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Notes on Plato’s Euthyphro
The Euthyphro is one of four dialogues that concern the trial, conviction and death of Socrates. While Socrates himself never wrote any philosophical works, Plato’s early dialogues are thought to contain considerable information about the historical Socrates. The figure of “Socrates” in the dialogues, however, is a creation of Plato. After these early dialogues, Plato continues to use “Socrates” in dialogues to voice Plato’s own philosophical thinking.
What is a divisio textus? An outline of the parts of the text being examined. It is our analysis of the structure of the text.
So let’s divide the text since we have all read it through to the end.
- The setting: Euthyphro and Socrates meet outside the court of the king-archon (one of the leading rulers in Athens) which dealt with religious matters and legal cases relating to the gods. Each of them is present concerning a religious offense of some kind.
1.1. Socrates explains that charges are being brought up against him for corrupting the youth and the prosecutor is Meletus. Note Socrates says Meletus is coming after him first and will surely go after other elders of the city.
It’s in this context that Euthyphro mentions Socrates’s divine sign. Socrates claimed that at times he would experience a divine sign that told him when NOT to do something.
In this context we learn that Euthyphro is a religious official who can foretell the future, though he has been derided for what he says in the assembly.
1.2. Euthyphro then explains the case he will be prosecuting. Before stating his case, he asserts that it makes no difference whether the victim is a stranger or a relative. All that counts whether the killer acted justly or not. (Notice this assertion about acting justly. It is a key for unlocking the right answers in the dialogue.) The victim was a servant who killed a household slave while drunk. Euthyphro’s father apprehended him, bound him and threw him into a ditch, then sending a messenger to a priest at the office of the king-archon asking what ought to be done. Before the messenger could return, the man died of exposure. So Euthyphro is bringing charges against his father for the servant’s death. But his relatives say Euthyphro is impious to prosecute his father.
More on setting. Euthyphro: “I should be of no use, Socrates, and Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men, if I did not have accurate knowledge of all such things.”(4e-5a) Socrates: “I am eager to become your pupil, my dear friend.”
- Defining the pious and the impious (godliness and ungodliness), which are “not the same”. (5d-e)
2.1: First definition: “what I am doing now, to prosecute the wrongdoer . . . whether the wrongdoer is your father or your mother or anyone else; not to prosecute is impious.” Zeus bound and castrated his father.
S: Do you agree there is war among the gods?
S: “[Y]ou told me that what you are doing now, in prosecuting your father for murder, is pious.”
S: there is one form in virtue of which actions are impious or pious. (one definition)
2.2. Second definition
E: “[W]hat is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious.”
S: “[Y]ou will obviously show me that what you say is true.”
Now the search for a coherent definition.
The gods have differing views and have arguments vs one another.
S:“Then according to your argument, my good Euthyphro, different gods consider different things to be just, beautiful, ugly, good, and bad, for they would not be at odds with one another unless they differed about these subjects, would they?” (Many definitions)
“[T]he same thing . . . considered just by some gods and unjust by others, and as they dispute about these things they are at odds and at war with each other.”
“the same things would be both pious and impious”
E: on this subject no gods would differ from one another, that whoever has killed anyone unjustly should pay the penalty. (What makes an act unjust and what makes an act pious?)
S: “Come now, my dear Euthyphro, tell me, too, that I may become wiser, what proof you have that all the gods consider that man to have been killed unjustly who became a murderer while in your service, was bound by the master of his victim, and died in his bonds before the one who bound him found out from the seers what was to be done with him, and that it is right for a son to denounce and to prosecute his father on behalf of such a man. Come, try to show me a clear sign that all the gods definitely believe this action to be right. If you can give me adequate proof of this, I shall never cease to extol your wisdom.”
Three parts:
S: is this the correction we are making in our discussion, that what all the gods hate is impious, and what they all love is pious, and that what some gods love and others hate is neither or both? Is that how you now wish us to define piety and impiety?
New definition:
E: “the pious is what all the gods love, and the opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious.”
S: (Critique) “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?”
S: “It is being loved then because it is pious, but it is not pious because it is being loved?”
E: “Apparently.”
S: “And yet it is something loved and god-loved because it
is being loved by the gods?”
In sum: S: “Because we agree that the pious is being loved for this reason, that it is pious, but it is not pious because it is being loved. Is that not so?”
((What is pious or holy in itself is not such because the gods love it. That the gods love something does not make it holy, but vice versa.))
S: “But now you see that they are in opposite cases as being altogether different from each other: the one is such as to be loved because it is being loved, the other is being loved because it is such as to be loved.”
((Analogy: What is just is not just because people regard it as just; rather, they regard it as just because of its one nature, its just nature. We do not by our regard or opinion make realty; rather, we recognize reality’s nature.))
Divine Command Theory: Ash’arism and Divine Power.
Break: Daedalus
2.3 Third definition:
S: “See whether you think all that is pious is of necessity just.”
S: “Yet you are younger than I by as much as you are wiser.
As I say, you are making difficulties because of your wealth of wisdom.
Pull yourself together, my dear sir, what I am saying is not difficult to
grasp. I am saying the opposite of what the poet said who wrote:
You do not wish to name Zeus, who had done it, and who made all
things grow, for where there is fear there is also shame.” 12 b
I disagree with the poet. Shall I tell you why?”
E: “Please do.”
S: “I do not think that ‘where there is fear there is also
shame,’ for I think that many people who fear disease and poverty and
many other such things feel fear, but are not ashamed of the things
they fear. Do you not think so?”
S: “But where there is shame there is also fear. For is there
anyone who, in feeling shame and embarrassment at anything, does
not also at the same time fear and dread a reputation for wickedness?”
((What is he arguing against?))
S: This is the kind of thing I was asking before, whether
where there is piety there is also justice, but where there is justice there
is not always piety, for the pious (holy) is a part of justice.
S: “if the pious is a part of the just, we must, it seems, find out what part of the just it is.”
E: “I think, Socrates, that the godly and pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods, while that concerned with the care of men is the remaining part of justice.”
care of the gods: doing things for the sake of the gods that benefit the gods and make them better
S: “Is piety then, which is the care of the gods, also to benefit
the gods and make them better? Would you agree that when you do
something pious you make some one of the gods better?”
E: By Zeus, no.
But we are back here again.
2.4 Fourth Definition:
I say that if a man knows how to say and do what is
pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, those are pious actions such
as preserve both private houses and public affairs of state. The opposite of
these pleasing actions are impious and overturn and destroy everything.
Piety and the pious : Are they a knowledge of how to sacrifice and pray?
S: To sacrifice is to make a gift to the gods, whereas to pray is to beg from the gods?
Euthyphro: Definitely, Socrates.
Socrates: It would follow from this statement that piety would be a knowledge of how to give to, and beg from, the god.
But this is to benefit the gods, and we failed in discussion of that.
Euthyphro runs away like one of the statues of Daedalus.