Preliminary Small Talk (2a-3e)
- As Euthyphro encounters Socrates outside the courthouse, the dialogue begins with ordinary conversational small talk.
- 2a. Euthyphro, whom we do not know about otherwise (see Grube's footnote), greets Socrates with "What's new?" This is pretty much what it says in Greek, Tí neoóteron? -- although neoóteron literally means "newer" or "later."
- 2a. Euthyphro mentions seeing Socrates in the Lyceum. In Socrates's day the Lyceum was an area outside the walls of Athens that had an athletic field (a gymnasium, gymnasion -- meaning a "place for nudity") and possibly a bath. Later, in 335, it became the site for the school of Aristotle. After the death of Socrates in 399, Plato had travelled a bit, and then, on returning to Athens, founded a school around 387 in a grove of trees, which may also have had an athletic field, just outside the Dipylon Gate of Athens. The grove had been named after an Olympic athlete, Akademos, and was consequently was known as the Akademeia. This became the name of Plato's school, the Academy, spawning modern words like, indeed, "academy," "academic," etc. The school lasted from 387 to 529 AD, when the Roman Emperor Justinian closed it as part of his campaign to stamp out paganism. That adds up to 915 years, a pretty good run, longer than most of the universities of Europe -- though the al-Azhar University in Cairo, associated with the al-Azhar Mosque, was founded in 970 AD by the Fatimid Caliph al-Mu'izz, so it is now 1028 years old. In modern Athens there is an old monastery in the area where the Academy would have been -- it may be on the actual site. Aristotle was Plato's best student at the Academy and was even known as the "mind of the Academy." When Plato died in 347, Aristotle thought he would become the head of the School. Instead, the office went to one of Plato's nephews. Aristotle was a little put out by this and left. After visiting a friend, who was then executed by the Persians, and marrying his daughter, Aristotle went home to Macedonia in 345, where his father, a court physician, got him a job as tudor to the son of the King. The King was Philip II, and the son would turn out to be Alexander the Great. Just what Aristotle taught Alexander, or what they had to say to each other at all, was recorded by neither of them and remains one of the tantalizing unknowns of history. When Alexander went off to conquer Persia, Aristotle then returned to Athens to found his own school in the Lyceum. This became one of the established schools of the Hellenistic Period, though it does not seem to have lasted as long as the Academy. Although members of the Academy were simply "Academics," members of the Lyceum were called "Peripatetics," which meant, and still means, those who "walk around," which evidently is the way that Aristotle lectured.
- 2a. Euthyphro mentions that he is meeting Socrates outside "the king-archon's court." The "king-archon" was one of the major officials of Athens (a group of whom were the "archons," = rulers). He was called the "king" because he discharged what had been the religious duties of the old kings. One duty was to preside over court cases with a religious dimension. With Socrates that is obvious, since he is accused of impiety (not honoring the gods of the city). Euthyphro is prosecuting a murder case, but it turns out that murder cases have a religious dimension because they involve the shedding of blood, which is religiously polluting, as Euthyphro later notes himself (4c). The foundations of the king-archon's court were discovered some years ago next to the subway tunnel that presently forms one boundary of the excavated area of the Agora (the marketplace) in Athens.
- 2c-3a. An example of Socrates's irony. He certainly does not think that his accuser, Meletus, will "become a source of great blessings for the city."
- 3a. Euthyphro misses the irony. But he seems to regard Socrates as a local institution, "the heart of the city."
- 3b. Euthyphro seems to be the kind of person, making his prophecies, who gets laughed at in the Assembly. This doesn't sound good.
- 3d. "...my liking for people..." Since Socrates spends his time in the most public and crowded places in Athens, like the marketplace (the Agora), asking people questions and drawing crowds, it is not surprising that he thinks of himself as liking people. This may be contrasted with Plato, who only taught at the Academy, outside the walls of Athens, who didn't let just anyone into the Academy (the sign said, "Only those who have studied geometry"), and who, according to the Republic, didn't think that just anyone should be allowed to study philosophy. One might conclude that Plato didn't have much of a "liking for people."
- 3e. "...the outcome is not clear except to you prophets." A bit of a challenge here to Euthyphro, who has boasted that "I have foretold nothing that did not happen" (3c). If he can "foretell the future" so well, why not predict the outcome of Socrates's case? "Perhaps it will come to nothing," however, is the strongest prophecy that he can make.
First Question: "What are you doing?" (3e-4e)
- 3e. "What is your case..?" The start of the dialogue proper. Socrates's characteristic first question is simply to ask people what they are doing. This is Socrates as the opposite of an armchair philosopher. With Euthyphro, he has already mentioned that he is prosecuting someone, but Socrates asks again whether he is the defendant or the prosecutor.
