Plato’s Euthyphro: Introduction
It has been a while since I posted a Booklog entry. It is not for lack of reading, on my part, but most of my reading has been either rather technical--Sicilian history, Pre-Socratic philosophy, the history of marriage--or too light to merit discussion. In preparing for our own Sicilian Expedition, though, I reread Plato's 7th Letter and was struck, again, not only by Plato's awakening common sense but also by his often conventional instincts--judge a leader by who well he keeps his friends.
Rather than take up the 7th Letter immediately, I am going to look at several early dialogues, not so much for any positive understanding we can gain concerning piety or courage, but to learn Plato's dialectic. This is my primary reason for doing this. It seems to me, reading newspaper columns and online comments, that the most rudimentary reasoning skills have disappeared. Even literate and intelligent people cannot see to the heart of an argument or subject their own opinions to rational scrutiny.
I considered setting up a course on practical reasoning, but that would have taken much too much time, and, besides, the West was taught to think by Plato and Aristotle. Why not use the tools that are available. That Plato is a charming and brilliant writer is no drawback, either.
Later, I hope to show where Plato goes wrong in applying his methods to everyday social and political questions, and, afterwards, to take up the 7th Letter. We'll have to see how much interest there is in this.
Then let us start with Plato's Euthyphro. Jowett's somewhat stodgy but clear translation is available everywhere, and I shall quote from that where I find it useful. Otherwise, I'll just translate the Greek in my own fashion.
I'm not going to give a lot of historical background, which would distract us from the main objective. The dramatic setting of this early dialogue is very striking. Socrates runs his young friend Euthyphro, who is undertaking a prosecution for homicide. Socrates also has a date in court, since Meletus (among others) has accused him of impiety and of corrupting the youth. Socrates' trial, conviction, and death are, of course, beautifully commemorated in the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, and this dramatic context is entirely relevant for a debate on what constitutes the virtue of piety.
The discussion begins.
I am going to begin the discussion with some paragraphs from a chapter of any unpublished book of mine on love and hate, family and kinship. They come from what is now chapter three, "Kith and Kin."
We have sketched out an idealized topography of ancient Athens that is a landscape expression of the tension between friendship and strife, between the religious and familial solidarity of the Acropolis and the economic and political competition of the Agora. Imagine we are now in the Agora, where a troublesome philosopher has gone to the basileios stoa for some business involving a suit that has been lodged against him. He is accused not only of teaching atheism but of making religious innovations (which may seem contradictory). Worse of all, he is to be put on trial for corrupting the young. The philosopher meets a young acquaintance, who asks what business takes him to the court, and when Socrates (the philosopher facing a trial) ironically praises his accuser as a man who knows enough about politics to start at the right end—with the education of the children—Euthyphro (for that is the young friend's name) misses the joke and declares that in accusing Socrates, the politician Meletus is destroying the city "from the hearth," that is, by attacking the very center of civil life.
Young Euthyphro's court business turns out to be even more curious than the prosecution that will cost Socrates his life; he is prosecuting his own father for homicide. Since homicide prosecutions at Athens had to be instigated by private individuals, generally by the victim's relatives, Socrates tries to find out what connection there was between Euthyphro and the victim. The young man responds by mocking the philosopher, insisting that the gods do not make such distinctions. The pious young man, who is all for a strict interpretation of the law, is (like the gods) no respecter of persons. He is, like most modern ethical philosophers, a universalist who believes that, when we are making moral decisions, such distinctions as kinship, ethnicity, and nationality are irrelevant.
As it happens, there are, circumstances that mitigate the father's guilt. A servant, it seems, had killed a slave, and Euthyphro's father had tied up and neglected the guilty party until he could receive official instructions. In the meantime, the murderer died. The case really comes down to an accidental homicide that resulted from an attempt to comply with Athenian law. None of this--motive, legality, or filial piety--carries any weight with a young man convinced of his own righteousness.
The rest of the conversation turns on the question of piety, and it is hard to miss the connection between Socrates' accuser and Euthyphro. Both of them assume that they know what is right and best for the city, and both are in fact destroying the city "from the hearth": Meletus, in the metaphorical sense that in prosecuting an honest moral philosopher, he is undermining justice, which is the foundation of civil life, while young Euthyphro is literally attacking his own household in the person of his father.
(The exact circumstances of Euthyphro's case have been the object of controversy. See Ian Kidd, "The Case of Homicide in Plato's Euthyphro in Owls to Athens": Essays on Classical Subjects Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover, edited by E.M. Craik (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) pp. 213-21.
Socrates begins to get down to business quite quickly in 5, where he ironically expresses admiration for what must be Euthyphro's prodigious expertise in all things divine. The young man responds that if he did not have such knowledge he would be no better than other men, who in his estimation are mere chumps. In these early dialogues, Plato is concerned to show that the expertise claimed by traditional specialists—soldiers, poets, priests, rhetors—is false.
His next step is to declare what is by no means a self-evident truth, that a virtue like piety (eusebeia), no matter how varied its expressions, must be based on a single principle of the holy as opposed to the unholy. Naturally, Euthyphro claims that the holy is the very thing he is doing, namely, prosecuting someone who commits murder or sacrilege, whether the malefactor is your father or mother. His proof? That Zeus, the preeminent force of justice, shackled his own father Cronus for swallowing his children. This rather cuts against Socrates, whose rationalizing and purifying of Greek myth had brought on the charge of impiety.
Euthyphro, by contrast, is rather like the Fundamentalist who not only believes in the stories on which he was brought up but insists that they are all literally true. But, back to the argument. Socrates point out that an example (What Euthyphro is doing now ) is not the same things as a definition of a universal virtue. There must be one ideal or essential form, says Socrates, that underlies all such examples of holiness or any other virtue.
Now, why do I stick at this? In the most important sense, Plato is clearly right, even allowing for cultural differences. But one does have to be a bit more careful. Some virtues overlap a bit, and where one group puts a stronger emphasis on, say courage or even physical strength, it will see the other virtues through that lens. Few Greeks would have agreed, for example, with Christ's insistence on humility. Aristotle would only go so far as to say that man's pride should not exceed his worth. This is not to say that Christ is not correct, but that in a purely rational discussion we cannot always take such things for granted.
Perhaps more to the point is that we are sometimes prisoners of language. Let us suppose that instead of the pious or the holy, we were grappling with a word like rough or gentle. Both have physical as well as behavioral connotations, and in the later case we would have to face the etymology, which clarifies Shakespeare's use of the word to refer to people of noble family. Obsolete? What about our continuing use of gentleman?
If a word like lordship or dominion can be used, as it was in Greek, of both the master of the city and of the master of a household, then doesn't it follow that such forms of authority are reducible to a single principle? Maybe, but maybe not. Aristotle was more cautious in these matters. Conservatives like to say that the state should balance its budget exactly as a homeowner does, but, as much as I agree with the basic principle, it cannot be applied universally. What if Atilla the Hun is on the way? A little money, wisely borrowed, might save everyone's neck.
In general, then, we should be careful about conceding this form of argument until we have examined it more closely, but since Socrates' point is generally and in the highest sense valid, let's not quibble.
