Socrates Dissatisfied

In Socrates Dissatisfied, Weiss argues against the prevailing view that the Laws are Socrates' spokesmen. She reveals and explores many indications that Socrates and the Laws are, both in style and substance, adversaries: whereas the Laws are rhetoricians who defend the absolute authority of the Laws, Socrates is a dialectician who defends - in the Crito no less than in the Apology - the overriding claim of each individual's own reason when assiduously applied to questions of justice.

It is only for the sake of an unphilosophical Crito, Weiss suggests, that Socrates invents the speech of the Laws; he resorts to rhetoric in a desperate attempt to save Crito's soul even as Crito sought to save his body. Indeed, as Weiss shows, Socrates' own philosophical reasons for remaining in prison rather than escaping as Crito wishes are clearly and fully articulated before the speech of the Laws begins.

Socrates Dissatisfied challenges the standard conception of the history of political thought: if its argument is correct, political philosophy begins not with the assertion of the supremacy of the state over the citizen but with the affirmation of the primacy of the citizen in his deliberative exercise of reason with respect to justice. Socrates Dissatisfied is vital reading for students and scholars of ancient philosophy, classics, and political philosophy.