- 3e-4b. It turns out that Euthyphro is prosecuting a murder case against his own father. This is shocking to Socrates. It would still be disturbing enough to us, where children turning against their parents sounds like something from Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or the War on the Drugs (where the DARE campaign has reportedly encouraged children to inform on their parents). It is more disturbing to Socrates, because the basic unit of Greek religion is the home and the household. The household hearth does not exist just for warmth and cooking; it is an altar, an altar to the household gods and especially the ancestors, whose misery in the Underworld is ameliorated by offerings from the living (similar beliefs were common in India before the idea of reincarnation caught on). The father of the family is thus the family priest. Roman Law gave the pater familias the virtual power of life and death over all members of the family. Turning against one's father is thus like turning against one's religion, and a major act of impiety -- rather like Arjuna's grief at the possibility of killing his teacher in the Bhagavad Gita. This is why the issue of the Euthyphro becomes piety.
- 4b-4e. Euthyphro loftily responds that one should simply punish injustice regardless of who does it. "The pollution is the same," refers to the religious pollution of the spilling of blood. However, we then get the details of the case, and it looks pretty weak. The victim, a servant, was a murderer himself, having killed a family slave "in drunken anger." Euthyphro's father then ties him up, throws him in a ditch, and sends a messenger to find out what to do about him. The messenger does not go to the police, because there are no police, nor to the district attorney, because there is no district attorney either. The messenger goes to a priest, doubtless because of the religious dimension, again, of the spilling of blood. But, with no telephones, it takes a while for the messenger to go and return. The prisoner, neglected, meanwhile dies. In modern law, the father might be liable for some kind of negligent homicide, but in Greek law and practice that would have been the end of it -- had Euthyphro not decided to prosecute his own father himself.
Second Question: "Why are you doing it?" (4e-5a)
- 4e-5a. The second question characteristic of Socrates is just to ask why a person is doing what they are doing. The answer will be of the form, "I am doing this because it is [value term]." The value term may be "good," "just," "virtuous," etc. In this case, Socrates doesn't need to ask the question because Euthyphro volunteers that people's "ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates." This is a red flag to Socrates. He asks if Euthyphro has no fear of acting impiously. Euthyphro answers loftily again that "Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men" if he did not know all about it. This gives us piety as the subject of discussion.
Third Question: "What is Piety?" (5a-15c)
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Ironic Pose: "I must become your pupil." (5a-5d)
- 5a-5c. Before asking the main question, Socrates sets himself up as Euthyphro's student. After all, if Socrates doesn't know anything about this, but Euthyphro says he does, what would be more fitting? Of course, this is an ironic pose: Socrates probably does not expect, as we do not, that Euthyphro can answer his questions. We might even consider this dishonest of Socrates; but he does give Euthyphro the benefit of the doubt, he does take him at his word, or, we might say, he is ready to give him enough rope to hang himself. Either way, if Euthyphro can answer the questions, Socrates will have to be his student indeed. He will also be able, as he says, to get Euthyphro to defend him at his trial! Or get Meletus to charge Euthyphro with "corrupting" older men, like his father and Socrates!
- 5c-5d. The question, when it comes, turns out to be two. "What kind of thing do you say godliness and ungodliness are," is the main question, but Socrates immediately provides Euthyphro with a way out by asking if the pious is not "the same and alike in every action." Euthyphro would not have to give a single answer to the main question if he answers the latter that the pious is, indeed, not the same and alike. This would derail the questioning for a while, but Euthyphro does not take advantage of that avenue. He answers the second question first, that "most certainly" the pious and the impious present us "with one form or appearance."
- 5d. There is some misdirection with the translation here. Grube gives us "one form or appearance" for mían tinà idéan, "some one idea," which is then footnoted with a discussion about Plato's terminology and the theory of the Forms. However, Plato's theory of Forms is not part of Socrates's thinking in the Euthyphro, and this is a distracting and out of place translation and discussion. Since the word "idea," used by Socrates in Greek, has been borrowed into modern languages and English, with a meaning recognizably similar to the original, there is no good reason to translate it at all. Socrates is asking for the "idea" of piety, which can still mean a request for its meaning. "Form," however, does not suggest meaning, unless we are aware of conventions in translating Plato.
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First Definition: "The Pious is what I am doing." (5d-6d)
- 5d. Euthyphro's first definition is simply to cite his own actions. This could be called an "ostensive" definition, to point to examples of what is to be defined, but Euthyphro does not give enough examples for that to work, and it isn't what Socrates really wants anyway. The failure of a person to give a general definition at first is common in Socrates's investigations.
- 5e-6a. Euthyphro now launches off into a speech citing Greek mythology
as a justification for his prosecution of his father. The incidents are
from Hesiod's Theogony (the "Birth of the gods"). Ouranos,
"Father Heaven," who was the son as well as the husband of Gaia,
"Mother Earth," didn't like the children she was giving birth to (the
Titans), so he refused to let them be born, forcing them back into
her womb.