Provoked, Euthyphro (7a) comes up with a pretty good first shot, one that would please most pious Christians: What which is holy is what pleases the gods, the unholy is what does not please them. This is parallel to the common Sunday School sentiment that all that morality per se does not really matter, because all that really matters is making God happy.
Euthyphro, as a fundamentalist, has fallen into a trap. He has already said he agrees with all the old stories about gods fighting each other. Presumably, their more serious wars would be about such things as the nature of the just, the holy, etc. The modern "Christian" Zionist has the same problem. It is fine for the state of Israel today to mistreat Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, because their literalist reading of the Old Testament has convinced them that G-d orders us to do what would otherwise be regarded as immoral.
Socrates now has recourse to one of his favorite metaphors: that of measurement of distances, weights, etc. When they disagree about the size or weight of a purchase, for example, they argue and act like enemies until by taking an accurate measurement they resolve the dispute. By implication, then, it will only be when have found the correct measuring device that we can end the sorts of arguments over virtue that cause not only men on earth but the gods in heaven to quarrel.
Let us pause here to discuss these things. I will point out that in this dialogue Socrates is making the critique of Greek religion that gave an opening to his accusers, while elsewhere, on such subjects, he is more likely to tear apart the arguments put forward by Sophists and rhetors. If we are not at all clear about what those arguments were, we should briefly take them up. If no one needs that instruction, we can pass by.
So, the first thing we learn from studying Socrates' method that it is not enough to tell anecdotes or list examples. A truly convincing argument can only be made when we have an agreed upon criterion for truth (our measuring device, again) and a definition of underlying form that can fit all the examples. By implication, there is no point to any rational argument until we can agree on some first principles. Thus, it is important for the two parties to come to an understanding of what each believes and on any basis of fact we might have in common.
For example, let us suppose we are arguing with a Randian. There is no point in dragging Scriptures or Tradition into it, because they reject both. Presumably, though, a Randian is interested in success and happiness, and we might then have a discussion of what constitutes either. Some might actually be brought to realize that having a lot of money or fame does not necessarily constitute either success of happiness. If they agree that men are not merely angelic but natural beings, then we might pursue a line of reasoning about what human nature is. Was Karen Carpenter successful or happy as she starved herself to death? Is a childless homosexual happy in a way that, say, that could be justified by a Darwinist?
My point is not to answer any of these questions but to show that we need to find common ground, and if we cannot, then it is better either to go away or silence those who corrupt the young. Socrates, remember, argued that the Athenians were wrong on the facts, not in sentencing him to death. He pointedly says that an accused criminal has to deny having done the deed, because if he admits to the crime, he cannot really hope to escape the punishment.
Part II
In switching gears, Socrates is careful to restate the question. Euthyphro's father has inadvertently caused the death of a homicidal slave, by putting him in chains until he can ascertain what he is supposed to do with him. It is up to Euthyphro to prove that his prosecution is pious and required by the gods.
He then puts the chicken-and-egg question. Is something holy because it is approved of by the gods or approved by the gods because it is holy? Since Euthyphro is not used to this sort of discourse, Socrates talks him through to an understanding of active/passive and subject/object. He persuades Euthyphro that the gods love what is holy and that we do not define its holiness on the subjective grounds that whatever pleases the gods is holy.
I think this is an important point. Muslims are content with a universe in which a capricious Allah defines good and evil in immediate and not contingent terms. He tells you what to do and you had better do it. There are Islamicist Christians who take this view, of course, and the truth of what they think is that our God is incapable of willing anything that is not good, true, and right. Nonetheless, our God also made a world and saw that it was good, and He established universal laws, accessible to our reason, of moral behavior. Now, I would argue (with Aristotle) that these laws are not simply abstract deductions but like the law of gravity. They are in our nature and when we violate them, we are wrong and do harm to our own nature.
So, concludes Socrates, being loved by god or gods is only an attribute of holiness and not its essence.
Are we all on the same page here?
III
Socrates has thoroughly confused Euthyphro with his important distinction. In nearly any serious discussion of art or politics or morals, we run across people who want to define the good in terms either of what they like or as what is pleasing to the Being they worship. Obviously, what God has made that pleases him is good, and just as obviously it is hard for mortals to distinguish between what is good in itself and what pleases the ultimate Good, but we can never get anywhere in such a conversation if we do not make this distinction. On the most trivial level, do I prefer Haydn to Honneger because that is just the way I was brought up to be or because of objective differences?
Euthyphro's response is to take up Socrates' joke about Daedalus (who made statues that walked) and claim he makes everything move around. Obviously, Socrates' search for stability leads first to the unstable and the uncertain.
Socrates now gets into one of his favorite modes of discussion, the part and the whole. If justice and piety are related, is it because they are the same or because one is a subset of the other? To illustrate his point, he quibbles over a line of verse that said that fear was always accompanied by reverence. Since the context is Zeus, it is the equivalent to "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Logically, however, Socrates insists that while reverence is always accompanied by fear--fear of doing something shameful, for example--the reverse is not true since we fear everything really unpleasant--sickness, slavery, etc.
Justice is a broader concept than piety, thus piety is a part or aspect of justice. Euthyphro, making some progress, now declares that piety is that part of justice that relates to what we do in regard to the gods.
Socrates now introduces another favorite topos: that of the expert. In every care-taking activity, there is an expertise, but the expertise of a dog-trainer, for example, aims at the well-being and improvement of the dog, but not the trainer. But surely, the pious man does not hope to make the gods better than they are?
Although I agree with Socrates' reasoning, there may be a few loose ends. Comments?
IV The question Socrates posed here, by the way, is often called "Euthyphro's dilemma" or the Euthyphro dilemma."
I don't see how a creature on a lower intellectual and moral plane
can actually help beings that are superior to him. We cannot speak
of these things as Christians might speak of angels,
because that is irrelevant to Socrates' case.
The gods in question are simply the gods, and we cannot
take it for granted (as Greeks) that their is power vastly greater.
Then we are agreed so far.
Since the service we bestow on dogs is inappropriate, what about medicine and architecture and generalship and the other arts as an analogy? They are broadly beneficial. Is religious piety like that?
Euthyphro agrees that there is a science or art of piety and it consists of sacrificing and praying. Thus, Socrates infers, religious piety is the skill or science of properly asking of and giving to the gods. It is the business of gods and men giving and receiving to and from each other.
But but but..what do the gods actually receive from us? Euthyphro predicatably says they like to be honored, and this gets us back to his earlier mistake of defining piety or holiness or goodness as that which is dear to the gods.
This is classic Socratic dialectic. One line of reasoning leads us to say that the holy is good in itself and cannot be defined by the pleasure it gives the gods; the second, a way of reasoning analogically about the arts, leads to the conclusion that the object is to please the gods.
Well, which is it?
Euthyphro: Gotta go!
Socrates humorously says he can never win his case now, because he has not been sufficiently instructed in what piety and impiety are. By implication, though, the accusers cannot know either, and they will certainly rely on Euthyphro's own prejudices. Perhaps it would be useful to go quickly through the Apology to see what their arguments are and how Socrates responds to them?
To be continued
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Thank you Dr. Fleming for returning to the Booklog with such a fascinating work. I look forward to reading this bit of Plato's and to enjoying your insights into this piece.
