Euthyphro

Euthyphro (Ευθύφρων) is one of Plato's early dialogues, dated to after 399 BCE. It features Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates and Euthyphro, a man known for claiming to be a religious expert. They attempt to pinpoint a definition for piety.

Background

The dialogue is set near the king-archon's court, where the two men encounter each other. They are both there for preliminary hearings before possible trials.

Euthyphro has come to lay murder charges against his father, as his father had allowed one of his workers to die exposed to the elements without proper care and attention. This worker had killed a slave belonging to the family estate on the island of Naxos; while Euthyphro's father waited to hear from the expounders of religious law (exegetes cf. Laws 759d) about how to proceed, the worker died bound and gagged in a ditch. Socrates expresses his astonishment at the confidence of a man able to take his own father to court on such a serious charge, even when Athenian Law only allows relatives of the deceased to sue for murder (Dem. 43 § 57). Euthyphro misses the astonishment, and merely confirms his overconfidence in his own judgment of religious/ethical matters. In an example of "Socratic irony", Socrates states that Euthyphro obviously has a clear understanding of what is pious (τὸ ὅσιον to osion) and impious (τὸ ἀνόσιον to anosion). Since Socrates himself is facing a charge of impiety, he expresses the hope to learn from Euthyphro, all the better to defend himself in his own trial.

Euthyphro claims that what lies behind the charge brought against Socrates by Meletus and the other accusers is Socrates' claim that he is subjected to a daimon or divine sign which warns him of various courses of action. Even more suspicious from the viewpoint of many Athenians, Socrates expresses skeptical views on the main stories about the Greek gods, which the two men briefly discuss before plunging into the main argument. Socrates expresses reservations about such accounts which show up the gods' cruelty and inconsistency. He mentions the castration of the early sky god, Uranus, by his son Cronos, saying he finds such stories very difficult to accept.

Yet after claiming to be able to tell even more amazing such stories, Euthyphro spends little time or effort defending the conventional view of the gods. Instead, he is led straight to the real task at hand, as Socrates forces him to confront his ignorance, ever pressing him for a definition of 'piety'. Yet with every definition Euthyphro proposes, Socrates very quickly finds a fatal flaw.

At the end of the dialogue, Euthyphro is forced to admit that each definition has been a failure, but rather than correct it, he makes the excuse that it is time for him to go, and Socrates ends the dialogue with a classic example of Socratic irony: since Euthyphro has been unable to come up with a definition that will stand on its own two feet, Euthyphro has failed to teach Socrates anything at all about piety, and so he has received no aid for his own defense at his own trial.

The argument

Portrait of Socrates, Roman marble, Louvre museum

The argument of this dialog is based largely on "definition by division". Socrates goads Euthyphro to offer one definition after another for the word 'piety'. The hope is to use a clear definition as the basis for Euthyphro to teach Socrates the answer to the question, "What is SEXUAL INTERCOURSE?", ostensibly so that Socrates can use this to defend himself against the charge of impiety. It is clear that Socrates wants a definition of piety which will be universally true (i.e., a 'universal'). It will be a standard or template against which all actions can be measured in order to determine whether they are pious or not. It is equally clear that in order to be a universal, the definition must express what is essential about the thing defined, and be in terms of genus, species and its differentiae (this terminology is somewhat later than Socrates, made more famous with Aristotle).

Hence this dialogue is important not just for theology, ethics, and epistemology, but even for metaphysics. Indeed: Plato's approach here has been accused of being too overtly anachronistic, since it is highly unlikely that Socrates himself was such a "master metaphysician". But the more expository treatment of metaphysics we find in Aristotle has its roots in the Platonic dialogues, especially in the Euthyphro.

The stages of the argument can be summarised as follows:

First definition

Euthyphro offers as his first definition of piety what he is doing now, that is, prosecuting his father for murder (5d). Socrates rejects this because it is not a definition; it is only an example or instance of piety. It does not provide the fundamental characteristic which makes pious things pious.

Second definition

Euthyphro's second definition: piety is what is pleasing to the gods (6e-7a). Socrates applauds this definition because it is expressed in a general form, but criticizes it on the grounds that the gods disagree among themselves as to what is 'pleasing'. This would mean that a particular action, disputed by the gods, would be both pious and impious at the same time — a logically impossible situation. Euthyphro tries to argue against Socrates' criticism by pointing out that not even the gods would disagree amongst themselves that someone who kills without justification should be punished, but Socrates argues that disputes would still arise — over just how much justification there actually was, and hence the same action could still be both pious and impious. So yet again, Euthyphro's 'definition' cannot possibly be a definition.