She didn't like this too much, and so she equipped the
eldest son, Kronos, with a scythe (a long pole with a wicked blade
for harvesting grain -- it must have been very crowded in her womb!). When
Ouranos next approached Gaia for sex, Kronos cut off his genitals [1]. Thus Kronos
became king of the gods [2]. But there was
then a ominous prophecy: Kronos would be overthrown by his son just like
his father. Kronos dealt with this by eating his children as his wife
Rhea gave birth to them. Rhea tired of this and saved her youngest
son, Zeus, by wrapping a stone in swaddling clothes and giving that
to Kronos. One wonders about the diet of the Titans when Kronos eats a
stone, clothes and all, and doesn't notice it isn't a baby! Rhea then
raised Zeus in a cave on Crete. He grew up and married his cousin
Metis, who then suggested giving Kronos something that would make
him throw up the other children. They did, and he did; and, after
growing up, evidently unharmed, in their father's stomach, Zeus's siblings
joined with him in overthrowing Kronos and those Titans that sided with
him. They were then imprisoned in Tartarus, the deepest part of the
Underworld. Zeus's brother Hades (or Pluto) took the Underworld to
rule, and Poseidon the Sea, while Zeus himself ruled all from
Mt. Olympus -- the highest point in Greece at 9,550 ft. (but not as
tall as Baldy, Mt.
San Antonio, which is visible from the city of Los Angeles on a clear
day, at 10,064 ft.). Only one problem remained: a prophecy that Zeus would
be overthrown by a son of Metis as his father and grandfather had been!
Taking measures one step further, Zeus actually devoured the
pregnant Metis! Although the goddess Athena, the patroness of the
city of Athens, then sprang from his forehead, this took care of the
prophecy -- Athena was rather like a son, born in armor, but she wasn't.
No prophecy then applied to the sons of Zeus's new wife, his sister
Hera.
- 6a-6b. We now learn that Socrates does not believe stories about violence, mutilation, war, and battles among the gods. This is Socrates breaking with the fifth characteristic of mytho-poeic thought. He is willing to suspend his disbelief, having become a student of Euthyphro, but he still expresses his astonishment.
- 6c. "Representations of which the robe of the goddess is adorned..."
The "goddess," of course, is Athena. A great statue of Athena
Parthenos, Athena "the Virgin," was contained in the Parthenon.
We know roughly what the
statue looked like, in ivory and gold, because of three small
Roman copies. We might not have known, however, that the statue had a robe
if not for a reference like this. The robe was cleaned (or replaced) every
four years and then carried back up to the Acropolis in a great
procession, as part of the Panathenaia festival. Not only the robe,
however, was adorned with mythological scenes. The Parthenon itself was
decorated with sculpted figures and reliefs, done by the great sculptor
Phideas. An inner continuous relief, the frieze, depicted
the Panathenaia itself. When the Greeks converted to Christianity, the
Parthenon became a church, dedicated, as we might imagine, to the Virgin
Mary. When the Turks arrived in
1456, they turned the church into a mosque but also, unfortunately, later
used it to store gunpowder. In a Venetian attack on the city in 1687, a
cannon ball came through the building and hit the gunpowder. Thus, 2133
years after its foundation was laid (in 447 BC, with money misappropriated
from the defense contributions of the League of Delos), the Parthenon was
blown to pieces. In 1801 the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire,
Lord Elgin, asked if he could remove some of the sculptures from
the wreckage. With Turkish permission, much of the decoration of the
Parthenon was then shipped to London between 1803 and 1812. Those
sculptures, now called the "Elgin Marbles," are still housed in the
British Museum. After Greece won independence from Turkey in 1830,
the Greeks began requesting the return of the marbles. British governments
have consistently refused, including, most recently, the Labor government
of Tony Blair.
Anyone who wishes to inspect all that remains of the Parthenon, therefore,
must travel to London as well as to Athens. In Athens itself, on the other
hand, some of the original marble on the Acropolis has been replaced with
fiberglass copies, so that the original stone can be housed in museums
away from the acidic properties of modern Athenian smog. Now, however,
reconstruction of the Parthenon itself has begun, using marble from the
original quarries.
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Second Definition: "The Pious is what is dear to the gods." (6c-8b)
- 6c-6d. "...at leisure some other time." Socrates is not really interested in Euthyphro's expertise on mythology. He now brings to Euthyphro's attention the fact that the first definition, "What I am doing now," did not really answer the question.
- 6e. "...this idea itself." Again, we have our problem with the translation, with "form" translating idea. Also, the imagery that Socrates then uses reminds us of the etymology of the word idea. Socrates says that he wants the idea, "so that I may look upon it..." Since idea comes from the same root (*wid) as part of the verb "to see," eídon ("I saw"), we may note the connection with Socrates's metaphor of "looking" and the meaning of the word. Another part of the verb "to see," oîda, meaning "I have seen," can also be used to actually mean "I know."
- 6e. "...and using it as a model..." "Model" here is parádeigma, a word that is still used ("paradigm") to mean a model or pattern. Although Aristotle says that Socrates did not dissociate the "idea" from the object, as did Plato, here we do have a distinction between the general meaning, treated as a separate "model," and the individual things which embody the meaning, "any actions of yours or another's that is of that kind..."
- 7a. "What is dear to the gods is pious..." Now Euthyphro gives a general definition, to Socrates's delight ("Splendid"). The overall irony of the dialogue is that after "manifold wanderings," as Kant would say, we find Euthyphro returning to the same definition in the end, at 15b.