It will be a welcome respite from contemplations of our current political climate and/or our degraded culture.
This is a very interesting and timely (perhaps timeless) topic. Piety, holiness, poetry, reverence ...Why respect for parents is a species of piety, why people should not be required by law to rat out every fault they may know about their neighbor, and much more. Thank you, Dr. Fleming, for renewing this series and I hope you will continue with the VII letter. I enjoyed reading the dialogue again this morning --- and what always seems to happen with Plato, for the first time.
Always an educative respite from the backround noise reading you Dr. Fleming. We could use a little P & A (Plato) & (Aristotle) for a change, the perfect yin & yang where the foundation for Western reasoning is concerned.
Dr. Fleming,
I also hope that the next thinker covered will be Aristotle. This would be an excellent duo to examine back to back.
I'm not sure why you refer to Dr Jowett's translation as stodgy.
The 19th century clergymen who ran the schools of learning in Britain wrote King's English - clear, as you say, but also using language that made the classics accessible to the large majority of the British public. Dr Jowett did not translate Plato for the benefit of University Greats men - well grounded in Greek - but rather the much larger audience with little Greek. The King's English is, in many ways, perhaps the most effective form of written English - certainly the most euphonious.
Yes, I understand. After renouncing all interest in elections, I have now agreed to degrade my mind by following the campaign for The Daily Mail. Oh the sacrifices I make for the sake of Chronicles and The Rockford Institute!
I read this morning an article in a newspaper about a well-endowed foundation that supports "conservative" causes, though not us. The interview with the head of the foundation, who appears (from the people I know who know him) to be a decent sort, reveals a mind filled with unexamined assumptions and political platitudes of the sort that a vigorous reading of Plato might flush out. If Russell Kirk were starting his career in this millennium, he would not dream of giving a book the oxymoronic title of "The Conservative Mind."
Several comments have been posted pseudonymously. They will not be published until the posters have registered and use their real names. One of them complained, in a rather snooty tone, that I should not have described Jowett's translation as stodgy. (Actually, I said "somewhat stodgy.") I do not see that any apology is due to Jowett's heirs. Although he wrote perfectly decent Victorian English, he was not a master of English prose, as Plato was a master of Greek. Plato's early dialogues are the work of a literary master with a liveliness and wit that has never been approximated in English, and Jowett gets very little of his psychological subtlety across. His is a perfectly serviceable translation, which is why I recommended it, and later versions are, typically, too flat and banal. Jowett is, at the very least, dignified and correct, and that will have to do.
By the way, I have no idea what MMGosh means by his praise of the King's English. Modern English has been around for five centuries at least, and English prose has undergone rather dramatic changes from Donne to Dryden to Gibbon and Johnson to Lamb and Macaulay to Kipling and Waugh. The Victorian age is perhaps not the age in which the greatest English prose was written, and, also by the way, Jowett as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford was not a clergyman-teacher or amateur scholar. Translations have many purposes, and one of them is to offer an explicit interpretation of what a text means. A classic instance is the Vulgate translation of the New Testament. I sometimes disagree with the interpretation implied by the translation, but I am very interested to know what sense the Church has made of the Greek. I am also interested in what sense Jowett makes of Plato, an author he studied far more assiduously than I ever shall.
The first thing that struck me reading this dialogue is how talented Plato was in creating for his readers the eager, youthful, and righteous spirit in the young man, Euthyphro, and the more mature qualities of age and wisdom in Socrates. I suppose Socrates is around 70 years of age and has probably never been to a court of law while the youngster has placed complete confidence in that "system." Shocked by the youngsters willingness to prosecute his own Father for mistreating a murderer, Socrates wants to know exactly why and what the young man expects to accomplish by such an act of filial impiety. Afterall, is the pius act something good because the gods command it, or do the gods command it, because it is good. Regardless of their inability to arrive ar a definitive conclusion , the two types portrayed in this dialogue are real types and remain somewhat familiar to us even today, although both Socrates and Euthyphro still had the benefit of sharing a common familiarity with a divine tradition that allowed for their conversation to occur.
I remember reading James Joyce in a college level english class back in the 70's and in that particular story, Joyce referenced the marriage feast of Cana. When the professor asked the class of about thirty students where the marriage feast of Cana reference came from, hardly any of the students were familiar with it .
Plato is said to have wanted to write drama, and he certainly has a great gift for characterization, not by the usual Dickensian method of description but by the much subtler and more effective method of the dramatist who has his characters reveal their natures by what they say. Socrates has known Euthyphro for years because he is a friend of the young man's father, and he must be seriously shocked by the smug way in which he justifies a highly rash act. As you all may know, one of the commonplaces of Athenian courts is that it is wrong to take kinfolk into court except when it must be done to preserve or contest a legacy. There is a great speech written by Isaeus for two brothers who high-mindedly declare the it was not their desire to go to court against kin but their greedy relatives (who have a pretty good case) dragged them into it. To bring up a father on a charge of this type is unthinkable. The dead slave had no legal standing, for one thing, and Euthyphro is less interested in the legal aspects of the homicide than in the impiety involved.
As a nice comic twist, also, we have Euthyphro outraged by Meletus' accusation of so good a man as Socrates, whose views on religion Euthyphro must know are, by his own standards, impious.
Dr. Fleming,
If you have the time or inclination, it would be helpful to me and perhaps other readers for you to talk a little about piety for the Greek imagination. It is difficult to read the Euthyphro, and its references to Miletus's charges against Socrates for corrupting the youth through acts of impiety, without also reading the Crito and the rather pious Socrates portrayed in that dialogue. I have often heard you justify the charges without completly understanding the differnces between the Greek, Roman and Christian conception of that term.
It seems false on its face to say Plato and Socrates had no use for the Greek gods or conceived the life of reason in the same sterile and materialist since as modernists. The life of philosophy as incarnated in Socrates ( and handed down to us through Plato's dialogues) has always reminded me more of the contemplative life of the Christian traditon (or perhaps the mystic cults of Pythagoreans) than a purely scientific analysis of humanity, or what we might call Cartesian rationalism.
Recently I was reading some essays by Josef Pieper, Three Talks in a Scupltors Studio, in which he very adroitly uses three different Greek myths on the muses to illustrate the difference between remembering which is something we do for ourselves, and being reminded which is something the muses do for us. This seemed to me to be more a more authentic way to illustrate a Socratic respect or understanding of the ancient Greek religion than to assert Socrates was an impious rationalist who suffered dearly for the reductionist themes of rationalism that we can now enjoy. Thanks for reading these dialogues and for any responses or insights you might have to these questions.
Eusebeia means something like having proper reverence, thus it is largely external. A Greek was eusebes by doing in public what is owed to the gods. Athenians didn't care much what you believed. What counted was your ritual behavior.
If it is possible to reconstruct the historical Socrates, the man, as opposed to the characters sketched by Plato and Xenophon, he was something of a wise guy--his own term is gadfly. He spent much of his time grilling people who were supposed to know something and showing them up as ignorant. This is not always the best way to make friends, as Prof. Kopff and especially I have learned over the years. On topics of religion and morality, Plato's Socrates tried to strip people down by exposing the absurdity of traditional myths and prejudices. His intention, if we can trust Plato--and I am almost sure we can--was to reconstruct a higher and more binding morality and a religion that could be defended rationally. Certainly, the school he founded has been providentially useful in developing a Christian theology.
