In ‘Euthyphro’, Socrates Asks: What Is Piety?
‘Euthyphro’, by Plato, reviewed.
Euthyphro takes place in 399 B.C. One of Plato’s earliest dialogues, it deals with an Athenian mantis — a religious prophet — and Plato’s mentor, Socrates, who is set to stand trial for corrupting the youth. As a mantis, as set against a priest, Euthyphro is a diviner, one who obtains knowledge of the future from the gods. (The most famous example of a mantis is Calchas who, in the first scenes of the Iliad, prophesies that Agamemnon must return the captive Chyrseis to her father to lift the plague sweeping through the army.) Whether or not Euthyphro, whose name literally means ‘right-thinker’, was real or not is a subject of debate among scholars. He exists only in Plato’s work, causing speculation that he was created as a literary device. Fittingly, his dialogue with Socrates concerns the meaning of piety.
After meeting on the porch of King Archon, Socrates tells Euthyphro that he is preparing to go to court to defend himself against a charge of impiety made against him by Meletus. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he, too, is going to court: to prosecute his father for causing the death of a slave. This slave, who was working on the family estate on Naxos island, had killed one of his fellow workers, prompting Euthyphro’s father to bind him, leave him in a ditch, and go to the exegetes—interpreters of the will of the gods—to find out how to proceed. While travelling to the exegetes, the slave died from exposure. Euthyphro, to the anger of his family, (who believe his father did nothing wrong), subsequently brought a charge against him for impiety. This delights Socrates, who, feigning ignorance (in what we now call Socratic irony), responds that Euthyphro must have a very clear knowledge of what piety means. Because Socrates is facing trial for impiety, he hopes (tongue still firmly in his cheek) to learn from Euthyphro, better to defend himself against the charge. Euthyphro then offers a string of definitions.
Because Socrates is facing trial for impiety, he hopes (tongue firmly in his cheek) to learn from Euthyphro, better to defend himself against the charge.
The dialogue turns on a dilemma from which much theological and philosophical discussion has sprung. What is called the ‘Euthyphro dilemma’ concerns the difference between describing something as having such and such a property because that property inheres in it, and describing something as having that property because of how we or others respond to it. For instance, is a joke funny to us because we laugh at it, or do we laugh at it because it is funny? In the dialogue, Socrates sets out this dilemma after Euthyphro argues that piety is what is loved by all the gods: ‘Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious?’ Socrates asks, ‘Or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?’ For Socrates, a joke (in our example) is funny because it is intrinsically so, not because we laugh at it. Pious actions are pious because they have the intrinsic property of being so, too. Socrates thus seems to identify himself as an essentialist: one who believes that things have a natural and enduring trait or set of traits which give them their identity. The opposite view — non-essentialism, sometimes bound up with anti- or non-foundationalism — holds that no unchanging essence or self can be found in any phenomenon.
Euthyphro is typical of Plato’s earlier dialogues, which together tell us much of what we know about Socrates as a historical figure. It deals with a single ethical question, and involves a discussion between Socrates and an expert (or supposed expert) in the realm of ethics with which the question is connected. It is also anti-didactic, ending in aporia (literally, ‘lacking passage’ or ‘puzzlement’) — that is, it does not give us the answer, but develops our ability to reason well and detect inconsistencies in our thinking, as well as the thinking of others. This makes Euthyphro, like much classical philosophy, highly practical — if only to put that intolerably opinionated friend of yours in his place.