- 7b. "We have also stated..." Now, Euthyphro's problem is going to be that, as we have already learned, he thinks that the gods fight among themselves and have, we might say, serious disagreements. This will be fatal for his definition, since the same things would be loved by some gods, and so be pious, but be hated by other gods, and so be impious. This may indeed be an artifact of most polytheisms, in which the pious worship of some gods may entail the impious neglect of others. Euripides wrote a play about something of the sort, Hippolytus, in which the reverence and dedication of Hippolytus for the virgin goddess Artemis draws down the wrath and vengeance of the goddess of love, Aphrodite.
- 7b. Socrates, however, does not go directly for the kill. First, he askes a deeper question, as he often does: If the gods disagree about things, why do they disagree?
- 7c-7d. "What subject of difference..." Euthyphro cannot say why the gods would disagree, so Socrates suggests that the subjects of difference are, "the just and the unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad." This gives us a nice list of such value terms as would constitute the "human and social [actually, political] kind of excellence [/virtue]" of the Apology (20b) [Grube, p. 26]. These are what the Sophists claimed to teach, and what Socrates actually asks his questions about, what, "when we are unable to come to a satisfactory decision, you and I and other men become hostile to each other whenever we do?" As it happens, people still become hostile over these issues, as with recent debate over "affirmative action".
- 7e-8a. "...according to your argument..." If Euthyphro thinks that the gods disagree, then they must disagree about what is "just, beautiful, ugly, good, and bad." They each love what they think good and hate what they think bad, and so the same things will come to be loved by some gods and hated by others. "And the same things would be both pious and impious."
- 8a-8b. So Euthyphro's definition is no definition, as Socrates says, "I did not ask what same thing is both pious and impious." Prosecuting his father may have been pleasing to Zeus, who overthrew and imprisoned his father, but not pleasing to Ouranos or Kronos, who were both victims of their sons. Euthyphro's actions would thus be hated by the older gods, even if loved by Zeus.
-
Correction: "The gods don't disagree about penalizing injustice." (8b-9a)
- 8b. "No gods would differ..." Euthyphro now wants to fix up his definition to avoid the difficulty exposed to Socrates. His argument will be, in general, that the gods will not differ in the actual murder case, even if they might differ about the piety of a son prosecuting his father.
- 8b. "Whoever has killed anyone unjustly should should pay the penalty." Unfortunately, the principle that Euthyphro proposes as what the gods would agree upon is far too general to encompass the specifics of the case he wants to make against his father.
- 8c-8e. "Have you ever heard..." Socrates points out that no one would disagree with the principle Euthyphro proposes. Euthyphro tries to disagree, saying that defendants will "say anything" to avoid punishment. But Socrates points out that they do not deny that the wrongdoer must be punished. Instead, "they deny doing wrong." They "disagree as to who the wrongdoer is..." Thus, O.J. Simpson did not walk into court, admit that he killed two people, and then deny that he should be punished. He denied that he had done any killing. Similarly, Bill Clinton denied ever lying under oath, even though he had to argue, to sustain the "legal correctness" of his answers, that oral sex was not sex and that he wasn't sure what "alone" and "is" meant.
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Question: "What do the gods agree on in the case?" (9a-9b)
- 9a-9b. "...what proof..." Now we hear the last that we will ever hear in the Euthyphro about the actual murder case. Socrates asks specifically why all the gods would "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 why it is right for a son to prosecute his father on behalf of the dead murderer. Euthyphro has no answer to this, and it now appears that he has given no thought to the actual murder case at all. It looks like all Euthyphro has prepared for court is his argument from Greek mythology why it is pious for a son to prosecute his father. He probably will enjoy shocking people with his outrageous behavior and argument. But when it comes to the actual case, Euthyphro will not be able to say why his murdering servant died unjustly.
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Third Definition: "The Pious is what is loved by all the gods." (9c-10a)
- 9c-9e. Socrates isn't all that interested in the murder case anyway. He wants to pursue the definition of piety. Also, since Socrates himself does not believe that that gods disagree about anything, we might wonder if the "loved by the gods" definition would be satisfactory to him once we toss out the embarrassing features of Greek mythology. Now Socrates makes that correction, "I will not insist on this point..." He will stipulate that the pious is what is loved by all the gods, while, if the gods disagree about anything, Socrates will disregard those matters. Euthyphro likes that fine, but, of course, Socrates has something else in mind.
- 9e. "...if one of us, or someone else, merely says that something is so..." Euthyphro is given an extraordinary chance to bail out. He could just tell Socrates, "Just accept what I say and stop asking these questions!" This is always a typical move of those claiming authority, to shut off debate and questioning. Euthyphro, however, is naively honest and supposes that he can handle whatever Socrates will throw at him. Eventually he will run away, but he will never admit to Socrates that he cannot answer his questions.
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Question: "Is the Pious loved because it is Pious, or Pious because it is loved?" (10a-11b)
- 10a.
Now we
come to what is historically the most significant question in the
Euthyphro. Socrates wonders whether the love of the gods is even
relevant to the meaning of piety, so he asks: "Is the pious loved
by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the
gods." This is a question about causality. On the one side are the gods,
in the act of loving. On the other side is piety. Is piety caused
by the loving of the gods, or is the love of the gods itself
caused by the nature of piety. In the former case, the pious
is whatever the gods love, for whatever reason. Indeed, the gods
must love things arbitrarily, for no reasons; for if the gods love
something for some good reason, then the nature of the thing makes it
worthy of love and the gods must merely recognize the objective
value of the thing. This is a question that becomes of increasing
theological importance in the future. That is because it can be
generalized into a question about the relation of all value (which
I shall conveniently call "the Good") to a monotheistic God, who
will later be supposed, by Judaism, Christianity, and Islâm, to be the
Omnipotent Creator of All Things. 