Unfortunately, some of his disciples and pals did not stay around for the second half of the course, and Socrates' negative critique was used to justify amorality and impiety. The careers of Alcibiades, Critias, and Meno the Thessalian, to name just three, justified the Athenians in looking with suspicion on Socrates' teaching, and while Plato's Socrates pooh--poohs Aristophanes' attack in The Clouds, there is real truth in it. A good physician does not put you on a course of treatment that, while not guaranteed to cure, will in many cases harm the patient.
In the long run, Socrates and his School did an enormous amount of good. It is not so clear in the short run, and the Athenians' "crime against philosophy" was committed with the best of intentions. One of the secondary points of this discussion, i hope, will be to see that good intentions and brilliant thought, if they are not used with great caution, can work great mischief. Most people are too dumb to practice philosophy, and if this is true of Athenians, it is vastly more true of Americans. I do believe that Plato and Socrates both thought they were providing tools to enable a moral person to resist sophistry and develop greater moral discipline, but as Aristotle, Plato's student, observed, a person of bad character, if he studies philosophy, will only learn how to justify his vices.
I would like to ask Dr. Fleming, Could it be that this dialogue was used in Plato's Academy for beginning students of philosophy to learn how to make sound definitions in their arguments?
"Most people are too dumb to practice philosophy", and that includes many of our current atheists. I once told a follower of Richard Dawkins that it seem rational to me that esse a se et per se is necessary before there can be any esse at all. He hadn't a clue what I was talking about.
I had to reread one section just to be sure I understood it.
Euthyphro is all for strict interpretation of the law.
But Euthyphro also ignores motive and legality, because of his righteousness in prosecuting his father.
It's a very confounding circle here. In the name of upholding the law, he becomes righteous. In being righteous, he then ignores upholding the law (or the legality of his prosecution). But why is he ignoring the legality? In the name of strictly upholding the law.
Of course, reading further I take it to understand that the strict fundamentalist is so badly corrupted that in trying to pursue the truth, he can only undermine the truth?
In beginning to read Euthyphro for the first time and in reading Dr. Fleming's introduction and the ensuing comments, I was struck to memory of William Faulkner's "The Barn Burning," and the struggle which Sarty has between the familial loyalty and devotion to his father on the one hand and the moral compulsion to tell the truth in a court of law, thereby betraying his father.
Faulkner does not pour the struggle in from the top in a Socratic exchange but allows the struggle to express itself in the very action of the story. Sarty unlike Euthyphro has no strict interpretation of the law. Sarty does not come to his act from a position of assumed innocence, i.e. made righteous by arrogating to himself an understanding of the law above others, including his father. What he ultimately does works itself out through action of the story.
There have likely been dissertations written on this seeming connection between Faulkner's "The Barn Burning" and Plato's "Euthyphro." Perhaps there are no dissertations because there is no connection; however, I intend to return to Faulkner's "The Barn Burning" and read it with quite a different eye as I follow the readings and the discussions on this thread.
I do not know if Faulkner could read Greek, but a superficial reading of Faulkner reveals that he was well acquainted with the themes and the works of the classical world, for they peep through the lines of all of his works.
I yield to those of you who know much more about these interesting matters.
I suppose it's a given the relationship between father and son wasn't normal and possibly Socrates knowing the father realized the boy was otherwise occupied with that? Do we have a case here of Socrates as Dr. Phil? Sorry I'm doing a poor imitation of Aristophanes. One thing about all of these Greeks, they really sparred with one another, very competitive, they were lively as all get up and go. Is it good because the gods say so, or do they say so because it's good? I think it's about order. The gods can be mischievous and so it's prudent for us to appease them in accepting our place in the order for whatever the 'reason' as being appropriately under them. In this regard of duty it's good because they say so; however, let's face it, in their mischievousness they do not always say so because it is good or necessarily good for us. This may have then been Socrates' blasphemous or disruptive, if all-sided point. The boy's duty was to his father in behalf of the order. Ironically in this case in confusing him, Socrates was not corrupting the youth rather preserving the order. These things do happen as in law case by case, since yes A is A. However A does not always equal A. Sometimes A equals A plus all that is around A.
Thank you Dr. Fleming for this discussion. I have a translation by Hugh Tredennick, will that suffice, or
should I go ahead and read the Jowett translation?
Prateek Sanjay,
You always ask the best questions and provide the most honest posts! I hope you will stick around for a while and read the rest of Plato's dialogues. You can never really read them all or perhaps I should say, ever finish reading them. During these shorts days and long nights go ahead and read the Apology, Crito and Phaedo and with the long holiday ahead, heck stay up all night and read them.
This question of piety is a little like the question of patriots. Tom Fleming, Clyde Wilson, Pat Buchanan and the Chronicles crowd are unpatriotic Americans --- think Socrates. While the Canadian, David Frum, Staraussian Paul Wolfowitze, and the GOP war party are all real patriots. As Alfred Whitehead once said, " All philosophy is a footnote to Plato." Read on and keep posting. I admire your honesty very much.
Tredennick will be fine.
Mr. Peters raises a valuable point. Much of Attic tragedy concerns a conflict of loyalties--to family or polis. In the Oresteia, Agamemnon has to kill his daughter in order to carry out his sacred duty as king. Antigone has to defy Creon's edict if she is to carry out her duty as heiress (epikleros) by burying her brother.
The first oddity that should strike a reader familiar with Plato is Socrates' apparent attachment to family and kinship. this is admittedly an early dialogue, but you will recall Plato's rather foolish treatment of family in the Republic, where the guardians share their wives and children in common. But Plato, when he was not playing with ideas, was a true Greek. He was intensely loyal to his friend Socrates, and while he hated the 30, he has no hesitation in being nice to kinsmen like Charmides. What I am suggesting is that it is a mistake to interpret his theoretical works too literally and unilaterally. Aristotle is his best critic and offers correctives to Plato's speculative fancies, but we cannot assume that he did not value all the things ordinary Greeks valued.
Let us turn briefly to the question of language. When we speak philosophically in English, we often have recourse to Greek-like expressions. While in ordinary English we speak of "goodness" and "holiness", which are purely abstract nouns expressing some quality, Greek, in addition to these pure abstractions, also uses an article + adjective phrase in the neuter, as in "the good," "the holy." It is less lofty, perhaps, and more graphic. While holiness (hosiotes) and piety (eusebeia) are the abstract virtue we should practice, "the holy" and "the pious seem to me more concrete. Each instance and the common identity of the instances of holiness is summed up in "the holy." I hope this makes some sense.
Then Socrates in looking for what piety and holiness are, is trying to come up with a model or definition of actions in the world, while we are sometimes tempted to think of these thinks rather emotionally and subjectively. We might not even like pious people, because they walk around with beatific smiles on their faces, conscious of how holy they are. A Greek is more inclined to look at concrete behavior. Socrates is, therefore, trying to define what such behavior should be.
I'm not sure I've entirely thought this through well enough, but it may help a bit.
