Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Episode Summary: Plato's Crito with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos

Hosts: Deacon Harrison Garlick, Adam Minihan
Guest: Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Date: September 30, 2025

Main Theme

This episode explores Plato’s Crito, the famed dialogue which takes place in Socrates’ prison cell, through a blend of close reading, contextual discussion, and Catholic intellectual tradition. Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos joins the hosts to unpack why Socrates refuses escape, the nature of piety, justice, gratitude to the polis, and the parallel dangers posed by Socrates and Christ to their societies. Together, they wrestle with the political and moral questions at the dialogue's heart, consider ancient and modern political structures, and highlight recurring themes in the Great Books.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dramatic and Philosophical Form of Plato’s Dialogues

• Drama and Character:
  • Plato’s format is immersive and dramatically rich, not just argumentative. Socrates’ method brings fundamental questions about how to live, using real personalities and dramatic context.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (03:31): “The dialogues are always dramatic and argumentative... The whole thing feels like a more immersive and embodied experience than other forms of philosophical writing.”
• Dialogue vs. Treatise:
  • Dialogue is the natural learning mode, echoing child-parent Q&A, and found also in the Summa's structure.
    • Harrison (07:45): “It's the question answer format that's most natural to human learning… The dialogue really mimics that, right?”

2. Socrates, Athens, and the Politics of Gratitude

• Socratic Teaching Context:
  • Popular image: Socrates as an annoying street philosopher; deeper truth: he nurtured the intellectual life among friends and fostered engagement with the great poetic and cultural tradition (esp. Homer).
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (09:42): “Homer... is the text quoted most often throughout the Platonic dialogues. For the ancient Athenians, Homer stands in the place of scripture.”
• Philosopher’s Debt to the Polis:
  • Socrates’ gratitude to Athens is more than for bread or protection—it’s an intellectual and cultural debt, stemming from the rich, myth-poetic soil he germinated in.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (13:42): “There's a deeper and richer debt… Athens didn't just give him birth, it gave him birth, an education… the pieces in some way were there in Athenian culture, which is so indebted to Homer.”

3. The Crito: Context, Myth, and Ritual

• The Delay of Execution & Religious Setting:
  • Socrates’ execution is postponed by the annual Delian ship ritual—a mythic, poetic backdrop that elevates the stakes and sets a cosmic rhythm.
    • Harrison (13:26): “There's this kind of line... why is this? They're waiting for the ship to come back from Delos. It's a religious ritual...a sacrifice to Apollo.”
  • Myth vs. Philosophy in Athens:
    • The polis orients itself around myth, not around philosophy, as seen in the city’s deference to the Delian ritual while the philosopher sits in prison.
    • Harrison (22:23): “We have a polis highly referential to religious myth, while the philosopher is in prison... Poetry is winning. It's what sets the rhythm of life.”

4. Plato’s New Heroism: Socrates and Achilles

• Socratic Heroism through Speech and Contemplation:
  • The recurring contrast between Achilles and Socrates—one heroizes through martial glory, the other achieves immortal “kleos”/glory through speech and a life of the mind.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (34:49): “Socrates is doing the Achilles thing by embracing the action that will win him immortal glory… Achilles needs a Homer and Socrates needs a Plato.”
  • Dream Sequence Interpretation:
    • Socrates’ dream of a woman (possibly a personification of wisdom or motherly guidance) signaling his impending “return to Phthia” (alluding to Achilles’ choice) both foreshadows his death and offers more subtle mythic resonance.

5. Crito’s Arguments and Socratic Refutation

• Crito’s Appeals:
  • Two key appeals:
    1. What will the “majority of men” think?
    2. Escaping is just, given Socrates’ unjust condemnation.
    • Harrison (37:13): “Crito's arguments… the majority of men, is that an opinion we want? And two, is what I'm doing just?”
• Socratic Response:
  • Socrates distinguishes between the judgment of the many and the judgment of the wise, using analogies of caring for the soul as for an athlete’s body:
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (46:12): “What the man on the street or an opinion poll will tell you... is much less reliable than what the person who has dedicated himself to learning this science will be able to tell you.”
  • The unjustly condemned must still not do injustice—escaping would breach an inherited debt to the polis, akin to a kind of familial piety.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (50:46): “Socrates’s debt to Athens is the kind of debt that can never be repaid.”

6. The Threefold Piety: Gods, Polis, Parents

• Piety as Gratitude and Political Order:
  • Piety is conceived as a robust, cosmic gratitude: to God, to the city, to parents.
    • Harrison (56:28): “Piety here has a very thick understanding of something that even gives political structure, cosmic structure, even structure to the soul.”
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (60:10): “All of that, I think, is a true ground for patriotism, which is… understanding that I owe an unrepayable debt to my country as well as to my parents and to God.”
• Ancient vs. Modern Politics:
  • Contrast with modern liberalism, which sees society as constructed and thus subordinate to individual rights, breaking the chain of piety.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (60:10-62:07): “Social contract theorists posit that we’re all naturally individuals instead of naturally social… the polis is our inferior because it’s something we made.”