If God is the
Creator of absolutely everything, then He would be the Creator of all
standards of value also. The Good would be posited by His own free,
arbitrary, and omnipotent act of Will; and so it would be whatever
he wanted it to be. However, this makes it senseless to praise God
as being Good or to think of Him as in any way distinguished by His
goodness. Whatever He thinks, wants, or does, it is simply good by
definition, regardless of what it is. This is, at least, disappointing. On
the other hand, if God recognizes what is good and wants to
do it because it is good, this posits the nature of value
independent of Him, so that he must, and wishes to, conform Himself to it.
This makes it sensible to praise and revere God's goodness, but it also
means that God is no longer the Creator of everything: standards of value
stand above and beyond Him, outside of his control and creativity. This is
actually what Plato thought (the Forms preëxist the creative action of
God, and provide the standard for it, in the Timaeus), and it does
sound rather like Zoroastrianism, but it is, as a compromise and
limitation of Omnipotence, disturbing for the monotheistic religions.
Consequently, the history of religion and philosophy shows the emphasis
going indifferent ways. Emphasis on the omnipotence and Will of God is
best represented in modern philosophy by the great Jewish philosopher
Baruch Spinoza, who does not actually believe in an arbitrary Will
of God, but who certainly does not belive in a God who does things
for a good and rational reason. In turn, the best modern representative of
God's goodness and rationality is the German philosopher Gottfried
Leibniz, who famously believed that this was the "best of all possible
worlds" because a benevolent and omnipotent God could not and would not
have created a world otherwise. 
Similarly,
historical religions have gone in different directions. As Greek
philosophy, in the form of Plato and Aristotle, tended to systematize the
goodness and rationality of God, the greatest sysematization of the Will
and Omnipotence of God may be found in Islâm, where, "God does what
He wishes" [Allâhu yaf'alu mâ yashâ'u], Qur'ân, Surah 3:40
(or 3:35). Or, as translated by Ahmed Ali [Al-Qur'ân, Princeton
University Press, 1988, p. 215, Surah 13:31], "Have the believers not
learnt that if God had so willed He could have guided all mankind?" If
this sounds harsh ("way harsh," as Alicia Silverstone says in the movie
Clueless), something very similar may be found in the Old
Testament, where God tells Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that
you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but
I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go" [Exodus,
4:21]. This is no favor to Pharaoh, nor to the Egyptians, all of whose
first born are eventually killed. While Islâm is mostly prepared to pursue
God's Omnipotence to its logical extreme, the Bible, Judaism, and
Christianity are somewhat more tangled up in trying to preserve God's
goodness and rationality. Thus, even in Genesis we get: "God saw that it
was good" [Hebrew, Wayyare' Elôhîm kî tôbh] (Genesis 1:10, 1:12,
1:18, 1:21, 1:25); and "And God saw everything that he had made, and
behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). If whatever God does is good by
definition, then it would not be necessary for God to "see" that His work
was good. Logically, however, Judaism and Christianity cannot have it both
ways, unless the principle of logical contradiction does not apply
to the Transcendent. This possibility was considered by the Mediaeval
philosopher William of
Ockham, by Buddhism, and in the essay
"Religious Value and the
Antinomies of Transcendence" at the Friesian School website. So,
obviously, this question that Socrates asks in the Euthyphro is
significant far beyond his concerns for a definition of piety.
- 10a-10b. Euthyphro at first does not understand Socrates's question, so Socrates must explain the difference between active and passive, between the causal agent and the object affected by causality. Thus, something "seeing" and something "being seen" are different, as someting "loving" and something "being loved" are different.
- 10b-10c. Socrates then points out the direction of the causality, that something is seen because something else is seeing it. An object is not carried because it is being carried but because something carries it. If an object could cause someone to carry it, this would make for a kind of nightmare reality where objects control people (like in some horror movies).
- 10c. "...if anything comes to be, or is affected, it does not come to be because it is coming to be, but it is coming to be because it comes to be..." This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The last two clauses seem to say the same thing. This may be a problem with the translation, but I haven't worked out a better one yet.
- 10c. Euthyphro agrees on the direction of causality. This is not fatal to his argument, but Socrates does seem to think that the pious must have an intrinsic nature, in which case being loved by the gods, as caused by an extrinsic source, could not define piety.
- 10d. "Is it loved because it is pious, or for some other reason?" Euthyphro loses his definition by agreeing that there is "no other reason." If the pious is loved because it is pious, then the pious must have an intrinsic nature that makes it worthy of love. This destroys both the second and the third definitions proposed, both of which depended on the love of the gods bestowing the character of piety. Euthyphro, of course, could have bitten the bullet and said that "it is loved" just because the gods happen to love it. That reveals the rational opaqueness of "Spinoza's Thesis": If the Will of God makes everything, including value, the way it is, this is ultimately for no reason at all except God's arbitrary and free choice. The Greeks, and most philosophers historically, have found this ultimate irrationality intolerable, though, from a religious point of view, it is no place for mortals, like Job, to question the will, motives, intentions, and purposes of their Creator.
