Socrates or Gandhi?

I listened to "Crito" this morning for what may have been the tenth time, perhaps more. (Summary: Crito visits Socrates in prison and tries to convince him to escape into exile. Socrates will have none of it. He will obey the law--if not the people.) If this summary isn't detailed enough for you and you decide to catch up on your Socratic Dialogues on wikipedia or Spark Notes, you'll be told that this dialogue contains the seeds of Rousseau's "Social Contract." Perhaps. Probably. Every time I listen to Crito, I can't decide if I buy Socrates's argument--oh, not for me. I'd wave goodbye to Athens and be on my way to Thebes.

There's no doubt that as described in "Crito," that Socrates made the harder choice, though for him it was neither harder nor a choice. By his own understanding of ethics, it was entirely necessary for him to obey the law, even though the law be wrong. It is not the choice Gandhi would have made. Both admirable men. Both doing what they were sure was the right thing. Diametrically opposed to each other.

Does it make a difference that Gandhi opposed colonial rule? To a certain extent; I think Socrates might have accepted the difference had he not seen these as Athen's laws, but laws imposed from afar. Interesting, though, that Gandhi's goal was similar to Socrates's, not to throw off British rule--important, but actually a prereq to his real goal--to revive the spiritual lives of the people of India. And that was Socrates's goal as well, to make Athens a virtuous city. You're call as to which either were successful.