Phil 327 2007

Plato’s Euthyphro (you-thi-fro)

Starting situation:

(1) Euthyphro is prosecuting his father in a murder case. His father beat up and then neglected a worker who had previously attacked a servant in a drunken haze. The Athenians would generally disapprove of Euthryphro’s actions, and view Euthyphro suspiciously (“Who do you think you are, prosecuting your own father? A god?).

(2) Socrates has been charged by Meletus with corrupting the youth by teaching against the old gods and introducing new ones.

The question: What is piety (holiness, righteousness)? While the question is deep and philosophical, it also has a practical pay-off: If we know what piety is, then we can decide whether Euthyphro is pious and whether Socrates is pious.

What Socrates wants: Socrates wants a definition of piety which specifies a feature (or set of features) which ALL pious acts have and which ONLY pious acts have. This feature will enable us to determine what is pious (if it has the feature, then it is pious). And we will know what makes an act pious. What makes it pious is having this feature.

Euthyphro’s first try:  He points to his own action (i.e. prosecuting his father) as an example of piety. Socrates objects that this does not tell us what piety is (it does not specify the one feature which all pious actions have in common).

Euthyphro’s second try: ‘Piety is that which is loved by the gods.’  Problem: What happens when the gods disagree? How do we decide?

Euthyphro’s third try: ‘Piety is that which is loved by all the gods.’ This successfully answers Socrates’ question. The ‘piety-making’ feature is this: Being loved by all the gods. An action is pious if and only if it is loved by all the gods.

            Socrates offers a complicated response. Basically, he tries to show that this

definition leads to a contradiction. He does this by endorsing a deep (interesting,

and somewhat philosophically controversial) claim and a superficial (and

somewhat silly but true) claim.

(A) Deep claim: The pious is loved by the gods because it is pious (that’s why they love it!)

       Note: The idea behind the claim is that generally we like things because they are 

good, they are not good because we like them)

(B) Superficial claim: The god-loved is loved by the gods because the gods love it; it is untrue that the gods love the god-loved because it is god-loved.

      Note: The idea is this. Something is carried because something carries it; it is untrue

that something carries something else because that something else is carried. 

But since pious is DEFINED as god-loved, we can freely substitute one for the other. Thus we end up with:

(B2) The pious is loved by the god because the gods love it; it is untrue that the gods love the pious because it is pious.

Unfortunately, (A) and (B2) are in conflict with each other.

Euthyphro’s fourth try: This time he provides a genus (piety is a kind of justice) as well as differentia (that which distinguishes piety from other forms of justice). Piety is not service to other human beings (that would be one type of justice); rather it is service to the gods.

Socrates’ Response: If the gods are truly divine, then they are complete and need nothing from mere mortals. So either our service is pointless or else it simply amounts to pleasing the gods (i.e. doing what they love). If so, we are back to the problem of the contradiction discussed above.

Ending Situation: Euthyphro leaves quickly. He realizes that he cannot answer Socrates’ question. The reader is left ignorant; Socrates is left ignorant. Socrates seems to think there is a right answer, but he does not know what it is.

Note: Is it coincidental that the charge against Socrates is that he teaches against the gods? The entire dialogue has raised serious worries about holiness and what it means to serve the gods.