Plato: Euthyphro

I argue that the type of progress exhibited by philosophy is not that exhibited by science, but rather is akin to the kind of progress exhibited be someone becoming ‘older and wiser’. However, as actually-existing philosophy has gotten older, it has not always gotten wiser. As an illustration, I consider Rawls's conception of justification. I argue that Rawls's notion of what it is to have a philosophical justification exhibits no progress at all from Euthyphro's. In fact, drawing on a remark (...) of Wittgenstein's, I suggest that Rawls's conception is inferior to the situation as depicted in Plato's famous dialogue – because at least in the case of Plato's Euthyphro, there is no illusion of justification. (shrink)

The central question of the Euthyphro is “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved?” A baseball analogy explains this to students: “Does the umpire say ‘Out’ because the runner is out, or is the runner out because the umpire says ‘Out’?” The former makes the relevant knowledge public, making Socrates the appropriate secular moral authority, while the latter makes it religious, invoking Euthyphro’s expertise. Foucault’s aphorism that power is knowledge illuminates (...) how the aristocracy stands behind Euthyphro, while Socrates empowers the democracy. An abstract epistemological question has important political consequences. (shrink)

If one interprets Plato’s dialogues using the dialogical mode, then the principal philosophical significance of the work is not exhausted by the arguments put forward by its characters. Integral to the dialogical mode involves a consideration of the purpose of investigating a philosophical issue in the form of a dialogue rather than a treatise. But Plato’s dialogues should not only be understood in a dialogical mode but instructors should also teach using this mode of interrogation. This paper describes a new (...) way Plato’s Euthyphro might be taught to students, focusing less on its use as a logical primer and more on the character of Euthyphro. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: L'article montre qu'une interversion structurelle caractéristique se retrouve tout au long de l'Euthyphron de Platon. Il est assez facile de voir qu'Euthyphron confond un aspect dérivé de la piété avec l'essence même de la piété, mais ma thèse est que cette confusion entre positions primaires et secondaires est présente à plusieurs niveaux dans le dialogue. Il y a relation d'interversion non seulement entre l'essentiel et le dérivé, mais aussi parmi les personnages mêmes, comme dans d'autres éléments du dialogue. C'est (...) la répétition de ce schéma de base qui confère à l'Euthyphron une certaine immobilité et qui fait obstacle à tout développement organique dans le texte. (shrink)

The paper presents the theological and philosophical category of Deus absconditus and shows it in the perspective of Nicholas of Cusa’s ideas contained in his dialogue De Deo Abscondito. The hidden God is the totally transcendent God that is beyond creation both ontologically and logically. Deus absconditus is God that cannot be the object of rational cognition and positive knowledge, hence the only way to acquire any knowledge of him is the method of negative theology. Therefore, the hidden God is (...) the subject of mystical epistemology. Cusanus’s Deus absconditus is also called Truth and as such he is not only incomprehensible, but also incommunicable. God’s transcendence, rational unintelligibility and inexpressibility are the aspects which the considerations presented in this paper build on. (shrink)

According to many interpreters, Socrates in the Euthyphro thinks that an answer to ‘what is the holy?’ should pick out some feature that is prior to being holy. While this is a powerful way to think of answers to the ‘what is it?’ question, one that Aristotle develops, I argue that the Euthyphro provides an important alternative to this Aristotelian account. Instead, an answer to ‘what is the holy?’ should pick out precisely being holy, not some feature prior to it. (...) I begin by showing how this interpretation allows for a straightforward reading of a key argument: Socrates’ refutation of Euthyphro’s proposal that the holy is the god-loved. Then I address considerations that seem to favor the Aristotelian account. I end by explaining how answers to ‘what is f-ness?’ questions are informative on this account, even though they do not identify anything other than f-ness. (shrink)

A sizable literature exists concerning the structure of Socrates’ argument at Euthyphro 9d–11b. Although there is some dispute, a substitutional reading has emerged as a leading interpretation. However, some rear-guard maneuvers are in order to defend this reading against its competitors. In this paper, I articulate a substitutional reading and argue that it is invalid on two counts: one, Socrates oversteps the logic of his reductio ad absurdum, and two, he illicitly substitutes coreferring expressions in explanatory contexts. Next, I defend (...) the substitutional reading by rebutting its leading contender, Sharvy’s formal causation interpretation, and showing how a similar substitutional argument is made in the Protagoras. (shrink)

