Matthew Kosarek

Euthyphro: the pious and the god-loved

Created 12/14/2022, 7:03:59 PM. Last updated: 12/14/2022, 8:25:54 PM

+ Recently, I picked up A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues. The book opens with "Euthyphro", a dialogue between Socrates and a man named Euthyphro. Socrates is on his way to the courthouse to hear charges against him when he runs into Euthyphro, who, by Socrates' standard, is in a bit of a moral pickle (although Euthyphro doesn't see it that way). Euthyphro is on his way to prosecute his father for the murder of a day laborer who according to the story had murdered a slave before being killed. Euthyphro is carrying out the prosecution because he believes it to be pious. The remainder of the dialogue features Socrates trying to uncover what "pious" is by dissecting Euthyphro's definition of "piety". Quick warning: Socrates is very smug. +

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+ While the dialogue features many arguments on the part of Socrates, I found the language used in one to a bit challenging, so I wanted to dissect it further. +

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+ In "9e", after being pressed for a more precise definition of "pious" by Socrates, Euthyphro says: +

+ All right, I'd say that the pious is what all the gods love, and its opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious. +

+ + To which, in "10a", Socrates responds: +

+ Consider the following: is the pious loved by the gods because it's pious? Or is it pious because it's loved? +

+ + This brainteaser obviously stumps the poor Euthyphro, but Socrates takes him by the hand. Socrates' argument is that the quality of a "loved" thing isn't that it is innately a "loved thing". Rather, a thing is "loved" because someone "loves" it. In other words, the action of loving a thing changes it: it transforms it from a "thing" to a "loved thing". A "thing" cannot be innately "loved". +

+ With this in mind, we can turn our eyes back to Euthyphro's statement that piety is loved by all of the gods. We now see that it isn't pious because it's loved. The action of loving a "thing" make it a "loved thing", not a "pious thing". Hence, it must be the case that piety is loved because it's pious. Or, in other words, piety has some intrinsic nature that makes it lovable. +

+ Now, Socrates begins to dissect the notion of "god-loved", because Euthyphro had previously claimed that the pious is what all the gods love (i.e. piety equals god-lovability). This is the point that the text gets a bit difficult. Socrates says: +

+ Then, the god-loved is not what's pious, Euthyphro, nor is the pious what's god-loved, as you claim, but one differs from the other. +

+ + Obviously, Socrates has some explaining to do. He starts off by restating that the pious has an intrinsic quality that makes it lovable (10e). Afterward, he argues: +

+ The god-loved, on the other hand, is so because it is loved by the gods; it's god-loved by the very fact of being loved. But it's not because it's god-loved that it's being loved. +

+ This is to say that a "thing" is not intrinsically "god-loved" in the same way that a "thing" is "pious". Why is this? As Socrates argued earlier, a "thing" is not a "loved thing" because it is intrinsically a "loved thing". Rather, a "thing" is a "loved thing" because someone is loving that "thing". The same goes for a "god-loved thing". A god must be loving the "thing" for it to become a "god-loved thing". In this way, the quality of being "god-loved" is NOT the same as being "pious", because the attribute (pious or god-loved) is achieved through opposite means (piety by internal forces and god-lovability by external forces). +

+ Socrates finishes by saying: +

+ But if the god-loved and the pious were really the same thing... then, if the pious were loved because it's pious, what's god-loved would in turn be loved because it's god-loved; and if what's god-loved were god-loved because it was loved by the gods, the pious would in turn be pious because it was loved by them. +

+ + The quality of a thing being "pious" and the quality of a thing being "god-loved" are different because they come about by different means. Hence, what is "pious" is not what is "god-loved" because they fundamentally differ in nature. +

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+ Perhaps it is the wording that got in the way of my initially understanding this one, but I hope that this helps anyone who happens to stumble across these passages with the same questions! +
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Euthyphro: the pious and the god-loved

Created 12/14/2022, 7:03:59 PM. Last updated: 12/14/2022, 8:25:54 PM

Created 12/14/2022, 7:03:59 PM. Last updated: 12/14/2022, 8:25:54 PM