- 10d-11a. Socrates goes over the point somewhat tediously. The "god-beloved" and the pious are different. If they were the same, then if the pious is loved because it is pious, the god-beloved would be loved because it is god-beloved, rather than god-beloved because it is loved by the gods. Repeating this a number of ways produces a confusion similar to that at 10c above.
- 10a.
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Interlude (11b-11e)
- 11a-11b. Now Socrates must ask what piety is all over again. "...you told me an affect or quality of it...but you have not yet told me what the pious is." Socrates maintains his ironic pose by accusing Euthyphro that, "you did not wish to make its nature clear to me." Euthyphro, however, is completely at a loss and doesn't know what other definition to propose. In a moment characteristic of Socratic dialogues, he is unable to imagine any new answer to Socrates's question.
- 11b-11d. This produces a typical interlude in the dialogue. Socrates
makes a joke that, if he had been proposing definitions himself, and they
kept moving around and not staying put, people could say it was because of
his descent from Daedalus, who was supposed to have been a sculptor
of such lifelike statues that they would get up and run away! It was not
uncommon for Greeks to reckon their descent from characters in Greek
mythology. Usually they did not think that too many generations had
passed. That was one of the things that surprised the historian
Herodotus when he visited Egypt, that, while the Egyptians claimed
descent from gods and mythological heroes also, they counted many, many
more generations back. Indeed, the Egyptians had records of far more
generations of history than the Greeks did.
Daedalus was famous as an architect as well as a sculptor and did his most impressive work for King Minos of Crete. His greatest works were all the result of an act of impiety by Minos, who had requested a bull from Poseidon to sacrifice to him but then, when Poseidon provided the bull, decided to keep it instead. The revenge of Poseidon took a very odd form. He caused the Queen, Pasiphaë, to conceive an unnatural carnal desire for the bull! Since the bull wasn't interested, she got Daedalus to build a model of a cow that would attract the bull but that she could hide in and use to have intercourse. This worked, and Pasiphaë actually conceived a child by the bull. This turned out to be a ferocious monster, with the body of a man but the head of a bull: the Minotaur (ironically, the "bull of Minos"). Minos then asked Daedalus to build a prison for the beast. Daedalus build a great maze, known as the "Labyrinth" (Labyrinthos).
This appears to have been the real name of a real place. In 1900 Sir Arthur Evans discovered a great palace at Knossos on Crete -- so large that it would have seemed maze-like to unsophisticated visitors from the mainland.
This was part of
the great pre-Greek "Minoan" civilization in the Aegean. Their language
still has not been deciphered. A great volcanic explosion on the island
of Thera, perhaps around 1500 BC, which sent ash as far away as Egypt,
damaged some of the centers of the civilization; but it is less clear
why the Cretan sites, like Knossos, were burned and abandoned later,
around 1450. Inthos is a suffix that does not occur in Greek
words proper. It is found in pre-Greek place names (like the name of the
city of Corinth). Labrys is known from one of the
non-Greek languages of Asia Minor (like Lydian) as the word for a
double-bladed axe -- just the kind of axe often pictured in the palace
at Knossos. Labyrinthos thus may simply mean "the place of the
double-bladed axe." What the palace was was confusedly
remembered, like Troy, long after the real place was buried and lost.
In the Labyrinth the Minotaur needed feeding. Minos required that Athens send seven youths and seven maidens every year to feed it. To end this, Theseus, the son of the King of Athens, volunteered to go and kill the beast. Once there, he befriended Ariadne, daughter of Minos. She agreed to help him and provided a ball of thread so that, if he killed the Minotaur, he could find his way back out. He did kill the Minotaur, and then he and Ariadne fled back to Athens. Some versions of the story are that he abandoned her on the way (to be found by the god Dionysos), but the Odyssey itself says that she was slain by the goddess Artemis on the island of Dia. In any case, on his way home Theseus forgot an agreement with his father to hoist white sails if he had survived. When the King saw the ordinary black sails instead, he committed suicide out of grief. Theseus thus returned to become King of Athens. Later the Athenians kept a ship on display that they claimed was Theseus's ship. During the Hellenistic Period it was realized that the replacement of rotting planks had, over time, resulted in every bit of wood in the ship being replaced -- so philosophers began arguing whether it was really still the same ship!
What Daedalus was the most famous for, however, was what happened when Minos became angry with him for all the aforementioned goings-on and he fled from Crete with his son Icarus. Daedalus made wings for the two of them, with feathers set in wax. This worked, but then Icarus was so exhilarated with flying that he flew higher and higher. Today we would fear hypoxemia (lack of oxygen) from this, but what happened to the mythic Icarus was that he flew too close to the sun, the wax melted in his wings, the feathers fell out, and he fell to is death. Icarus falling from the sky is still one of the most striking images from Greek mythology.
- 11d. After a bit more byplay about Daedalus, Socrates is ready to get back to business.
