Socrates

Socrates believed that all knowledge is not knowing anything.  Being a philosopher, he traveled around Athens asking multiple questions to the smartest people others could recommend.  Always after about 10 minutes of asking questions, the "smart" person he was sent to would either contradict themselves or loose the answer.  This made the "smart" people angry and usually those smart people had themselves some power.  It ended with Socrates being charged with corruption of youth and being arrested and sentenced to death.  Before he was sent to be executed, one of his followers attempted to get Socrates to escape.  Socrates declined because he stated that he didn't want to be above law and was killed.   In class today, we were grouped off to discuss whether Socrates had better reasons to stay within the prison and let law rule out or to escape.  The answer was to be decided between four topics.  Human Rights, Justice, Fairness, and Respect for the Law.  

Human Rights:  

We decided based on the theme of Human Rights, Socrates should have escaped the prison because putting a human to death as a punishment goes against the basic idea of Human Rights.

Fairness:

Under the topic of fairness, we decided that Socrates would have seen it unfair to be able to escape a punishment that had so many other victims for false conceptions like he experienced.

Justice:

Justice was not completely thought of in this situation because Socrates was accused of something that was a misconception.  Because of this, in the theme of Justice Socrates should have escaped.

Respect for the Law: 

Socrates stated to his follower that he did not want to be above the Law because the Law had provided so many benefits for the society.  He had no interest in corrupting that so staying was the right choice.

Out of the four themes, half fall towards him to should have left while the other half leans towards proving why he should stay.  I think it was a very true and courageous thing to stay and i'm sure after the commitment, the accusers of him thought twice of what they did.