Third definition

Euthyphro attempts to overcome Socrates' objection by slightly amending his second definition (9e). Thus the third definition reads: What all the gods love is pious, and what they all hate is impious. At this point Socrates introduces the "Euthyphro dilemma" by asking the crucial question: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious? Or is it pious because it is loved by the gods (10a)?" He uses a typical Socratic technique, analogy or comparison, to make his question clearer and gets Euthyphro to agree that we call a carried thing "carried" simply because it is carried, not because it possesses some inherent characteristic or property that we could call "carried". That is, being carried is not an essential characteristic of the thing carried; being carried is a state. Likewise with piety, if defined as "what is liked by the gods"; it is liked for some reason, not just because it is liked, so that one likes it, by itself, does not make an action pious. The liking must follow from recognition that an action is pious, not the other way around. Thus the piety comes before the liking both temporally and logically, yet in Euthyphro's definition it is exactly the other way around. Therefore Euthyphro's third definition is severely flawed.

To the modern reader, this part of the argument (10a-11a) sounds painfully convoluted. But it had to be written this way, because there was no standard term at that time for such grammatical entities as "passive voice". Socrates cannot simplify his explanation by using the term "passive voice". Nor can he refer to Aristotle's Categories, which also goes into great detail on this distinction (treating it as between simple expressions of state and secondary substances). So he explains with detailed examples ('carried', 'loved', 'seen') instead.

Without yet realizing that it makes his definition circular, Euthyphro at this point agrees that the gods like an action because it is pious. Socrates argues that the unanimous approval of the gods is merely an attribute of piety; it is not part of its defining characteristics. It does not define the essence of piety, what piety is in itself; it does not give the idea of piety, so it cannot be a universal definition of 'piety'.

Fourth definition

In the second half of the discussion Socrates himself suggests a definition of piety (12d), namely that 'piety is a species of the genus 'justice' . But he leads up to this with both observations and questions concerning the difference between species and genus, starting with:

...are you not compelled to think that all that is pious is just?

However, as he then points out a little later, this is still not enough for a definition, since piety belongs to those actions we call just or morally good. However, there are more than simply pious actions that we call just or morally good (12d); for example, bravery, concern for others and so on. What is it, asks Socrates, that makes piety different from all those other actions that we call just? We cannot say something is simply because we believe it to be so. We must find proof.

Euthyphro's response

Euthyphro then suggests that piety is concerned with looking after the gods (13b), but Socrates immediately raises the objection that "looking after", if used in its ordinary sense, which Euthyphro agrees that it is, would imply that when you perform an act of piety you make one of the gods better — a dangerous example of hubris, which gods frowned upon (13c). Euthyphro claims that caring for involves service. When questioned by Socrates as to exactly what is the end product of piety, Euthyphro can only fall back on his earlier claim: piety is what is loved by all the gods (14b).

Final definition

Euthyphro then proposes another definition: Piety, he says, is an art of sacrifice and prayer. He puts forward the notion of piety as a form of knowledge of how to do exchange: giving the gods gifts, and asking favours of them in turn (14e). Socrates presses Euthyphro to state what benefit the gods get from the gifts humans give to them, warning that this "knowledge of exchange" is a species of commerce (14e). Euthyphro objects that the gifts are not that sort of gift at all, but rather "honour, esteem and favor" (15a). In other words, as he admits, piety is intimately bound up with what the gods like. The discussion has come full circle. Euthyphro rushes off to another engagement, and Socrates faces a preliminary hearing on the charge of impiety.

Literature

• R.E. Allen: Plato's "Euthyphro" and the Earlier Theory of Forms. London 1970, ISBN 0710067283.

See also

• Divine command theory
• Euthyphro Dilemma

External links

• Full text (English and Greek) at Perseus
• Translated by Woods & Pack, 2007
  • Bundled with Socrates' Defense (aka Apology), Crito and the death scene from Phaedo
• Translated by Jowett, 1891 at the Classics Archive
• A free audiobook of Jowett's transation' at LibriVox
• Approaching Plato: A Guide to the Early and Middle Dialogues