Reflection 1 Liuying Huang Part I: Q1: what are the accusations against Socrates in the Euthyphro and Apology? There is more than one layer of accusations against Socrates in Euthyphro and Apology, where he was charged with: 1) Impious, for not worshipping or acknowledging the gods of Athens. Instead, Socrates went for a different set of “divine” new ideas created by himself and got charged for introducing new gods. 2) Corrupting the youth living in Athens by teaching them his ideas, which were quite novel, encouraging them to question the Athenian authority and Athens’s religious traditions, and making these young students turn away from the Athenian gods and religious beliefs. This accusation stemmed from another long-existed older set …show more content…
Recall in Euthyphro that Euthyphro was asked by Socrates to define what’s piety. Of course, reasonings and evidence are necessary during this inquiry process. Initial answers probably have fallacies, so the questioner will raise another question to point out such loopholes. In Euthyphro, Socrates followed questions, one after another, on the causal relationship between piety and being“loved by the gods” (10a). During this process, the questionee may be confused about the questions themselves. The questioner can then explain in detail the logic behind the follow-up questions. In Euthyphro, Socrates explains why there’s a contradiction between being god-loved and being pious as he argues that there must’ve been a higher standard of piety among the gods so that god-loved cannot be the sole standard of what piety is. Similar steps again take place when Euthyphro tried to come up with the fourth and final definition of piety. By doing so, questioners like Socrates could keep refining and digging questionee’s logical implications and helping them approach the truth, though difficult. This process of repetitive questioning will prevail during the Socratic Method until the questionee produces a better and more critical understanding of the