From Understanding Plato: The Smart Student's Guide to the Socratic Dialogues and the Republic

EUTHYPHRO: EXAMPLES OF SOCRATIC METHOD

Part 3

Euthyphro now makes a third attempt (D3) to provide a definition. “I’d say that the pious is what all the gods love, and its opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious” (9e). Socrates responds by asking a question that some scholars have called one of the most important questions in the history of philosophy: “Is the pious loved by the gods because it’s pious? Or is it pious because it’s loved?” (10a). The question is important because it proposes a dilemma.[1] No matter what choice Euthyphro makes the result is unacceptable (R3).

Here are the choices: (1) If the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, then the piety of an action has nothing to do with whether or not the gods love it. For example, if the gods love Euthyphro’s act of prosecuting his father for murder, and they love this because it is pious, then we can still ask the question “Why do the gods believe that what Euthyphro did is pious?” If the gods tell us their reasons for believing this, then these reasons are accessible to everyone, not just the gods. But more important than that, we still have no answer to the question “What makes an action pious or impious?”

(2) If an act is pious because it is loved by the gods, then it is logically possible that any act, even the most heinous act imaginable, could be pious. All that is needed to guarantee this is that the gods love it.[2] Hence, it is possible that Euthyphro’s act of prosecuting his father would be pious if the gods love it, but it is also possible that the gods could love the Holocaust, and if they did love the Holocaust, then this would also be pious. This is the unacceptable result of a theory that makes the moral quality of an act (the quality of being right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust) utterly dependent on an emotional response (love, approval, desire), whether it is a response of the gods or of humans.[3]

Once again, we see the elenchus at work. If piety is what all the gods love, and it is possible that all the gods love (for example) torturing innocent children, then it is possible that torturing innocent children is pious. But we can safely assume that the torture of innocent children is not a result that Euthyphro would ever accept as a pious act. Therefore, he must abandon his hypothesis (“piety is what all the gods love”).

[1]A dilemma requires a choice between options that either are or seem equally unfavorable or unsatisfactory.

[2] Professor S. Marc Cohen has an amusing way of making this criticism. He says that Euthyphro’s proposed definition leads to something like (what I’ll call) the Kim Kardashian Paradox. Kim is famous. She appears on talk shows, reality TV shows. Everyone knows who she is. But what does Kim do? What is she famous for? As Cohen’s joke goes, “She is famous for being famous”. But that is just to admit that there really isn’t any reason for Kim Kardashian to be famous. We are all making the same mistake by paying any attention to her. The analogy to Euthyphro’s definition of piety is obvious. If piety is being god-loved, then the gods are all making a mistake in admiring an act for its piety. They are admiring nothing other than their own admiration.

[3] Later philosophers have used Socrates’ counter argument to criticize The Divine Command Theory of Ethics. This theory says that the morality of an action depends upon whether the act does or does not violate a command of God. This raises the question “Does God command this particular action because it is morally right, or is it morally right because God commands it?” It is in answering this question that the divine command theorist encounters the same difficulty encountered by Euthyphro (For more on this dilemma see Michael Austin’s article in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

EUTHYPHRO: AN EXAMPLE OF SOCRATIC METHOD, Part 3

EUTHYPHRO: AN EXAMPLE OF SOCRATIC METHOD, Part 3