소크라테스와 정의롭지 않은 법률의 준수 문제

This paper aims to review critically the claim that Socrates said that laws that are not justice are laws and should be abided by. In the past, authoritarian regimes of South Korea have long included the tragedy of Socrates in the moral curriculum as if it were a historical fact that Socrates said unjust laws were laws and should be abided. In the early 1990s, several studies were published in Korea in the wake of professors Kang Jung-in and Kwon Chang-eun's counterargument, which achieved some of the tasks of separating Socrates from the notorious claim that unjust law is a law. In the case of the legal academy, the circumstances are not the same. The failure is because legal positivism and natural law theory maintain tension and confrontation till now, so they do not simply declare victory in natural law theory on the issue of an unjust law. In a paper published in 2013, Professor Choi Bong-cheol argued that Socrates and his descendants, Plato and Aristotle, all shared the view that unjust law is a law, and even Aquinas expressed such a view. This paper rebuts that Socrates cannot be the basis for legal positivism, and upon Augustine's views, Aquinas said an unjust laws outrages rather than laws. This article also pointed out that Socrates' positions in Crito should be interpreted within the ancient Athenian notion of Nomos. Nomos does not mean more than not doing evil to others and acting justly, and that following Nomos is justifiable only on such a premise. Following Nomos does not mean unexceptional compliance with every law. If modern people understand Socrates' teachings in a way that unconditional compliance is justice, there can be many misunderstandings because Socrates did not emphasize thorough compliance with all laws.