Euthyphro
THE SEARCH FOR A PROPER DEFINITION OF
PIETY OR HOLINESS
Preamble
 Setting: Steps of the King Archon’s court.
 Socrates being charged with impiety, and the dialogue is
about the meaning of piety.
 Euthyphro is there to charge his father with murder
(which many think is impious).
 Socratic irony: “I realize that as well as you do, my dear
friend, and that’s why I am eager to become your
student. I know that this Meletus … pretends not to
notice you at all, whereas he has seen me so sharply and
so easily that he has indicted me for impiety” (5c)
 Vainglory: the conceit of wisdom.
Definition 1
 “What’s pious is precisely what I’m doing now:
prosecuting those who commit an injustice, such as
murder or temple robbery, or those who’ve done some
other such wrong, regardless of whether they’re one’s
father or one’s mother or anyone else whatever. Not
prosecuting them, on the other hand, is what’s impious”
(5d-e).
 Evidence: The god’s treatment of their fathers.
 Problem: It’s not a ‘real’ definition. (It’s an ostensive
definition.) Socrates wants the delineation of a
characteristic that can be used to pick out any instance of
impiety, not just this one. (6d-e)
Definition 2
 “What’s loved by the god’s is pious, and what’s not loved
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by the god’s is impious” (7a).
Response: The god’s quarrel and differ with each other
(7b).
Some disputes – e.g., those over empirical and
mathematical properties – can be settled by the facts or
concepts of the matter.
Other disputes – such as those about justice, goodness
(i.e., value issues) can’t be so settled.
When the gods disagree about what can’t easily be
settled, then the same thing is both pious and impious,
and this definition fails (8a).
Definition 3
 What all the gods love is pious; what all the gods
hate, is impious (9d)
 The Euthyphro question
 “Is the pious loved by the gods because it’s pious. Or
is it pious because it’s loved (10a)?
 I.e., what is the cause here, and what is the effect?
Socrates answers by saying that the act of loving
must precede (or cause) the state of being loved.
“It’s not because it’s a loved thing [a state] that it’s
loved by those who love it; rather it’s because it’s
loved [an act] that it’s a loved thing” (10c).
Definition 3 cont’d
 Euthyphro then attempts to say that an action is loved by the
gods because it is pious, rather than the other way around.
But his choice implies that the state of being loved precedes
the act of loving, which contradicts the agreed upon premise
that the act must precede the state.
 Piety and what all the gods love are not the same. Essence vs.
mere attribute or property
 Presumably, there are other things loved by the gods besides
piety – justice, for example– so being loved does not
differentiate a concept like piety from a concept like justice.
Both piety and justice share the property of being loved, but
Socrates is searching for the thing that makes piety the thing
that it is and nothing else. If other things besides piety are
loved by the gods, then being loved can’t be the essential
property of piety.
Definition 3 cont’d
 Euthyphro now stumped: “I have no way of telling
you what I have in mind. For whatever proposals we
put forward keep somehow moving around and they
won’t stay put” (11b)
 Aporia or befuddlement– Socrates’ interlocutors
often say they have been stung by a stingray from
their slumbers.
 Aporia is the start of true philosophical exploration,
according to Socrates, since you won’t look for that
which you think you already know.
Prelude to Definition 4: genus-species def’s
 Socrates suggests that piety is a part of justice: “the
pious as a whole must be just” (11e).
 Genus species definition. Isolate a large group
(genus) to which something (a species) belongs
(similarity) and then note as well how the species
differs from the genus. E.g., Aristotle's definition of
the species humans: The animal (genus) that thinks
(differentia). S. discusses this @ 12 b-c.
 What, then, is the differentia of piety (amongst the
genus, just things)?
Definition 4 cont’d
 Piety is “the part of the just .. that is concerned with
tending to the gods…” (The other part of justice
attends to humans) (12e).
 Question: What do we mean by “tending to” the
gods? In other cases, tending to x always benefits x
(dog and horse trainers). But surely we don’t
improve the gods by tending to them.
 It is rather, Euthyphro says, like the tending of a
slave to a master (13d). But what is the end of this?
I.e., what do the gods get from our attendance?
Definition 5
 Piety is “some sort of knowledge of sacrificing and
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praying,” where “sacrificing is giving to the gods, and
praying is asking from them” (14b).
Piety, then, is an “expertise in mutual trading between
gods and men” (14e).
But while it’s clear that we benefit from the god’s, what
benefits can we give them?
“Honor and reverence” i.e., “what’s pleasing to them”
(15b).
But then we are back to the definition that piety is what is
pleasing to the gods, which has already been defeated.
Aporia.