Added to the original post
Part II
In switching gears, Socrates is careful to restate the question. Euthyphro's father has inadvertently caused the death of a homicidal slave, by putting him in chains until he can ascertain what he is supposed to do with him. It is up to Euthyphro to prove that his prosecution is pious and required by the gods.
He then puts the chicken-and-egg question. Is something holy because it is approved of by the gods or approved by the gods because it is holy? Since Euthyphro is not used to this sort of discourse, Socrates talks him through to an understanding of active/passive and subject/object. He persuades Euthyphro that the gods love what is holy and that we do not define its holiness on the subjective grounds that whatever pleases the gods is holy.
I think this is an important point. Muslims are content with a universe in which a capricious Allah defines good and evil in immediate and not contingent terms. He tells you what to do and you had better do it. There are Islamicist Christians who take this view, of course, and the truth of what they think is that our God is incapable of willing anything that is not good, true, and right. Nonetheless, our God also made a world and saw that it was good, and He established universal laws, accessible to our reason, of moral behavior. Now, I would argue (with Aristotle) that these laws are not simply abstract deductions but like the law of gravity. They are in our nature and when we violate them, we are wrong and do harm to our own nature.
So, concludes Socrates, being loved by god or gods is only an attribute of holiness and not its essence.
Are we all on the same page here?
To Mr. Reynolds, I would say that while Plato reserved his more esoteric wisdom for students attending his lectures, these early dialogues in particular are meant to introduce learners to his methods of dialectic. In most of them, no actual conclusion is reached, because without some objective reference point beyond our senses, nothing can be proved really true. For example, we might inductively show after 1000 trials that when two pebble are added to two pebbles, the result is four pebbles, but to prove that this is universally true requires us to admit the existence of binding mathematical and logical rules that are independent of our senses. The same is true of political and aesthetic questions--though, a Aristotle will show later--one cannot simply impose mathematical and logical methods on human things
Dr. Fleming,
It is less lofty, perhaps, and more graphic. While holiness (hosiotes) and piety (eusebeia) are the abstract virtue we should practice, "the holy" and "the pious seem to me more concrete. Each instance and the common identity of the instances of holiness is summed up in "the holy." I hope this makes some sense.
It makes sense to me in the context of vrtues being habits, that can be acquired with understanding, discipline, will power and for those like me, the grace of God. Aristotle of course saw happiness as something active, something to be physically practiced with the help of understanding,---- pursuing good acts on a daily basis and for a long time. Plato always seems to emphasize the understanding of what virtue is --- "Courage is "knowing" what to fear and what not to fear." Aristotle seems to emphasize the doing and the experiencing -- the enduring, the attack, ... the concrete and active manifestations that reveal courageous acts.
Plato describes the pursuit of wisdom as a way of salvation, the practice of pursuing truth, goodness and beauty with the mind and almost the mind alone: "My philosophy does not admit to strictly verbal formulations, but after prolonged application to the subject itself and after living together with it , it is born in the soul on a sudden, like a flame which is kndled by a leaping spark, and thereafter sustains itself." His school lasted for 500 years and for those still capable of resting in the truth, is still a noble pursuit if not the most noble pursuit we humans can undertake.
It is worth noting that Crito was amazed at the peace of mind with which Socrates went to his own death. I have heard cynical modernists suggest he refused to cut and run, because he was old and knew the end was near anyway, but as Crito says in reply, " I have seen alot of old men approaching death with more anxiety and less repose than Socrates diplayed, sleeping peacefully the early morning I arrived at his cell the day of his own execution. "
We are capable of loving our own, parents for children, husband and wife, and by loving I think it means caring about them more than ourself (if we love.) It is, as Aristotle would point out---and Dr. Fleming you always hit the nail on the head or explain more completely so forgive my restatements in explaining to myself---also in-us, as human beings to simultaneously love (i.e. more than ourselves) that which transcends our own and us.
But which comes first, love of our own, or love of the transcendant? But if they're simultaneous, which they are since the same but not identical, at least not identical to us here as humans, which comes first in priority, the senses or love of our own whom we see? Or the abstract also a part of us which we don't see. This is a question possibly germane especially since we know we can prove neither what we see nor what we do not see in any scientific way. We'd have to be gods, which we're not.
Though I wonder too if it is a question at all since they are happening simultaneously. I personally suspect that Jesus Christ in the necessary myth or story like the necessary myth of story of Moses knew the underlying issue is: are we capable yet of love? "If we cannot love what we see, how can we love what we do not see?" And also in John since it's happening simultaneously there's no contradiction because "God is love."
However it is a process too, which Parateek has admirably joined in on here, inclusive of pondering these important matters in the journey to being able to love. I haven't met many who do or can including myself for whatever the 'reason', although we do get better at it over time. Love and hate it seems to me are two sides of one coin, and the hate side faces up too much of the time, the bad news. But there IS also the good news.
Though after only one reading I am still groping my way around somewhere within the circle in which Socrates leads Euthyphro - somewhere between the chicken and the egg - I have already been entertained by the humor of this piece. What an accomplishment, to be able to span two and a half millennia and still get your joke across! And the characterization - fresh as a daisy the contrast between the old wise man and his overconfident youthful interlocutor. I look forward to much more on this topic....
Dr. Fleming, do you think that we are justified in taking Socrates' conclusions about the pious as indicative of a more philosophically sophisticated theology held by Plato?
I ask this because, although Socrates is here only interested in challenging conventional ideas, it seems that we can draw broader theological conclusions from the arguments presented. The point about the gods disagreeing and quarreling over what is just and pious suggests that there can be no division in the divine will, meaning that there really can only be one God. And the point about whether the pious is pious because it is loved or vice versa, let me know if you think this stretches too far beyond the scope of the dialogue, illustrates that God's will must be different from human wills in that it cannot change and, more generally, that God must also be the source of being and goodness. I say this because otherwise we would have to affirm that God plays no causal role in goodness, justice, piety, etc.
I know that much of this may conveniently correspond to Christian theology, but I cannot help see that there are kernels for such thoughts within Socrates' criticisms.
E.R. Bourne, the Holy Scrolls tell "It rains and the sun shines on the just and on the unjust." Given the divine and accepting its existence it cannot be known by an act of our own will(s) alone (hubris), so prayer, grace, etc. help due then perhaps to divine acceptance or cooperation in meeting us where we'At.
Otherwise rather than a 'tell' there would be sure angles to play [into heaven] regardless of the divine's participation, or not.
Just a pilgrim's shared perception out loud in case it pertains at all to the issue of piety. Youth wants to believe it can know; age knows it can't know, and thus the need for appropriate belief.
Michael,
"Youth wants to believe it can know; age knows it can't know, and thus the need for appropriate belief."
There is some truth in this, but perhaps old age does not necessarily lead to intellectual scepticism but a certain humilty that reveals what seemed so damned important at one time in life, was rather minor in the long run. I would prefer to continue and wonder about things in old age,(or simply forget them) than review all that I was taught by modernists as "very important things to know".
"Them that says, don't know. Then what know, won't say."
Robert, thanks for the reply. We're perhaps more on the same page than you imagine? I'm an old soul (perhaps?) thus I don't equate a lack of hubris or praying, grace etc. & awareness that we otherwise cannot know the divine by an act of our own wills alone with my own being skeptical. I do not feel skeptical. Besides the priestly blessing Numbers 6:24-26 in addition, my new favorite prayer is one of the heart: 'Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me.' ... Should I otherwise accept that I'm skeptical since you imply so? The singular line you quoted of mine above is in this context, not the one you placed it in. That's ok. That's also what's being addressed here, language having its limits too.