At the start of Plato’s Minos an anonymous comrade argues that the variability of law according to time and place undermines the claim that it conveys moral truth. But by the end he has accepted Minos as the greatest of lawgivers because of his education by Zeus. How does he manage to slide so quickly from the moral laxity of conventionalism to the moral absolutism of divine revelation? Guided by this question, the author considers how the two divergent parts of (...) the Minos form one whole, and so what Plato suggests is the common basis to conventionalism and piety. Plato’s Minos thus ends up having an unexpectedly close relationship to his Euthyphro. (shrink)

The argument used by Socrates to refute the thesis that piety is what all the gods love is one of the most well known in the history of philosophy. Yet some fundamental points of interpretation have gone unnoticed. I will show that (i) the strategy of Socrates' argument refutes not only Euthyphro's theory of piety and such neighboring doctrines as cultural relativism and subjectivism, but nominalism in general; moreover, that (ii) the argument needs to assume much less than is generally (...) thought, and finally that (iii) while Socrates' argument, properly understood in its full force, appears to be inconsistent with the goal of his own inquiry, his own 'Platonic' position escapes the inconsistency. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that informational semantics, the most well-known and worked-out naturalistic account of intentional content, conflicts with a fundamental psychological principle about the conditions of belief-formation. Since this principle is an important premise in the argument for informational semantics, the upshot is that the view is self-contradictory??indeed, it turns out to be guilty of a sophisticated version of the fallacy famously committed by Euthyphro in the eponymous Platonic dialogue. Criticisms of naturalistic accounts of content typically proceed piecemeal (...) by narrowly constructed counterexamples, but I argue that the current result is more robust. It affects a broad family of accounts, and provokes a wider doubt about the possibility of successful execution of the naturalistic project. (shrink)

This book is a quest for the real Plato, forever hiding behind the veil of drama. The quest, as the subtitle indicates, is Cartesian in that it looks for Plato independently of the prevailing paradigms on where we are supposed to find him. The result of the quest is a complete pedagogical platform on Plato. This does not mean that the book leaves nothing out, covering all the dialogues and all the themes, but that it provides the full intellectual apparatus (...) for doing just that. It consists of two parts. The first is a general orientation in three chapters, one each pertaining to the life, thought, and works of Plato. The second is a dialogic companion covering the four dialogues built around the last days of Socrates, with a separate chapter devoted to each: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. (shrink)

The most famous Socratic question—ti esti touto?—is often pre- ceded by a far less famous, but more fundamental question—esti touto ti? Though this question is posed in many dialogues with re- spect to myriad topics, in every instance it receives but one answer: it is something, namely something that is. The dialogue devoted to why this question always meets with an affirmative answer would appear to be the Parmenides, for there Parmenides throws into question whether the eidē are, only to (...) establish that, if we have opinions that there is some unity in being, such unity must be. Nevertheless, the dramatic setting of the Parmenides is the quarreling of the Pre-Socratic schools, and the popular dismissal of philosophy that their quarreling engendered. For a dialogue that establishes that the object of inquiry is simply because we have opinions about it, we must, as I hope to show, turn to the Euthyphro. (shrink)

Despite earlier interest in the dialogue, Plato's Euthyphro has received little attention over the past fifty years. The few works on the dialogue which have appeared during this time have either concerned themselves primarily with the broadest issues, or else have focused upon special problems of interpretation. The present work, on the other hand, attempts a full and detailed analysis of all of the most important aspects of the dialogue, paying close attention to the language of the text, as well (...) as to the structure of the arguments which thus emerge. ;The thesis of the dissertation is that the Euthyphro presents an indirect argument in favor of the assumption of absolute moral standards. The dialogue describes a meeting between Socrates and Euthyphro. Euthyphro is prosecuting his father on a charge of murder. His family thinks that this action is impious; but Euthyphro justifies his proceeding with the claim that one must act in accordance with the law of the gods; and that, while the family does not know how the gods feel about the pious and the impious, Euthyphro does possess this special knowledge. Euthyphro and his family are thus seen to have offered competing claims as to what, in the given circumstance, is pious or impious. This calls forth the Socratic search for the eidos or idea , which shall serve as the standard or paradigm by which the particular actions can be judged. This standard is assumed to be universal, self-identical, and logically distinct from its particulars, an assumption that is implicitly justified throughout the course of the dialogue. In answer to Socrates' request to state the universal, Euthyphro offers four successive definitions. But in each case Socrates shows that Euthyphro has failed to grasp the universal, and has only proffered statements about particular pious things. What Socrates wants, however, is neither an example, nor simply some characteristic mark that all holy things might happen to possess, but rather that very essence by virtue of which all pious things are pious. For only this essence will provide the standard that is required. Euthyphro, however, fails to understand Socrates' request, and this failure is shown to arise from Euthyphro's conceit of wisdom. This, in turn, justifies the function of Socrates' negative elenchus, as well as the aporia with which the dialogue concludes. (shrink)

