Reading Euthyphro
The objectives of studying the Euthyphro
The main objective is to learn what the method of philosophy is through the
method Socrates used.
The secondary objectives are (1) to be acquainted with a philosophical work by
one of the greatest philosophers; (2) to appreciate the uniqueness of Plato’s philosophical
writings.
Plato as a literary artist
Plato was not a mere writer. It was said that he had been a poet and playwright before he
met Socrates and that ever since he burned all his poems and plays. Some of the poems
attributed to him survived. Being a literary artist, when he wrote his Dialogues he did not
just have people talking with one another about philosophy; he constructed them in the
form of a drama. This is particularly true with his early dialogues which were written for
the purpose of preserving the memory of Socrates. Why he did this is a matter of
conjecture. Probably, being an artist, he could not avoid doing it this way. Most probably,
he did it this way because he wanted to keep his readers from being bored. The
Euthyphro is a good example of his art, and in my opinion his best dramatic composition
is the dialogue called Protagoras.
His art as reflected in the Euthyphro can be observed thus:
- The Euthyphro is about the nature of piety, and that is because one of the
allegations against Socrates was that he was impious. Instead of starting right away with
the discussion about piety, Plato depicts the scene of the chance meeting between
Socrates and Euthyphro. The conversation begins naturally about the purpose of each
being there and it is Euthyphro's stating of his purpose that leads to the topic of piety.
Notice the careful characterization of Euthyphro as a man confident of his knowledge of
religion and the ways of the gods. Notice also the nature of the case that Euthyphro is
bringing to court. Plato intends it to be shocking and this is a common dramatic device.
This also brings out the fact that Socrates is encountering an unconventional man, not just
an ordinary one. This make the drama even more striking.
- Socrates is best known for the Socratic irony; that is, he claimed to be ignorant
and went around searching for people who had knowledge and were willing to teach him,
and yet his questioning exposed these people as in fact ignorant. In trying to preserve the
memory of Socrates, Plato sprinkles the irony all through the dialogue even though we
can never know whether the real Socrates was capable of such sustained ironic
performance. Plato's art is seen in his ability to put words into Socrates's mouth is such a
way that he seems to be sincere, and yet the reader can discern the mocking tone behind
his speeches. Euthyphro is portrayed as being too serious to be conscious of the irony and
thus is clueless about what Socrates is getting at. The reader cannot help being amused at
the hapless Euthyphro. It is a part of Plato's art to be able to put wit and humour into a
serious philosophical discussion.
The central argument of the Euthyphro
Euthyphro’s definition:
D1. Piety is what all the gods love, and what all the gods hate is impiety.
Which can be put succinctly as:
D2. What is god-beloved is the same as what is pious.
The true statements both Euthyphro and Socrates agree upon:
1. What is pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, not pious because it is loved
2. What is god-beloved is god-beloved because the gods love it; and that they do not love
it because it is god-beloved.
If we substitute ‘pious’ with ‘god-beloved’ in 1. we get:
3. What is god-beloved is loved by the gods because it is god-beloved, not god-beloved
because it is loved.
The result is 3 contradicts 2.
If we substitute ‘god-beloved’ with ‘pious’ in 2. we get:
4. What is pious is pious because the gods love it; and that they do not love it because it
is pious.
The result is 4 contradicts 1.
[Piety has a defining property in itself independent of how the gods feel about it. What is
god-beloved doesn’t have such a property, its defining property depends upon the love of
the gods]
The last eight pages of Euthyphro we did not read in class
Socrates offers to help Euthyphro find out what piety is. He points out that to be pious is morally
right, but not all that is morally right is pious. That is, all pious actions are morally right but not
all morally right actions are pious. There are morally right actions which are not pious. Thus
pious actions are a kind of moral rectitude, and since there are many kinds of moral rectitude,
what has to be found out is what kind of moral rectitude piety is.
At this point, Euthyphro makes another attempt. He proposes that piety is the kind of moral
rectitude that has to do with tendance of the gods. Socrates, as we can expect, seizes upon the
meaning of tendance. He points out that one use the term 'tendance' is in animal farming. Farmers
tend to horses and other animals to make them better so we can use them or sell them. But it is
impossible for humans to make gods better. They can make us better but not the other way round
(otherwise they wouldn't be gods!). So Euthyphro has to modify his definition. He proposes that
piety is a sort of service to the gods. Again when Socrates asks what the gods get from our
service, Euthyphro fails to specify what it is. But he explains that it has to do with saying and
doing the right things in prayer and sacrifice. Socrates then points out that sacrifice consists in
making presents to the gods and prayers in making requests to them; we do all of this to ask for
what we need from the gods and we offer them something in return by means of sacrifice and
prayer. Would not piety then be, Socrates asks, the art of commerce between man and gods?