I find Mr. Bourne's point quite intriguing. At the very least I'd think that Socrates' belief that the gods do not fight with one another suggests that there must be fundamental harmony at the highest level of being. Whether this necessarily suggests monotheism is a question a sharper metaphysician than I would have to address.
Josef Pieper's view was indeed that much of Plato's work can be seen as theology, an effort to draw truth from various poems and legends -- Homer, Hesiod, etc. -- in much the same way a modern theologian might draw truth from revelation.
One can only take the parallel so far, though, right? Even though the dialogues draw upon Homer in some instances, in others -- like this one, for instance -- Homer & Co. almost seem to be dismissed.
III
Socrates has thoroughly confused Euthyphro with his important distinction. In nearly any serious discussion of art or politics or morals, we run across people who want to define the good in terms either of what they like or as what is pleasing to the Being they worship. Obviously, what God has made that pleases him is good, and just as obviously it is hard for mortals to distinguish between what is good in itself and what pleases the ultimate Good, but we can never get anywhere in such a conversation if we do not make this distinction. On the most trivial level, do I prefer Haydn to Honneger because that is just the way I was brought up to be or because of objective differences?
Euthyphro's response is to take up Socrates' joke about Daedalus (who made statues that walked) and claim he makes everything move around. Obviously, Socrates' search for stability leads first to the unstable and the uncertain.
Socrates now gets into one of his favorite modes of discussion, the part and the whole. If justice and piety are related, is it because they are the same or because one is a subset of the other? To illustrate his point, he quibbles over a line of verse that said that fear was always accompanied by reverence. Since the context is Zeus, it is the equivalent to "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Logically, however, Socrates insists that while reverence is always accompanied by fear--fear of doing something shameful, for example--the reverse is not true since we fear everything really unpleasant--sickness, slavery, etc.
Justice is a broader concept than piety, thus piety is a part or aspect of justice. Euthyphro, making some progress, now declares that piety is that part of justice that relates to what we do in regard to the gods.
Socrates now introduces another favorite topos: that of the expert. In every care-taking activity, there is an expertise, but the expertise of a dog-trainer, for example, aims at the well-being and improvement of the dog, but not the trainer. But surely, the pious man does not hope to make the gods better than they are?
Although I agree with Socrates' reasoning, there may be a few loose ends. Comments?
To be continued
Plato, I think it is certain, was a monotheist in believing with Parmenides that the ultimate reality, which is divine, is one. This would not have prevented him from acknowledging lesser supranatural powers, just as we Christians acknowledge Christ as the divine Logos and second person of the trinity, as well as innumerable angels in different orders. Plotinus,. one of Plato's greatest "students" (he lived many centuries later) sets up a hierarchy of being rather compatible with Christianity, as Augustine acknowledged.
I sometimes wonder if it is really useful for Christians to emphasize monotheism--an abstract notion that lumps our religion with Judaism and Islam as one of the three great monotheisms. I think our understanding of divinity is closer to that of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus than it is to Islam or the Judaism that developed in opposition to Christianity.
Dr. Fleming, I am in the process of putting together a proposed course on Socrates. As I have not had the joy of reading very much of the classics for some years, I decided to propose a course pairing off Xenophon and Plate with Aristophanes' "The Clouds" for yet another view of Socrates. Which Platonic Dialogue is the one where he seeks to refute Aristophanes' view of Socrates?
Dr, Steve,
I think I said, actually, that he pooh-poohs Aristophanes' treatment. That is how I take his reference to the comic poet in the Apology. He also, by introducing Aristophanes as a very charming contributor to the Symposium, gives the impression he and Socrates are pals. Finally, the middle dialogues, especially the Phaedo and Phaedrus, portray Socrates as a serious theologian in pursuit of the ultimate good rather than just a wise guy who exults in showing how no one actually knows anything.
If we could work out the schedule--always iffy in my case--I'd come, not so much to teach your class, but help out in a session, in return for a decent meal in De Kalb, if that is possible. The only halfway decent food I've ever had in that awful place was at a cheap Lebanese place, now out of business. Are you doing Xenophon's Hiero, which I know you, as a good student of Strauss, admire. I don't think Strauss or Kojève by the way, had much interest in the historical and literary dimensions of the Hiero, which is precisely what interests me. Hiero was a great man in his day, though also a ruthless tyrant. Simonides was commonly admired for his wisdom and not just for his poetry. How much reality of the 470's is reflected in a work written a century later?
I hope you are attending our little program on defending Christmas. I'm leaving for Serbia a few days later.
I am planning to use Xenophon's Symposium, and contrast that with Plato's. The same for the Apology written by each author. Then, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates, and perhaps Plato's Crito. We would read The Clouds, also. I may add the Phaedo or the Phaedrus to balance out the Memorabilia of Socrates. It is a 300 level course, so I have to deal with at least some students who have yet to learn to read critically. I am also going to pitch it to our Honors Program, so if they accept it, I can crank up the rigor a bit more. I have taught the Hiero before in a 200 level political philosophy course, and in that class it went over very well. I am thinking about having each student post a review of each dialogue or play before we go over it in class, and then require each student to critique several of their classmate's work, and rebut the criticisms to their own review. I am experimenting with this next semester as a way to get them to actually read the readings.This is a similar format to what takes place in better on-line courses. I have no idea if it will be funded, but I would like to give it a try.
The culinary delights of My Fair City, are a bit on the sparse side. That Lebanese place was apparently a money laundering venture for one of the Christian Lebanese families, and it has closed. Twin Taps has decent beer, and very good sandwiches. My other home away from home is the Junction, which is not fancy, but provides good fare and hosts a considerable amount of local camaraderie. Should this attempt actually take off, I would be delighted to have you as a guest speaker, and we can head out to lunch, too. I am hoping to make the Christmas Defense.
Despite studying under a fair number of the graduate students of Leo Strauss, I never became a Straussian. This is probably why I was exiled to Public Administration, and may Paul Gottfried forgive me!
'But surely the pious man does not hope to make the gods better than they are.' Re: request for comments if loose ends. ... There is a hierarchy of being, and personally I prefer finding my place, to being a ram who's going to punch a whole in the dam, because he has high hopes.
In other words although as peace includes war and justice includes piety so does order include justice. That is because the order is not the law of the jungle that might alone makes right at the level of human beings.
If the gods below the highest order of heaven with which we are in fact in touch as well, are mischievous on occasion in their influence and we resist in behalf of what we feel on the higher level, assuming we succeed in our resistance even they might be admiring of that? We can hope so. But given the order it might be silly to hope (really a wish) to make them better.
Just so the discussion doesn't get over my head here, are we saying that Plato was being ironic when he cites the gods arguing? I thought he was being serious, and using their disagreement as his basis for positing that the ultimate good, or the will of the gods, is unknowable. Of course, I haven't read the rest of Plato, so I don't know the rest of the story (of his argument). I am getting nervous about questioning Christianity's identity as a monotheistic religion ... sorry, the cafe is closing and I have to go.