Although the Euthyphro explicitly ends in , careful analysis of the dialogue reveals that it is an extra-judicial defense of Socrates against the charge of impiety. This private apologia consists primarily in redefining piety as doing philosophy, and in justifying that definition in two ways: positively by an appeal to the hierarchical structure of changing reality, and negatively by the ironic claim of Socrates not to know, and his correction of Euthyphro's impiety, at least theoretically. ;This defense, however, is not (...) without its own problems. Specifically, Socrates' reverence for the divine things places him in an ambiguous relationship to the city. While this ambiguous relationship cannot be seen as a conflict between philosophy and religion per se, it does reveal a conflict between philosophical piety and political piety, or, more broadly, a conflict between philosophy and politics. As a consequence, philosophy must be practiced esoterically, if philosophy is to protect itself against the city's suspicions. ;Included is an appendix which compares the Euthyphro and Laws, Book X. (shrink)

In this work I argue that throughout the Euthyphro Plato uses carefully set out allusions as well as specific technical terminology to model the entire conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro in terms of an Athenian legal procedure called antidosis, "exchange." Within this framework the introductory passages of the dialogue develop the relationship between Euthyphro and Socrates and depict the two interlocutors as disputants in an antidosis challenge, the purpose of which is to determine which of the two interlocutors is the (...) more suitable candidate on the charge of impiety and corruption. The second half of the dialogue, shaped by the antagonism and legal discourse found in an antidosis , continues to develop the analogy and encourages a particular reading of the arguments on the nature of piety. Overall, the antidosis analogy invites readers to view the two halves of the dialogue as a unified whole, and the pervasive allusions to antidosis provide insight not only into otherwise perplexing passages of the dialogue but also into Plato's own philosophical enterprise. ;After providing an overview of the antidosis challenge, I examine three particular passages in the Euthyphro where there is strong correspondence between the conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro and the legal procedure. Once establishing the analogy between the dialogue and the antidosis procedure, I then interpret the entire work in light the procedure. The chief conclusion of the analysis is that Plato likens the benefits of philosophy to that of an antidosis procedure. Just as an antidosis procedure leads to lavishly funded liturgies, public services, for the benefit of Athens, so Socrates' philosophical activity leads to the performance of services to the gods, which the dialogue recognizes as a pious activity. (shrink)

Piety is not a theme that normally attracts the modern mind. In our own age rebellion has a more prominent position and the theme of impiety strikes a more sympathetic note. We are led to examine Plato's Euthyphro as much for the hints we find on the subject of impiety as for whatever it might contain on the seemingly drab subject of the holy. The Euthyphro is also a dialogue concerned with justice, a recurrent theme in the Platonic corpus, and (...) it questions the accepted relationship of justice to piety and orthodoxy. The secular implications of the argument, which seem to be the more important to Socrates, himself, are as relevant to modern politics and religion as they were to the life of ancient Athens. (shrink)

It is my contention that what is generally construed as the Euthyphro Dilemma as a reason to deny that moral facts are based on theological facts is one of the worst arguments proposed in philosophy of religion or ethical theory, and that Socrates, the character of the dialogue who poses the dilemma, was both morally bankrupt in his challenge to Euthyphro, but more importantly here, ought to have lost the argument hands down. But in any dialogue, the author controls what (...) people say. Plato was able to easily give Socrates the victory by writing the ending of the story himself, where Euthyphro, believing that piety is what the gods approve of, loses the argument abysmally. The version of events presented here is different. This time, Euthyphro is permitted to offer a reasonable defence of his position, and he has the benefit of having been able to read all that has been said on the Euthyphro dilemma over the last couple of millennia, and especially the last fifty years. Under such circumstances, Socrates does not stand a chance. We arrive at our scene, the steps of the Dunedin High Court, in Dunedin, New Zealand, on a cool mid-winter July morning. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.