Summary
Socrates has just been charged with impiety and is preparing for his trial, which will ultimately lead to his execution. He encounters Euthyphro, one of the few people in Greece whom Socrates has not yet alienated. Socrates quickly remedies this oversight. Euthyphro is on his way to court to accuse his own father of murder. His father had owned a slave who murdered another slave, and in response, Euthyphro’s father ordered the guilty slave to be bound and thrown into a ditch while he sent messengers to officials to determine the appropriate legal action. Before the messengers returned, the slave died from exposure. According to Athenian law, murder charges are typically allowed only by relatives of the victim. This accusation would have been considered highly impious by Euthyphro’s society; therefore, he must be highly confident in his understanding of “goodness” and his ability to convince a court of his definition. Socrates, himself about to be tried, uses his circumstances as a casus belli to challenge Euthyphro’s confidence. Socrates initially asks Euthyphro a simple question: “What is goodness?” Euthyphro responds that it is to do what God has ordered, as that is pleasing to God. Through dialogue, this definition is shown to have hidden assumptions, which leads Socrates to pose another seemingly innocent question that creates a truly thought-provoking dilemma for those inclined to ponder it: “Is the good loved by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by the gods?”
Thoughts
This question is more complex than it first appears and would require some intricate reasoning by theologians to resolve to their satisfaction. If the gods love things that are good, then that implies good exists independently and prior to the gods. Conversely, if something becomes good as a result of being loved by the gods, then we are not talking about good directly but through the preferences of the gods. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume I am asserting that “yellow” is the best color.
Argument 1
Yellow is the best because all the gods love yellow. We took a poll, the votes are in, and yellow has been selected as the best. Socrates would suggest that this poll doesn’t inform us about goodness but only divine preference. All colors exist in a neutral state, but there is something in the color yellow that excites love from the gods more than other colors. We are presented with two options: either the “excitement” caused by the color yellow has a cause, or it is arbitrarily random. If the former is true, then yellow was good before the preference; if the latter is true, good cannot be defined because it is, by definition, without cause.
Argument 2
Yellow is the best because the gods recognize the properties that are good in it, and therefore, they love it. Socrates would argue that this definition brings us no closer to understanding what good is; it only tells us that it exists apart from and prior to the gods and that they can recognize it and align themselves with it. This question was not only challenging for the ancient Greeks but also continued to challenge Christian theologians for centuries. Often, a good question is much more useful than a good answer, and you can gauge how good a question is by how long it remains unanswered. I would recommend this dialogue to anyone who wants to learn how to lose friends and have no influence over people.
#book #euthyphro_dilemma #socrates #philosophy #piety #moral_philosophy #theology #goodness #divine_preference #socratic_dialogue #ancient_greek_philosophy #theological_debate #ethical_questions
Plato