Let's recall the opening. Socrates is being prosecuted for impiety because he is critical of religious stories that depict the gods as violent, sex-crazed, and irrational. His point will ultimately be to purify Greek religion.
My point in bringing up monotheism was not to deny Christianity's monotheism but to suggest that Christianity is distinguished from other monotheisms primarily by the Incarnation but also by the very nature of the Trinity. Unitarians, to the extent they believe in anything, are pure and simplistic monotheists, while we understand or at least accept the revelation of a triune God, one nature but three persons.
Judaism for example holds that the highest God in heaven requires he be worshiped only. That is the definition of monotheism, the worship of one God. Then he allowed and made a new covenant through his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as those 2 only are one with him the same but not identical if in different forms, since this way became *appropriate in relationship with mankind, meeting those who pray and receive grace, where they are. It doesn't mean there aren't other gods and angels in the order of being. Just don't worship them they can be mischievous and through the covenant God is saying be one with me I AM sincere as long as you also remember you're Not God. That IS the divine singularity one with God but Not God. Take your time that's what time is for, see who you are in the Order of being. What's to be nervous about. If we're sincere but get too big for our breeches we'll find out about it as God too is sincere. So the prayer of the heart is: "Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me."
I don't perceive Plato was being ironic about the gods arguing, necessarily? He did want to try to come up with a way of arriving inductively at knowing the unknowable by an act of our own efforts alone. And although he was a sincere theologian that may have been hubris via the ideal forms he alone imagined.
He wanted to go beyond Socrates' organic dialectic through which Socrates realized we can't know the unknowable deductively or inductively. This has long been known and why we speak of revelation.
Socrates was sincere but perhaps he went too far in behalf of his own daemon? Tradition is valuable and needs to be built upon not circumvented or trashed or we go back to square one and what's the point of that? Or perhaps unwittingly Socrates was building upon it.
I think it is more helpful to attend to the actual arguments being made rather than speculate on Plato's or Socrates' motives. We don't actually know at what point Plato started to go beyond Socratic dialectic. I think rather few scholars regard these early dialogues--so evocative of real people and so filled with drama and humor--as unSocratic. A thorough reading of Plato and his successors reveals to us a band of dedicated people pursuing knowledge of the good and not simply what is good for this or that man or for mankind. It is a purely philosophical theology in that it is not bound to any non-rational assumptions or texts. A Christian theologian must take certain things for granted--the existence of God, the creation of the universe, the Incarnation and then make sense of them, whereas a philosopher cannot work that way. If there are axioms, then they must be like the axioms of geometry, convincing to all rational and sincere people.
But even a Christian theologian, once he has accepted revealed truths, has to play the game of theology by the rational rules of philosophy.
So let us take it for granted, as Socrates in this dialogue makes perfectly clear, that rational Greeks, even those who accepted the mythology, sought a deeper and non-literal meaning. Some developed an allegorical method of interpretation that some of the fathers (e.g. Origen) applied to the Old Testament. Others, primarily poets, developed alternative versions. Stesichorus, blinded for slandering the divine Helen, began a poem, "It is not true; you never went to Troy." Pindar devises an alternate story for Pelops because he will not consent to a story of the gods eating human flesh even inadvertently. We see this latter tendency most clearly in Attic tragedy.
IV The question Socrates posed here, by the way, is often called "Euthyphro's dilemma" or the Euthyphro dilemma."
I don't see how a creature on a lower intellectual and moral plane can actually help beings that are superior to him. We cannot speak of these things as Christians might speak of angels, because that is irrelevant to Socrates' case. The gods in question are simply the gods, and we cannot take it for granted (as Greeks) that their is power vastly greater.
Then we are agreed so far.
Since the service we bestow on dogs is inappropriate, what about medicine and architecture and generalship and the other arts as an analogy? They are broadly beneficial. Is religious piety like that?
Euthyphro agrees that there is a science or art of piety and it consists of sacrificing and praying. Thus, Socrates infers, religious piety is the skill or science of properly asking of and giving to the gods. It is the business of gods and men giving and receiving to and from each other.
But but but..what do the gods actually receive from us? Euthyphro predicatably says they like to be honored, and this gets us back to his earlier mistake of defining piety or holiness or goodness as that which is dear to the gods.
This is classic Socratic dialectic. One line of reasoning leads us to say that the holy is good in itself and cannot be defined by the pleasure it gives the gods; the second, a way of reasoning analogically about the arts, leads to the conclusion that the object is to please the gods.
Well, which is it?
Euthyphro: Gotta go!
Socrates humorously says he can never win his case now, because he has not been sufficiently instructed in what piety and impiety are. By implication, though, the accusers cannot know either, and they will certainly rely on Euthyphro's own prejudices. Perhaps it would be useful to go quickly through the Apology to see what their arguments are and how Socrates responds to them?
I agree better if not lapsing into motives.
However I think philosophy went wrong by imagining it might ever arrive at knowledge of the good like a mathematical axiom divorced from what is good for man and mankind.
Because all of these things are happening at the same time but different and include one another and so to whatever degree influence one another while also remaining primarily themselves. Or are you implying the context itself is merely abstract.
We're free to chase such a chimera but is it philosophy, much less rational? Sorry. I won't post for a while since have more than my share, not enough on text. I better get back to my day job. Especially since one cannot eat the abstract axioms for what is the good, should they ever be arrived at. Sadly it's our flesh and blood requiring nourishment doing the philosophizing. One last indulgence, Plato wanted the abstract cure, Socrates said: pass me the hemlock.
Socrates explains piety as only a part of justice, so I wonder if Socrates might be saying that a person might be pious without necessarily being just. In other words, a person might have piety without necessarily having the all other attributes, whatever they are, that make up justice. So, for example, devout Muslims acting in accordance with their faith kill themselves and 3,000 innocent people in a terrorist attack. Such attackers would lack justice, and they would also lack wisdom, another of the major Platonic virtues, but maybe they truly possess piety.
This may backfire, but here goes:
If piety is a part of justice, then by definition it cannot itself be unjust. The killing of innocents is unjust, therefore it cannot be motivated by true piety. Thus the 'piety' of these murderers is not true piety at all, it is really just simple psychopathic evil masquerading as 'piety'. True piety is something which these murderers cannot possibly understand, and they don't really care to.
In other words, the part may not contain the whole, but it cannot itself contradict the whole, or else it is something else entirely, or at least a part of something else.
Concerning that which is holy, is it holy in and of itself, or is it holy because it is held or apprehended to be so? I would say that the 'holy' in and of itself, is holy because it is holy of itself, and then it expresses itself in the world as an attribute. Therefore man cannot himself define the 'holy', he must be led to know what the 'holy' is. Thus divine revelation.
Man cannot look at something and say 'holy'. It must come to him in pure form, and perhaps his attempt to define the 'holy' corrupts it, if we assume that such corruption is possible (or could it be possible?) It truly is easy to go in circles with this one.
But if course this is going out of bounds, since we're several centuries prior to divine revelation.
One wonders what Socrates would have thought of early Christianity.
