Socrates

This second reason for remaining in jail would be the first formulation of the Social Contract theory. .
             The first aforementioned argument is that the state has raised and nurtured Socrates; therefore he owes the state a debt, which can only be repaid by obeying its laws. He compares the state with parents raising a child and protecting the child thought his or her period of dependency. In the Speech of the Laws Socrates has personified the laws of Athens and is engaging in mock rhetoric with the laws. "Given the personification of the laws which Socrates imagines for the purposes of the discussion, the representation of oversized parents is not too far fetched to be illuminating." (Woozley, 1980, pp.312) By the state having laws that allow the marriage of a person's parents and the education of that person the state has the same kind of rights the parents have over this person, if not greater rights. This leads to a sense of duty one should feel to the state, as one should feel duty to one's parents for nurturing him. "The idea that is being foreshadowed is of something being what we ought to do because it is a duty, where duties are things a man can find himself having without having incurred them." (Woozley, 1980, pp.313) The person did not take on this role himself, his parents did, but with this role come certain duties which Socrates said must be adhered to. Although this was an integral portion of the Speech of the Laws, it is not the portion we are primarily concerned with.
             "Socrates" second argument is the argument later employed by the Social Contract theory of political obligation, which a man ought to obey the law to the extent that he has given an undertaking that he will." (Woozley, 1980, pp.314) Many thinkers have given the credit to Socrates for originating the idea of the Social Contract, whether they agreed with the theory or not. "The only passage I meet with in antiquity where the obligation of obedience is ascribed to a promise is in Plato's Crito, where Socrates refuses to escape from prison because he had tacitly promised to obey the laws.