EUTHYPHRO: EXAMPLES OF SOCRATIC METHOD, Part 1

Part 1 Examples are not Definitions

Plato sets the scene of Euthyphro outside the courthouse in Athens.   Socrates is there to hear an indictment brought against him by a young man named Meletus.  Upon his arrival, Socrates is surprised to run into a prophet[1] he knows named Euthyphro. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is there to bring a prosecution against his own father for the crime of murder.   Socrates is understandably astounded that anyone would do such a thing (4b) . Euthyphro admits that his relatives feel the same way, but he argues that it should make no difference whether the killer is his father or a stranger: "the sole consideration should be whether the killer killed justly or not.  If he did, let him go; if he didn't— prosecute” (4b).

Euthyphro explains to Socrates the facts that led him to prosecute his father (4c-4d).  The man that his father killed was a day laborer of his -- "he worked the land for us."  This man got drunk one day and, in a rage,  he cut the throat of one of Euthyphro's household slaves.[2]   Euthyphro's father tied him up and threw the killer in a ditch until he could find out from the authorities what should be done with him.  He did not give the man any food or clothing for protection against the elements because he did not care whether he lived or died while they were waiting.  "And that's just what happened: hunger, cold, and being tied up caused his death" (4e).  

Euthyphro's father and other relatives are angry with Euthyphro for prosecuting his father for murder.  They say that his father "didn't really kill" the laborer, and "even if he definitely did kill him, it's wrong to be concerned about the dead man--since he was a murderer” (4e). 

Euthyphro's next statement, which is the claim on which Socrates focuses the rest of the discussion in the dialogue, is this: "You see, it's impious, they say, for a son to prosecute his father for murder" (4e).  Euthyphro tells Socrates that he rejects this criticism on the ground that he, Euthyphro, has an "exact knowledge" of such things as piety and impiety and "the positions that the gods take" about the pious and the impious[3].   

Socrates immediately seizes upon this statement because he has also been charged with the crime of impiety.  He tells Euthyphro that he wants him to teach him everything he knows about piety, beginning with a definition of this term.  Euthyphro’s answer:

"What's pious is precisely what I am doing now: prosecuting those who commit an injustice, such as murder or temple robbery, or those who've done some other such wrong, regardless of whether they're one's father or one's mother or anyone else whatever.  Not prosecuting them, on the other hand, is what's impious" (5d-5e). 

For future reference, we will use the label D1 Euthyphro's first definition.

After a brief interlude Socrates tells Euthyphro that D1 is not adequate because it fails to give us the "one characteristic" by which "the impieties are impious, and the pieties pious" (6e).

Socrates means that citing an example of a pious action (like prosecuting his father for murder) is not helpful because it fails to give us the characteristic, model, or "form itself" by which "any action of yours or anyone else's" is pious (6e).  We will refer to this as Socrates' first criticism as R1.

What Plato has done here is to launch analytic philosophy 2,000 years before it was used again in Western philosophy.  By the "form itself" Socrates means what we now refer to as the "concept itself."  The form or concept of a thing or act tells us what is essential to an act of piety.  For example, the form or concept of bachelor is "human, male, adult, unmarried."  These are essential to something being a bachelor.   Only humans,   males, adult males, and unmarried males can qualify as bachelors.  We would not refer to a dog as a bachelor, nor would we say that a three-year child, or a married man is a bachelor.  The concept of bachelor applies only to those people who have these characteristics.  They are essential.  But at the same time we can never observe the concept of bachelor.  I would not point at a man walking down the street and say "there goes the concept Bachelor."   Instead, the man walking down the street is a bachelor  We can think about the concept of bachelor but we will never observe it.  We can see a bachelor but only if he is of a certain height, weight, color, and other visible properties that are not essential to the concept. 

And so it is with piety, according to Socrates.  If Euthyphro is to succeed in defining piety he will have to focus on piety as a concept not as a visible object.  And the concept of piety, like the concept of bachelor can only have what is essential to any act or person that we would refer to as pious.