Ne Me Quitte Pas: The Laws’ Argument in Plato’s Crito and Migrants’ Obligations to Their Political Communities

• Author: Guillaume Bogiaris
• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920941612
• Subject Matter: Articles

2021, Vol. 74(4) 822 –833

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920941612

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912920941612

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Plato’s1 Crito begins with the titular character visiting

Socrates in jail. Upset, Crito is trying to convince his life-

long friend to flee an imminent death sentence of alleg-

edly questionable justice. Crito, who seems to have lost a

little philosophical courage following the events of the

Apology, genuinely wants to save his friend’s life (Rosano

2000; Rosen 1973; Steinberger 1997; Strauss 1983).

Socrates is unfazed. To calm Crito, he summons the

imaginary presence of Athens’ Laws, through whom he

defends the position that it would be unjust to flee in the

wake of his condemnation to death. The anthropomor-

phized Laws Socrates imagines are furious: how dare

Socrates consider flight now that he no longer benefits

from the system, having until now lived a long and happy

life in Athens? The timing suggests a certain hypocrisy.

The specific context of the conversation between

Socrates and the Laws is Socrates’s potential escape from

jail and subsequently his death sentence. The Laws’ argu-

ment, however, taps into a philosophically richer point:

that of citizen-to-state obligation (Allen 1980; Gorman

1992; Kirkpatrick 2015; Rosen 1973). Athens’ Laws

argue that by fulfilling three specific conditions, they cre-

ated an environment rich for the flourishing of citizens,

and that this, in turn, implies a moral obligation from citi-

zens to obey and submit themselves to them in situations

of potential conflict.

This article aims to show that the Laws’ argument can

be generalized to the broader context of emigration from

contemporary liberal democratic welfare states. The Laws

imply that the environment they provided for Socrates

demands a certain reciprocity. A sort of quid pro quo

where citizens, in fact, owe the state for what it has,

through communities, given and empowered them to

achieve. This suggests that in leaving—not simply to

escape just or unjust punishment—people may be failing

to “repay” their political communities, thereby hindering

their ability to continue to endure healthily and provide

similarly fertile environments for others. The Laws pro-

vide sufficient justification for the argument that resi-

dents, if they wish to act in a manner that risks hindering

the ability of well-governed communities to continue

providing the goods and services that contributed essen-

tially to the identities they enjoy and value, have some

moral duty to correct for the detrimental effect caused by

their departures.

Two arguments made in the Crito are relevant to

migration theory: (1) the debt of parentage argument,

according to which there is an obligation not to hinder

our communities’ ability to parent current and future

members, and its correlate; (2) the argument from cor-

ruption, according to which there is a duty not to further

injustice through migration, either by lessening the

power of vulnerable home communities or making host

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PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920941612Political Research QuarterlyBogiaris

research-article2020

1The University of West Alabama, Livingston, USA

Corresponding Author:

Guillaume Bogiaris, Department of History and Social Sciences, The

University of West Alabama, Station 22, Livingston, AL 35470, USA.

Email: gbogiaris@uwa.edu

Ne Me Quitte Pas: The Laws’ Argument

in Plato’s Crito and Migrants’ Obligations

to Their Political Communities

Guillaume Bogiaris1

Abstract

This paper argues that in their criticism of Socrates’s prospective evasion, the Laws of the Crito make two arguments

relevant to the discussion of the ethics of migration, labeled here the “Argument from Parentage” and the “Argument

from Corruption.” When considered from the perspective of liberal democracies, those arguments help us realize that

political communities should be considered as a subject of justice in migration alongside individuals, and that migration

might entail some citizen-to-community obligations. This means that some correctives may be justified to offset the

moral costs of some acts of migration. This paper concludes by exploring how the extension of local voting rights in

absentia could be one such corrective.

Keywords

Crito, Plato, migration, identity, obligation

Article