Euthyphro gives assent without seeing Socrates' sarcasm in this question. Socrates then returns to
the point that the gods, being what they are, cannot get any benefits from us. Euthyphro senses an
opening here and he claims that even though the gods cannot get benefits from us in terms of
material things, they can be pleased by our actions. Then Socrates retorts that this means piety is
what is pleaing to the gods and once more piety is the same as god-beloved. He accuses
Euthyphro of leading him back in a circle to try to conceal the truth from him. Euthyphro realizes
he has been cornered, so he says goodbye to avoid further humiliation.
You should appreciate Plato's wit in turning this serious-sounding dialog into a comedy. But the
idea is not just to make the reader laugh. Plato's point is that the method Socrates uses is a
therapy. People have to be made aware of their ignorance before they can be set on the path of
truth. Of course not very many people respond to this therapy; instead of accepting their
ignorance they become angry and resentful. The execution of Socrates is a testament to this.
The ‘What is X?’ question
What is the point of Socrates’ question in the form of ‘what is X?’ (What is piety? What
is justice? What is courage? Etc.).
The point is in every society people are taught virtues and vices so they can perform
virtuous actions and avoid vicious ones, but we are rarely taught why certain acts are
virtuous or vicious. Instead we are presented with a list of actions that are virtuous and
another list of them that are to be avoided. Some actions are clearly courageous, or just,
or pious etc., but others are not clearly so. How do we know whether we should perform
this latter group of actions or not? Since society gives us only a list, but doesn’t tell us the
unique characteristic of each virtue, we will be either at a loss of what to do or probably
do the wrong things.
Take benevolence as an example, it is surely a virtue that we should be kind to people.
Helping the blind cross the street is unquestionably laudable. But if we help the poor by
just giving them money instead of helping them help themselves, we are making them
depend on us and hurting them in the long run. Someone might help a person out of
compassion without considering the possibility that that person might use our help to
harm others. Are these two cases benevolent actions? They surely are cases of people
helping people. There are two ways to think about it. Either they are cases of benevolence
but must be avoided, or they are not. If they are, then some benevolent actions are not
good. Since we believe benevolence is a virtue, that is, all benevolent actions are good,
it’s more reasonable to think that these are not benevolent actions. But then we have to
think deeper than looking at the list society gives us. We have to seek a definition of
benevolence that rules out these two cases. This is the point of Socrates’ insistence on the
‘what is X?’ question. Philosophy requires that we think deeper than common sense in
order to find the truth.
The positive doctrine implied by the Euthyphro
Having reached the end of the dialogue, we tend to think that it doesn’t tell us what piety
is, only what it is not, and so we might think that we get nothing positive from it. But this
is not so, this dialogue points the way to an understanding of the universe that is
subversive of the common Greek beliefs. Socrates’ central argument hinges on his
success in getting Euthyphro to share his conviction that piety has the property that is
independent of the gods’ likes and dislikes, the property which all the gods love and yet
doesn’t depend for its existence on that love. In other words, piety is something objective
in the sense that it depends on neither gods nor humans. Piety can’t be the only thing that
has this objective nature; justice, courage, benevolence etc., which are virtues on the
same level with piety, must also be objective. These are moral truth and thus other kinds
of truth, for instance, scientific truth, must also have the same status. If truth does not
depend on the gods, then the gods cannot be the ultimate authority in the universe. Since
the ancient Greek thinkers believe that truth can only be reached by reason, this leads to
the belief that the universe is a rational order.
Even though this conception undermines the supremacy of the gods in the Greek
mythology, it is not incompatible with another form of theology. For some thinkers the
idea that the universe is a rational order suggests the existence of God. Any kinds of
rational order must be caused by reason and thus by an intelligent being; therefore, the
rational order of the universe must be caused by a super intelligent being, the supreme
being of all beings and that must be God who is identified with reason itself. This is the
idea held by stoicism that we will study next week.
This idea of objectivity implicit in the Euthyphro was developed by Plato in his later
dialogues into his famous Theory of Forms. Of course, the idea that virtues are objective
has been challenged all through the history of philosophy. Quite a large number of
thinkers believe that virtues are relative to societies: different societies hold different
conceptions about what virtues are, and there is no objective truth in this matter. In fact,
during Socrates’ time this idea was held by some of the most famous Sophists. In his later
dialogues, Plato spent a lot of effort trying to present elaborate arguments to combat this
kind of thinking.
