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Compose a thesis statement for Socrates’s argument in the Crito. Make it one complete declarative sentence.
A summary, abstract, and thesis are like a Chinese box: inside the summary lies hidden a briefer version of the text, the abstract; and inside the abstract is the article’s essential idea, the thesis. Philosophical writing is usually argumentative writing. The heart of such prose is the author’s thesis, the central point that he or she is trying to defend, explain, justify, or otherwise convince the reader to believe based on whatever rational considerations the author can muster.
Often, philosophers open with the thesis but sometimes they don’t present the thesis until much later. In other cases, the thesis is implicit but never clearly stated. Authors vary widely in how they present their theses.
If you can find a sentence or two in the text that restates what the author has put into the title, you may very well have identified the thesis. But be careful not to confuse the author’s topic, perhaps expressed in the title, with the author’s thesis. Try to discern the main point the author is trying to make, around which the examples, analogies, evidence, and illustrative details cluster. Try to state the thesis as precisely and briefly as you can. Try to force yourself to restate the thesis in one declarative sentence. If you find yourself writing more than one sentence, you are on your way to giving an abstract of the author’s text.
August 30, 1999