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Euthyphro's Pious Analysis

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During his discussion with Socrates, Euthyphro agrees with much of Socrates reasoning. One of these many concessions is that “the gods love the pious act because it is pious”. This concession ultimately leads to Socrates defeating Euthyphro’s claim. Therefore, Euthyphro should have answered slightly different than just a defeated “yes”. However, because of Euthyphro’s definition of the pious, equating the pious to the god loved, the statement is circular in understanding, but it remains a true statement. It would be wrong to refute the statement that the god loves the god loved acts because they are god loved. Therefore, Euthyphro must not deny the claim, but rather challenge the relevance the claim has on testing the definition of pious acts …show more content…

The god loved act is the same as the pious act. This is given in the form of Euthyphro’s definition of a pious act, and therefore, can be thought of as an equal to each other. The god loved = the pious. Since these two are equal this notion of a one-way causation is illogical. It would be as if to imply that an act is intolerable because it is unbearable. Such a causation cannot happen; there must be an underlining cause for the characteristics to hold. Therefore, Euthyphro should have pushed these claims in further questioning of Socrates. The two …show more content…

In other words, what specific characteristics of the pious/god-loved acts specifically makes the act pious/god-loved. The answer to this should be that the reason the act is pious will differ on a case to case basis such as they do to individual humans. One doesn’t love everything that they love for the same reason. Someone may love the beach because they find it beautiful and love their brother because of the connection that has been fostered between the two. This answer will not satisfy Socrates, promoting further questions of the underlying cause of the love. At this point the best underlying cause of love would be some sort of perceived value that exists between the object that is loved and the entity loving the object. In the previous example of the beach and the brother, there exist some sort of perceived value that the individual has for each. The individual perceives there is value in the beauty of the beach and therefore describes that perceived value as love. The same logic can be applied to the brother; the individual perceives some sort of value in the relationship fostered between the individual and the individuals brother that is described as

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The reading, “Euthyphro” by Plato, is a discussion between Socrates and Euthyphro, where they converse over the ideas of knowledge. In the beginning, Euthyphro has to take his own father to court. The reasoning for this is that one of his father’s slaves killed another slave, so he tied him up. While he was going to get the authorities, the captured slave died. A question that is imposed is, “What is piety or goodness?”

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Socrates has been accused of impiety and he encounters Euthyphro outside the Porch of King Archon, where Euthyphro has come to prosecute his own father for murder (Plato, Euthyphro 2a). Euthyphro claims to have a strong knowledge of holiness so Socrates tries to become Euthyphro’s pupil before his own trial against Meletus (Plato, Euthyphro 4e-5a). Euthyphro’s initial argument is that, “holiness is doing what I am doing now, prosecuting the wrongdoer who commits murder or steals from the temples” and unholiness is the opposite (Plato, Euthyphro 5d). When Socrates asks for a clearer definition Euthyphro states that holiness, “what is dear to the gods is holy” (Plato, Euthyphro

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At the same moment, Socrates praised Euthyphro and suggested that he must be great expert in religious matters as he was prosecuting his own father on such a doubtful charge. The conversation progressed and Socrates started asking a lot of probing questions to produce a contradiction

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