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Suggestion: "Piety is a kind of justice." (11e-12e)
- 11e-12a. Socrates sets out to overcome the "unncessary difficulties" that Euthyphro is making and get the dialogue started again by offering a suggestion -- a typical moment in these dialogues (we actually can see it happen twice in the Meno): He asks whether "all that is pious is of necessity just." Euthyphro agrees to this but then is confused when Socrates turns it around and asks if, instead, all that is just is necessarily pious.
- 12a. "Yet you are younger than I by as much as your are wiser." As Euthyphro gets further out of his depth, Socrates starts to tease him more than earlier.
- 12a-12c. "...where there is fear there is also shame." Socrates gives examples of terms whose meaning contains the meaning of others. One is fearful of shameful things but not ashamed of all fearful things. Similarly, odd numbers are numbers, but not all numbers are odd.
- 12c-12d. "...for fear covers a larger area than shame." The
geographical or geometric metaphor that Socrates uses for meaning is
striking and suggestive.
What is also curious is that a form of illustration
that would be suggested by it was not implemented until the great Swiss
mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783 -- note that Euler
in German is pronounced like "oiler" in English) began using overlapping
circles to represent relations in meaning. These became known as "Euler's
Circles," although largely replaced in logic today by Venn Diagrams (from
the 19th century English logician, John Venn). With Euler's Circles, we
can literally show that "fear covers a larger area than shame." We can
also show that number covers a larger area than odd (number), and so, as
Euthyphro agrees, justice covers a larger area than piety.
- 12d-12e. "...we must...find out what part of the just it is." If it is agreed that piety is part of or a kind of justice, then the question to ask is what part of justice it is. Socrates wants to know how piety differs from other kinds of justice. This is to set up the problem in the form that Aristotle would later establish as the basic form of a definition: genus and differentia. The genus is the kind of thing -- it is the Latin word for "kind," the Latin translation, of course, of Arisotle's own Greek term. The differentia (Latin again) is what sets apart, what differentiates, specific things from others of the same kind. Aristotle's own classic example of such a definition was his definition of "man" as the "rational animal." There the genus is "animal," and the differentia is "rational." Rationality sets men apart from other animals. Socrates, long before Aristotle, is looking for the same form of a definition. His suggestion that piety is a kind of justice thus sets up the question of the differentia, to give Euthyphro a chance to come up with some new ideas and get things going again.
- 12e. "...in order to tell Meletus not to wrong us any more..." Socrates asks the new question, about the differentia, with some fanfare, like this is now going to do the trick.
-
Fourth Definition: "The Pious is the part of justice concerned with the care of the gods." (12e-13d)
- 12e-13a.
Euthyphro comes up with the differentia: Piety is the part of
justice concerned with the "care of" the gods, while the remaing part of
justice concerns the "care of men." Socrates says that Euthyphro seems to
him "to put that very well," but he still needs "a bit of information."
Knowing Socrates, this requirement for "a bit of information" can be
ominous indeed.
- 13a. The difficulty is over the meaning of "care." Socrates does not think that Euthyphro can mean care of the gods in the same way that horse breeders care for horses; but then Euthyphro surprisingly asserts that he does mean it that way.
- 13a-13d. It takes a few lines to establish that Euthyphro must mean a different kind of care, since horse breeders taking care of horses, or hunters taking care of dogs, benefit horses or dogs in ways that human piety cannot possibily benefit the gods. When Socrates asks, "Is piety then...also to benefit the gods and make them better?" Euthyphro realizes his mistake and answers no. So Socrates must ask what kind of care of the gods piety would be.
- 12e-13a.
-
Fifth Definition: "The Pious is the part of justice concerned with the service of the gods." (13d-14a)
- 13d. Euthyphro answers that the pious care of the gods is "the kind of care...that slaves take of their masters." So Socrates suggests "it is likely to be a kind of service of the gods." Euthyphro agrees. So this modifies the previous definition, making piety into a kind of justice concerned with service to the gods. This is getting rather close to home for Socrates; for, according to the Apology, his whole project of questioning people is in service to the god at Delphi, which he does regard as good and just and pious (Apology 35c). So Socrates himself acts with a certain sense of piety in mind, and it does involve obedience to and service to the god -- an obedience for which he is willing to die, and does. In those terms, Socrates cannot have any fundamental objection to Euthyphro's answer.
- 13d-13e. Socrates does, however, ask a new question. If piety is service to the gods, what are the gods trying to accomplish with that help? He does not ask this immediately, but, rather out of the Blue, asks "to the achievement of what goal service to doctors tends?" Euthyphro agrees that it is to achieving health. We then run through the purposes of shipbuilders and housebuilders, until Socrates asks what are the similar purposes of the gods.
- 13e. "You obviously know..." Socrates teases Euthyphro for his pompous attitude again, and Euthyphro obligingly agrees again that he has "the best knowledge of the divine." But all he can say about the "excellent aim" of the gods is that it involves "many fine things."
- 14a. This is not very satisfactory for Socrates, who points out that we would have no difficulty saying that the concern of generals is victory in war and that the concern of farmers is to grow food. So what are the "many fine things that the gods achieve?"