What do we learn about philosophy from reading the Euthyphro?
1. The nature of philosophy
The fact that philosophy requires us to go deeper than the common sense leads us to the
essential characteristic of philosophy. Going deeper means philosophy cannot avoid
challenging conventional wisdom. In the dialogue, when Euthyphro proposes definitions,
these involve common understanding about the gods and their actions that forms the
foundation of Greek morality. Socrates' criticism of these definitions is a way of
questioning the reasonableness of this understanding. Do the gods really make wars
among themselves? Is worshipping the gods the offering them things they need? To think
philosophically is basically to challenge common beliefs. In each society, we are taught a
certain worldview mostly associated with religion. We are taught what the universe is
like, the place of man in nature, how should we behave towards others, how should we
live etc. The justification for this worldview is not elaborated or often is never offered,
partly because society has subsisted upon this worldview for so long and so there is
complacency about it. In its attempt to use reason to explore this worldview, philosophy
might find it not rational enough or even irrational. In the first case it has to find deeper
reasons to support the current worldview, in the second case it might have to abandon it
altogether and offer a better system. Philosophy can be subversive sometimes, but as
Plato has Socrates said in the Apology: ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’. In short,
philosophy teaches us to construct a rational worldview which will guide us in our living.
2. The method of philosophy
Socrates criticizes Euthyphro's definitions by pointing out that they can't be correct
because they lead to contradictions. Valid reasoning must not lead to a contradiction.
This is the basic law of logic, and thus we learn from Socrates' method that logic is the
main instrument of philosophy. Questioning beliefs is not a matter of rhetoric or debate,
but is the use of reason to test them. Logic helps us separate what we should believe from
what we should not.
3. The nature of progress in philosophy
Socrates and Euthyphro start out from trying to understand what piety is. In the end they
depart without getting the answer. Is all of this futile? Not at all; at least we learn what
piety is not, that is, some answers have been ruled out as irrational. This is the kind of
progress in philosophy. Though philosophy aims at the truth, at present there is no
consensus among philosophers what the answers to the main philosophical problems are.
Nevertheless, along the way from the time of ancient Greece, a lot of unreasonable
answers have been discarded, paving the way to more reasonable answers. Maybe
philosophers will never reach a consensus, but at least the reasonable answers have been
narrowed down and we are left with a manageable choice of answers.
Why should BBA students study philosophy?
Philosophy has nothing to do either with accountancy or commerce. Even worse than
that, when a graduate from this Faculty applies for a job, the prospective employer who is
in his right mind does not care one bit whether this graduate has studied philosophy or
not, let alone whether he or she got a good grade in it. What then is the idea of forcing
BBA students to study philosophy? There is of course a good reason for it.
Philosophy is part of a group of academic subjects called General Education. Every
university student is required to take a number of courses in general education. That
means a student is required to take some courses outside their field of interest. For
example, a student at the Faculty of Arts must take a number of courses in science, the
social sciences, and art. The idea is to make students aware that there are various kinds of
knowledge and various means of seeking knowledge. This will prevent a student from
having a narrow mind and a narrow conception of knowledge. Thus a student from the
Faculty of Accountancy and Commerce is required to take some courses in the
Humanities, among other subjects outside his or her field. Philosophy is a part of the
Humanities. The Humanities aim at the knowledge of the human condition, using
methods different from the scientific one. There is no unified method of the Humanities:
different disciplines in the Humanities use different methods. By studying philosophy, a
student will learn at least one method used in the Humanities.
Levels of philosophical investigation, from the most concrete to the most
abstract.
What leads humans to enter upon the enterprise of philosophy is the problems we face in
trying to live our lives. The most pressing problem is of course that of how we ought to
live, that of the meaning of life. From that point on, thinking about it philosophically
leads us to further questions that are more and more abstract.
1. How should we live? (How should I lead my life in order to be happy? How should I
behave towards others?). To answer the question adequately, we are led to ask:
2. Who are we? (What are human beings? What is the human nature? What is the kind of
life that is most appropriate to human beings?). Trying to get a satisfactory answer leads
us to ask further:
3. What is the universe? (Is the universe governed by laws? Is there a God? Why am I
here? What is my place in the universe? Are humans special?). Even if we thought we got
the answer to this, philosophy would require us to ask:
4. Do we really know? (Can we have knowledge of reality? If we can, how do we obtain
this knowledge?)
The branch of philosophy that deals with the first question is called Ethics and Social
Philosophy; that deals with the second and third questions is called Metaphysics; that
deals with the last question is called Epistemology. All these levels constitute a system of
philosophy.