongside the prevalence of hopefulness. With anarchists we get called both pessimists and optimists, utopian in view and thought yet cynical in thought and method, contradictions often live alongside each other, which is interesting to look into. Anyways, why Socrates allowed himself to be executed in interesting, and it changes depending on who you ask. But for sake of my own time, I’m not really going to get into that. But to say the least, Socrates reasoned to let himself be executed for some unknown reason although it is popularly believed to either be his opposition to the Athenian democracy or belief in law as objectively moral.
Both arguments seem odd to me, but that’s that I suppose. Either way, Socrates made his choice, and I would not deny him such, even if that choice is death. Now, another idea is that it is a citizen/person’s duty to disobey and oppose the law when it is unjust. Yes, laws can be important, but that doesn’t make them good. I have had to break the law for survival’s sake myself in all honesty, as well as to protect children. Does that make me a criminal? Somewhat I suppose, although I did convince the people meant to stop me, deport the children back to a country that would mean certain death for them or shove them into a cage/detention center and maybe put the children up for adoption, imprison me and put me on the waiting list for the court hearing trials for this matter which would have gotten to me in maybe 5 years if I’m really lucky (immigrations’s backed up), to instead go ahead and not only break the law they are meant to enforce but to go against their very job to help me and these children get illegally across the border and find shelter. I did what I had to in order to survive, and they did what they felt was morally objectively right. I am not going to leave these small children abandoned and probably left to be killed just for the sake of following the law after all, call me amoral, a criminal, or a terrorist even, I’ve been called all three for much less, it doesn’t matter to me, because I know what I did was necessary and I’d say even the right thing to do. For things I’ve been called a terrorist for; housing and feeding a large group of homeless people free of cost, writing about anarchism, advocating for abortion rights, and wearing clothing I found in a dumpster and modified with other waste products. I do not like the term terrorist personally as it is often used to strike fear at and create distrust towards groups or people by authority figures and structures in order to discredit them without need for evidence. If terrorism can mean a peaceful protest and a bombing simultaneously, I’d rather avoid usage of such a broad and rather vindictive term. Same goes for criminal really, political prisoners exist. My other thing with terrorism is that, it’s only considered terrorism if a powerless person, small group or another country considered an enemy is doing the bombing, but if it’s your own country then it’s not terrorism, even if one is using molotovs and small bombs and the other is using nuclear bombs, after all, one has few options for such weaponry, the other has all too many. Then there’s also of course criminal, look, maybe if the law didn’t outlaw my own autonomy and existence even in some cases I’d be fine with it, but that’s not the case, so I disagree with the term as well. Then we also have ‘amoral’, well, I’ve been called thought for supporting abortion rights, supporting queer friends and rights, sitting with a homeless man in a parking lot and talking to him and offering him help as opposed to just passing by and tossing him a coin, not believing in a god or higher being, and of course, not believing in government, except I’ve been called both a terrorist and a criminal for that one, so I haven’t got much to say on it either.
On the subject of social contracts, well, when I was in 2nd grade, elementary school, I remember saying this in response to a little speech the teacher gave about the US government. “With consent of the governed? When did I ever give consent? Since when did goo-goo ga-ga mean ‘I consent’?” which personally, all I say to my younger self there is, fair point. Do we benefit from taxes? eh, depends. For me, it’s brought gentrification, shut down most places, cemented over a communal garden my community relied on, raised taxes and effectively forced the poor out of their homes in order to buy it out and build it up for rich people to turn a profit, kicked out all the homeless, and got rid of our diy recycling spot where trash was collected and refused for
making fertiliser, every day items, art and clothing. Other than that, I learned more from the local library (which had been anarchist owned, no government support) when I was younger than my school, what I learned at school is that hierarchy is the basis of society and I hate hierarchy and thus I hate society and I hope both things will burn and rot, younger me was an angry little kid to say the least. Whilst it can be good, it’d be much better to focus on problems like our wasteful culture and trying to make things better within and get people to respect their environment and be responsible themselves without a more powerful person/group making them obsolete and unable to be responsible even if they wanted to. Plus, most pollution comes from big businesses and our many processes enforced by our government, not the typical every day person. At that, most people agree that we shouldn’t kill each other as is, and I’d say that’s a good thing to have in this whole social contract idea, but the problem is that whilst we have it, it’s conditional on ‘who has the authority to kill and who doesn’t?’ with things such as executions and murders and police/law enforcement brutality.
Think of it this way; the law sometimes should and must be disobeyed, after all, if you were in Nazi Germany, would you listen to the law because “it’s the law and should be followed no matter what”? I’d at least hope not personally. The Anarchist idea of state/government/hierarchy is that it is a system with a monopoly on violence, which can be both physical and systematic. You can silence people or kill them or criminalize them or imprison them as you please and you make the law and judgement, effectively creating a monopoly on power and violence, especially being that government and state plays the role of executioner, judge, enforcer, interpreter and lawmaker at the same time. The idea is that it is an illegitimate authority and has a
monopoly not only on this false authority but also the means thorugh which to ‘legitimise’ it.
Anyway, all I have to say here is that this honestly has nothing to do with actual anarchy, and you can find lots of good books and sources on it on the anarchist Library (essentially a pirated collection of books, but it’s completely ethical, anarchists tell you to pirate their stuff and it’s anti-copyright so have at it if you want, it’s entirely free) so if you are going to be writing in such a way about anarchism and anarchy, please do educate yourself on it. I’m an anarchist and I educate myself on opposing views after all, it’s important to understand views other than your own, helps you avoid echo-chambers of thought, even if in all honesty a large portion of anarchist writings is anarchists disagreeing with other anarchists, hell, even I don’t agree with all prominent anarchist figures, or even necessarily think of them as really anarchist for a few.