Thanks, Mr. Wilson, for making exactly the correct Socratic reply. When we all took geometry in high school, we were probably exposed to the visual expression of this argument in the form of a big circle within which was a smaller circle. If the big circle is X quality and the smaller circle Y, then all Y (piety) has the quality X but not all X has the quality Y.
What Socrates would say, if the question of pious Muslim terrorists were raised, is that their piety no piety at all because it did not partake of justice.
What would he say if we pressed him and asked why he thought we can take it for granted that piety is a part of justice, he would make an argument that justice was the virtue of acting correctly in a given circumstance--perhaps more akin to our word righteousness. While not all generically righteous people are pious--virtuous atheists and agnostics do exist--but that one could not be properly pious without being just.
These kinds of arguments and counter-arguments were used by Socrates and his students in order to clarify the meaning of important concepts. Much, of course, depends on the specific Greek words, but it is a mark of how influenced we are by the Greeks that much of our moral discourse has been shaped by them.
Though I most decidedly do not wish to talk much about religion, I would suggest that Christian discourse is confused by the constant repetition of technical terms that are not always understood fully. A term like justification, for example, can be better understood in Greek.
Finally, I don't quite understand a statement about where philosophy went wrong because... Presumably we would have to show 1) that philosophy did go generally wrong and that 2) philosophy generally did apply mathematical and abstract methods to the problem of the good, and 3) that this was the cause of philosophy going wrong. Where philosophy certainly went right was in forcing us to ask these questions.
I think Mr. Yurick is generally right about most philosophy since Descartes and about some aspects (but not all) of ancient moral and political philosophy
Thank you Mr. Wilson and Dr. Fleming.
I just want to just quickly thank you, Dr. Fleming for your response, though I've not read all the way through to today's postings. I'm thrashing about madly, but I think my head is still (just) above water. This is great exercise! Thanks again.
Plato shines his talent in this dialogue. I am an undergrad student and from reading Plato’s dialogues, I learned more about proper writing and ways to draw an audience into your writing than I have in past English classes. The minute details and descriptions make it easier for me to understand and connect with his writing compared to other ancient philosophers. An earlier comment noted that in Euthryphro, since Socrates was in his 70’s he couldn’t understand the son bringing the charges against his own father, but I am grateful for Plato’s writing the dialogue in this manner because the naïve behavior of Socrates created the ability for the development of the story; As Mr. Fleming noted “Plato is said to have wanted to write drama, and he certainly has a great gift for characterization, not by the usual Dickensian method of description but by the much subtler and more effective method of the dramatist who has his characters reveal their natures by what they say.” This says it perfectly. The way Plato does this shows how well a character can be developed without listing the attributes of the character for the reader to see in plain sight. There are many people out there who need to learn this in order to write in a way that will interest many readers and be able to hold their audiences until the end of the dialogue.
Going on, without the naïve behavior of Socrates in Euthyphro would not teach or dissects as much details and characteristics about piety and impiety as is done in the dialogue. Even though there is no final ‘definition’ of a pious or impious action in the story, the reader learns much about what is or is not a pious or impious action. There is much that can be learned from this dialogue, such as, how to argue in such a way to make the other person prove themselves wrong. This is a talent that would be very useful in anyone’s life. There are some aspects of the dialogue that do not shine but I feel as if the positives out shine those negative without any argument. There is a reason that as an undergrad student, I was required to read Plato for if it was not a requirement I most likely would have never picked up a single one of this books. The amount of brilliance Plato had and expressed through many of works of literature, give us the opportunity to develop some of his skills for our own personal gratification.
I thank Mr. Hanrahan for reminding us that Plato can teach us to write well, not merely to think well. In these early dialogues, he shows himself a master of characterization as well as of irony. The give-and-take of the dialogue is not intended to reach positive conclusions but rather to show the inadequacy of the assumptions put on the table by someone like Euthyphro. It is not that Socrates could not understand or enjoy the company of young men. On the contrary, he spent much of his time trying to teach noble young Athenians to think seriously about their responsibilities and to resist the sophist's arguments to undermine morality. Dramatically, this dialogue works very well partly for reasons I took up in my first comments, namely, that an ordinary Greek reader would have been horrified by Euthyphro's smug assertion of piety even as he was violating the Greek moral tradition of honoring one's parents. Remember in the Clouds, when Strepsiades realizes that his son, schooled by Socrates, now respects neither of his parents. His response is to burn down the phrontisterion--Socrates' school. In this dialogue, Plato is indirectly 1) refuting Aristophanes, and 2) claiming the moral high ground for Socrates as the man who defends filial piety.
One thing I have not even touched upon is Plato's prose style, because it cannot be discussed in terms of a translation. Greek prose, compared with English, is like Haydn to Irving Berlin. A friend of mine (David Sider) first revealed to me the subtlety and brilliance of Plato's use of particles, tiny little words like ge, ar, gar, oun, mentoi, which are hard to translate without overtranslating because they give a tone of voice to the sentence, suggesting logical connection, arousing the interlocutor's interest, concession, irony. In English we raise our voice, use hand gestures, roll our eyes or do something with our eyebrows. Naturally, the Greeks did all these things and like modern Greeks used hand gestures probably more than we do, but their language by itself could get these feelings across to a blind man or a reader.
"One wonders what Socrates would have thought of early Christianity."
Mr. Wilson,
I have never really understood the Athenian gods to any significant degree. Most of the characters in Plato's dialogues are familiar with Homer, know the stories about their gods by heart, and the why of their major holy days (Holidays) or feast days still celebrated in Athens. Socrates was also a man like alot of saints, who had both loyal friends and sworn enemies and in most ways attempted to cultivate the gifts of what we call the Holy Spirit ---wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God.
I am not fond of the current practice of most of our popular historians of saying some historical figure was "ahead of his times" because he resembled our times. Reading history like that usually involves reading it backwards. One can draw nuggets of wisdom from miserable men such as Voltaire, write eloquently of his wit and satire and even take some of his stock phrases such as "Religion began when a Charlatan met a fool) and demonstrate his consistency with Aristotle who had already noticed man was a political animal. Yet even on his worst day, Voltaire was no vile and stupid neo-con as we know them.
I want to thank everyone on this thread for their good comments and reflections. It is a ture delight to learn in this way and all of you have contributed to my delight in reading Euthyphro.
As a Greek, he probably would have looked down his nose on people from the Eastern Mediterranean, but as a man dedicated to virtue he would have applauded the simplicity of their lives and the cleanness of their conception of divinity.
The Greeks themselves, at least the philosophers, often had trouble with the rich mythology they had inherited. The philosophers, while striving for a higher conception of Zeus as the ruler of the universe, were quite critical of the apparently childish tales told of him. Modern scholars have often, though not always, been equally unkind. I recommend Walter Otto's rather poetic book on Homeric gods and Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones under-appreciated Sather lectures, The Justice of Zeus, in which Sir Hugh traces the notion of divine justice from Homeric times through the poets. I agree entirely with him that Greek religion schooled the Greek mind and promoted a sense of justice.
A.M. Hanrahan,
I am most pleased (even envious) that a young man of your caliber is reading the dialogues for the first time. I remember staying up all night as a college student to read Plato and have never stopped reading him. Unfortunately he has not helped my writing skills as much as yours, but then again I had a longer way to travel. I can't even run spell check on these typing devices without losing my posts.