7. Socratic Obedience and the Role of Precedent

• Destroying the Order:
  • Socrates insists that escaping would set a precedent undermining the rule of law and the polis itself.
    • Harrison (66:39): “What would Socrates be teaching the people in the polis if he did this?... That precedent is set.”
  • Parallel with Religious Authority:
    • Catholics have a ‘higher’ polis—the Church—that can sometimes supersede temporal authority, a nuance not available to Socrates.

8. Socrates, Christ, and the Danger to the Polis

• Paradigms of Disruptive Figures:
  • Both Socrates and Jesus introduce new conceptions of piety that threaten the existing order; the city’s typical response is violence or exile.
    • Harrison (83:54): “To what degree can a civilization survive the advent of a Socrates or a Jesus Christ?... If the guy’s right, the polis would have to restructure.”
• Justice, Martyrdom, and Historical Tension:
  • The episode draws parallels to martyrs and saints who similarly stood in opposition to, and were crushed by, established authority.

9. The Absence and Presence of the Divine in Argument

• Argument’s Rhetorical Precision:
  • In Crito, Socrates curiously refrains from emphasizing divine mandates, focusing instead on human (legal/social) obligations.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (89:24): “He genuinely wants to persuade Crito based on Crito's own opinions. He doesn’t want to just assert something that is going to override Crito’s thought.”
  • A final oblique reference affirms Socrates’ decision is not checked by his daemon, suggesting divine sanction.

10. The Ending: Law, Myth, and the State of the Soul

• Mini-Myth and Socratic Peace
  • With the laws’ speech, the dialogue ends with a reminder that the just man will have a defense before the rulers in Hades—melding myth and reason, aligning philosophy with tradition.
    • Dr. Papadopoulos (93:35): “Socrates arguing philosophically and then capping it with a myth… a memorable story that one can take away.”
  • Socrates describes an interior harmony, echoing the Corybantes’ trance—a kind of philosophical “liturgy” or ordered peace.
  • Final line: “‘Let it be then, Crito, and let us act in this way, since this is the way that God is leading us.’” (97:20)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Socrates is doing the Achilles thing by embracing the action that will win him immortal glory… Achilles needs a Homer and Socrates needs a Plato.”
– Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos (34:49)

“If you have to teach the text, you come to learn it better yourself… iron sharpens iron and you kind of get drawn into the text.”
– Harrison Garlick (06:30)

“The ancients...talk about: you become an adult, and it's like, what can I give back?... What great deed can I do that could give back to Rome, to Athens? This is just an insanely alien political thought to us today.”
– Harrison Garlick (58:10)

“All of that, I think, is a true ground for patriotism… understanding that I owe an unrepayable debt to my country as well as my parents and to God.”
– Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos (60:10)

“The apology is what Athens owes to Socrates; the Crito is what Socrates owes to Athens.”
– Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos (104:52)

“This is the way that God is leading us.”
– Socrates, quoted by Harrison Garlick (97:20)

Key Timestamps

• 03:31 – Dr. Papadopoulos on Plato’s dramatic and argumentative form
• 09:42 – The role of Homer and high culture in Socrates’ Athens
• 13:26–16:37 – Ritual, myth, and the setting of Crito
• 22:23 – Poetry’s dominance over philosophy in the polis
• 29:13–36:15 – The Achilles parallel and the meaning of Socrates’ dream
• 37:13–44:17 – Crito’s arguments and Socrates’ gentle engagement
• 46:12–50:46 – Socratic refutation: expert opinion vs. popular opinion, the soul’s care
• 56:28–62:07 – Threefold piety, politics of gratitude, ancient vs. modern political theory
• 66:39–70:32 – Dangers of impiety, the precedent of fleeing, The Clouds and Athens
• 83:54–85:30 – Socrates, Christ, and the dangerous reformer; the cost to the city
• 89:24–98:42 – Socrates’ divine guidance, absence/presence of myth and mythic closure
• 104:52–105:33 – Summing up: Apology vs. Crito, reciprocal debts, Plato’s design

Episode Takeaways

• Crito asks not just a question of law versus justice, but explores the much deeper question of the individual's debt to family, city, and the divine.
• Socrates defends obedience to the city’s law, even in the face of apparent injustice, as an act of cosmic and political piety—an idea deeply at odds with the modern politics of rights.
• The dialogue models how philosophy both disrupts and is indebted to its civic context, and the challenge of reconciling personal conscience with public order.
• The enduring tension between philosophy and the city—mirrored in the stories of Socrates and Christ—remains central to the question of how civilization handles its prophets.
• The episode masterfully illuminates the relevance of the Great Books conversation for contemporary questions about citizenship, dissent, and the sources of political health.

Next Episode: Plato’s Phaedo – listeners are encouraged to start reading and join the philosophical ascent!