- We should note this point as the "high water mark" of the Euthyphro. This is as close as the dialogue ever gets to a definition of piety. It is downhill the rest of the way. We will have a clue, however, what kind of answer might have satisfied Socrates. Indeed, we should have a clue somewhere, since we might ourselves well ask Socrates, who is in the service of the god, what he himself is supposed to be accomplishing for him.
-
Sixth Definition: "Piety is knowledge of how to and sacrifice and pray." (14a-15b)
- 14b. Rather longwindedly, Euthyphro now says that piety involves knowing "how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice." This has benefits, while neglecting it brings misfortune. But the definition now suddenly doesn't seem to have much to do with accomplishing the gods' purposes. Indeed, it is entirely unresponsive to Socrates's last question.
- 14b-14c. Socrates expresses his disappointment, both treating Euthyphro's answer as willing avoidance ("you are not keen to teach me") and as a digression from the proper approach ("you turned away"). It therefore should be noted that Socrates regarded the previous line of questioning as heading in the right direction.
- 14c-14d. So now what is involved in prayer and sacrifice must be cleared up. To pray is to ask from the gods and to sacrifice is to give to them. So piety is to know about this. Euthyphro congratuates Socrates on his understanding, which provokes an ironic jab from Socrates: "I am so desirous of your wisdom, and I concentrate my mind on it, so that no word of yours may fall to the ground."
- 14d-14e. Now Socrates notes that we would ask from the gods what we need, while to give correctly would be give what the gods need. Euthyphro agrees, and Socrates then characterizes piety, consequently, as a kind of "trading skill." Euthyphro is perhaps uncomfortable with this, since it sounds more mercenary than pious, but he agrees.
- 14e-15a. Socrates, however, has a problem with the gods having any need of sacrifices from us. So he asks what benefit the gods would have from our gifts to them. At the same time he stipulates, "What they give us is obvious to all. There is for us no good that we do not receive from them." This is a telling passage for Socrates's views about the gods. And, if there is "no good" that we do not get from the gods, is this not the answer to the question about the gods' purposes? Are not the gods, indeed, always trying to accommplish simply the good? That could well complete the definition of piety that Socrates was looking for. At the same time, such a definition would simply open the further question: What is the good? If the business of the gods is to accomplish the good, then we would have to worry about what that is.
- 15a-15b. Euthyphro is not going to admit, as Socrates would not, that the gods are actually benefited by our sacrifices. Our gifts are not actually needed by them. So why bother? Euthyphro suggests that the gifts are made out of reverence and gratitude. Since this would not benefit the gods, what is it to them? It is, Euthyphro says, dear to them.
-
Seventh Definition: "Piety is what is dear to the gods." (15b-15c)
- 15b-15c. But if the pious is simply what is dear to the gods, this brings us back to one of the original definitions, the second one. So Socrates tells Euthyphro that he is much more skillful than Daedalus, making the arguments not just move around but having them "go round in a circle." He points out that it was already agreed that the pious could not be the "god-beloved," but now what is "dear to the gods" is precisely that. So they have come back to an agreed upon mistake and must set out again.
Conclusion (15c-16a)
- 15c-15d. "So we must investigate again from the beginning...." Probably the most terrifying words to hear from Socrates. Of course, this will not happen. Euthyphro is going to flee. The allusion to Proteus is apt: Proteus could answer all questions, but he didn't want to, and would assume any form to scare away the questioner. The way to handle him, however, was just to grab hold and hold on, regardless of any form he might assume. Eventually Proteus would give up and answer questions. Euthyphro, who knows that he cannot answer the questions, does not want to continue the torture of the eternal grasp of Socrates!
- 15c-15d. Socrates remains in ironic character, humbly petitioning Euthyphro ("do not think me unworthy") to continue his instruction. But we now see the point: "If you had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety, you would never have ventured to prosecute your old father for murder..." Since it is now obvious that Euthyphro does not have "clear knowledge of piety and impiety," it should be obvious to anyone, even Euthyphro, that he indeed should never have prosecuted his father. Socrates remains in character as Euthyphro's student, but he is here clearly laying out the conclusions that Euthyphro should draw. All Euthyphro needs to do is admit his own ignorance and then connect the dots. But Socrates will not simply tell him what to do.
- 15d-15e. "For fear of the gods..." That is, Euthyphro should fear the gods for what he is doing. "...and would have been ashamed before men..." That is, Euthyphro should be ashamed before men. "...but now I know well..."...unless Euthyphro has knowledge of piety and impiety, so either get on with it, or admit his ignorance.
- 15e-16a. Euthyphro will not admit his ignorance, so he can only flee. But Socrates still remains in his ironic pose. He is cast down from a great hope; he will not escape Meletus's indictment; and he will not be able to avoid being careless and inventive about divine matters. Of course, this is Socrates's way of pointing out, again, that Euthyphro has been careless and inventive about divine matters. Instead of Socrates losing the chance to be "better for the rest of my life," it is Euthyphro who has lost that chance by failing to grasp the lesson of the dialogue. But Socrates will not simply tell him anything. Euthyphro had to make the essential step himself, which he would not do.