Overview
For today's lesson, you need to read the Euthyphro, by Plato, in Chapter 1 of Gordon Marino's Ethics: The Essential Writings. Once you've completed the reading, move on to the next part of today's lesson.
Chapter 1, pp. 6-23 Plato: Euthyphro
Required text Ethics: The Essential Writings, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Modern Library, 2010). ISBN: 978- 0812977783
Today's LessonAlthough there are philosophers in ancient Greece before Socrates, none of them makes the impact or has the influence on philosophy that Socrates does. Socrates wrote nothing down, preferring to spend his time in the marketplace (“agora,” in Greek) of the city of Athens, engaging in intellectual debates with the leading figures of his day. His most basic impulse was, it seems, a skeptical one: he was curious enough about the truth to reject the easy answers, presuppositions, and biases customary among his fellow citizens, and thus he found himself regularly asking questions of people who were thought to know the answers. What Socrates typically found, however, was that even purported experts in a field, when asked the most basic questions about their field, could not provide clear and definitive answers. Socrates took this to mean that they didn’t really know, for certain, that what they claimed to believe was true. Thus, in our reading for today, the Euthyphro, Socrates is engaged in dialogue with an expert in religious matters named Euthyphro. Euthyphro claims to know for certain what piety is, and so Socrates asks him the most basic question you could ask an expert in piety: What is piety? This question—so very basic, and yet so very important—is one that Euthyphro, despite his expertise and reputation, cannot really answer. Euthyphro knows what Greek religion says about piety, and he knows what his fellow Athenians think piety is. He also knows how to speak about piety in such a way that people who aren’t thinking critically would be mesmerized by his eloquence and erudition. But he can’t define the word, “piety,” in such a way that he distinguishes once and for all between pious things and impious things—and, for Socrates, that means Euthyphro doesn’t really know what piety is, after all. Most of the conversations Socrates had with other Athenians were of this sort, and most of them end in the way the Euthyphro ends—with Socrates saying that they really must start over if they want to find the truth, and his interlocutor insisting that, while that seems like a good idea, they’re really too busy just now—maybe some other time. It should come as no surprise that, in 399 BCE, Socrates was put on trial for impiety and corrupting the youth of the city, was found guilty, and was executed.
During his lifetime, however, Socrates attracted a number of wealthy, aristocratic, intelligent young men as students and/or friends—men who enjoyed seeing their fathers and fathers’ friends skewered by Socrates’ questions—and those men were galvanized by Socrates’ death both to remember their mentor and continue his work, the work of philosophy. Among those young men, and almost certainly the brightest of them, was a young man probably named Aristocles—known better by his nickname, probably given to him when he was a wrestler and which means “broad”: Plato. Our readings are written by Plato, but “star” Socrates. Both of them were written after Socrates’ death, and the Republic, at least, is a better representation of Plato’s views than of Socrates’.
In texts like the Euthyphro, Plato more or less invents (no doubt as influenced by the life and teachings of Socrates) the philosophical approach to ethics. Thus, we see in the Euthyphro the philosophical concern for freedom and integrity, as well as the interest philosophers take in the use of human reason to resolve ethical issues. Tomorrow, in the selection from the Republic, we will also see the philosopher’s interest in pursuing ethical issues all the way down to the most fundamental principles possible. But for now, the Euthyphro.
The Euthyphro is among my favorite works by Plato, largely because I think it gives us an incredible depiction of philosophy as practiced by Socrates. In this text, the chief concern is piety—which of course has a natural relationship to religion—but Socrates is unwilling to let Euthyphro get away with repeating the traditional or customary beliefs about piety. In ancient Greek religion, piety was more or less equated with engaging in two religious practices: prayer and (animal) sacrifice. Euthyphro dances around this belief throughout the dialogue, sometimes offering it straightforwardly (in the second half of the text, defining piety as prayer and sacrifice), and sometimes more indirectly (in the first half of the text, arguing that piety is what the gods love). Socrates, however, wants to know what makes pious people and actions pious—what is the root or origin of their piety. In other words, Socrates is interested in the principle that unifies all pious things, the one trait or quality (we might call it “piousness”) the possession of which makes all pious things pious (and the lack of which makes all impious things impious). This is where Socrates’ famous question comes in:
The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. (Marino, p. 15)
The question is an interesting one: Socrates is willing to agree that the gods love everything that is holy. But is it their love that makes those things holy? Or is it the fact that they’re holy that makes the gods love them? To put it differently, Socrates is asking about the origin of the holiness of holy things. Do holy things get their holiness from the gods, or do they possess their holiness on some other basis—and the gods simply recognize that they are holy? And in yet another way: Are holy things holy in themselves, or is their holiness something they get from the gods? Do the gods make holy things holy? Would the things called “holy” still be holy, even if there were no gods?
We don’t have to see how Socrates and Euthyphro resolve this question (which they don’t, really) to see its importance for ethics. If we replace the word “holy” with the word “good,” we begin to see the problem more clearly. We can agree that, if there is a God, God is good and loves good things. But did God cause those things to be good? Or does God simply recognize that they are good? When we put it this way, bringing it into a more contemporary context, we can see why Socrates’ question is so off-putting to Euthyphro (and other traditional Greeks). Socrates is asserting that there are only two possibilities:
1. The difference between good and evil is something created by the gods, or
2. The difference between good and evil is something that exists independently of the gods.
(1.) is the traditional answer, in Socrates’ culture and our own, and it basically says that God decides what is good and what is evil. If God changed God’s mind about this, the goodness of an action or person would similarly change. Being a good person, then, would be about understanding what God wants, and coming into a certain sort of relationship with God. On this view, if there were no God (or gods), then there would be no ethics—no difference between good and evil at all. Socrates suggests very strongly, however, that (2.) is a better answer—that good things would be good even if the gods hated them, or even if there were no gods—and he gets Euthyphro to agree with him. And on (2.), whether we know what God wants for us or not, we still have the problem of figuring out why good actions are good before we can figure out how to be good ourselves. Option (1.) requires only faith in order for you to become a good person; option (2.) requires philosophy.
Once Euthyphro agrees with Socrates, however, that piety is something human beings can investigate by way of reason for themselves, then he has effectively lost the argument—since Socrates isn’t really proving that piety is this or that, but that whatever it is, one would have to examine it skeptically, philosophically, for oneself. None of the answers Euthyphro gives to Socrates’ question (“What is piety?”) offer anything but variations on traditional Greek religious ethics—all of which expect people to believe what they are told, without question. While Socrates is not saying that the traditional religious answers are wrong, he is saying that people are wrong to believe them just because they’re the traditional answers, or because they were told to do so by their parents or priests, etc. Socrates is asking us to interrogate even our most closely held, widely cherished, deeply religious beliefs—to find out, for ourselves and once and for all, whether it makes sense to believe them.
Traditional morality is often like what Euthyphro represents here, whether in ancient Greek culture or any other culture: it asks us to believe that what people have always believed is true, or pious, or just, and not to question it. There is of course much beauty, wisdom, and value in many traditions. But to accept a tradition unquestioningly is, from Socrates’ perspective, to deny one’s own freedom to think for oneself. Any ethics really worth the name—for Socrates, any philosophical ethics—must begin with independent inquiry. Anything less treats the people who are trying to discover ethical truths as if they’re something less than fully rational beings capable of judging matters for themselves. Anything less denies us our freedom.
As this is our first substantial reading from the history of philosophy, I’d like to leave you free to comment however or upon whatever you please (so long as it’s relevant to the Euthyphro).