Journal of the History of Philosophy

Socratic Piety In The Euthyphro MARK L. McPHERRAN A PERSISTENT AND MUCH DEBATED issue in the interpretation of the Euthyphro is whether the dialogue is merely a peirastic inquiry or a source of positive Socratic doctrine on the nature of piety.' The majority of commentors favor the latter view and have produced various reconstructions of the positive Socratic doctrine of piety they find implicit in the text following the "aporetic interlude" (Eu. i Ib-e). ~ A few prominent scholars have raised objecI wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities and all my fellow seminar members in the 1983 NEH Summer Seminar on the philosophy of Socrates for providing me with the stimulating environment in which this paper was written. I am particularly indebted to the director of the seminar, Gregory Vlastos, for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also wish to extend my gratitude to my colleague, Charles Chiasson, and an anonymous referee for the Journal of the History of Philosophy for their constructive criticisms of earlier versions of my paper. See W. G. Rabinowitz, "Platonic Piety: An Essay Toward the Solution of an Enigma," Phronesis 2 (1958): 112-14 (hereafter cited as "Platonic Piety"), for a partial history of this issue, the discussion of which extends from ThrasyUus of Alexandria to a recent article by C. C. W. Taylor, "The End of the Euthyphro,"Phronesis 2 0982): 1o9-18 (hereafter cited as "The End"). Among the constructivists are J. Adam, PlatonisEuthyphro (Cambridge, 19o2); H. Bonitz, Platonische Studien (Berlin, t866): 233-34; T. Brickhouse and N. Smith, "The Origin of Socrates ' Mission," Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1983): 657-66 (hereafter cited as "Socrates' Mission"); J. Burnet, Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito (Oxford, x924), 82-142 (hereafter cited as 'Plato's Euthyphro'); P. Friedl~inder, Plato, 3 vols. (New York, z964), 2: 82-91; W. A. Heidel "On Plato's Euthyphro," TAPA 31 (19oo): 173ff.; T. Irwin, Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), 1--131; B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1953), l: 3o3-o8; Rabinowitz, "Platonic Piety"; P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, ~933), 74-8o; A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work (New York, 1927), 146-56; C. C. W. Taylor, "The End"; and G. Vlastos, "The Unity of the Virtues in the Protagoras,"in PlatonicStudies(Princeton, 1981): 22169 and 427-45 (hereafter cited as "Unity"). For further references, see Rabinowitz, "Platonic Piety," 113, n. 4, and L. Versenyi, Holiness and Justice: An Interpretation of Plato's Euthyphro (Washington, D.C., 1982): 111, n. 4 (hereafter cited as "Holiness"). [283] 284 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:3 JULY 1985 tions to this constructivist approach. ~ R. E. Allen, for instance, taking the Socratic profession of ignorance to heart, holds that the Euthyphro "bears its meaning on its face," and that (hence) it neither states nor implies a definition of piety. 4 Lazlo Versenyi, another anticonstructivist, argues more cogently that no definition of piety involving reference to the gods may be culled from the dialogue's explicit statements (contra all the constructivists), and that in fact, the notion of piety towards which Socrates is directing Euthyphro is a thoroughly secular one, identical to the whole of virtue) It seems to me that the anticonstructivists are wrong, and that most of the interpretations the constructivists have offered involve the mistaken use of textual references which do not plausibly bear on the views of the historical Socrates, 6 and/or do not do justice to a reasonable understanding of Socrates ' profession of ignorance, his claims to be pursuing a god-ordered work, and the evidence of his somewhat traditional religious practices and beliefs. In the following, I argue for a cautiously constructive view of Socratic piety derived from the Euthyphro, which is consonant with a reasonable conception of the historic Socrates. 1. Following the aporetic interlude of the Euthyphro, Socrates offers to aid (ov~t~xQo0vlx~oolxctt) Euthyphro in the search for a definition of piety (6otog; Eu. 11e3-5). 7 Socrates initiates this assistance by raising the question of whether justice and piety are coextensive concepts (such that all and only See, e...