Philosophical Piety in Plato's Euthyphro

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Philosophical Piety in Plato’s Euthyphro

Abstract: I argue that, through the course of the argument of Euthyphro, the traditional

Greek gods are quietly replaced by universal causal essences or forms. Once this

substitution has been made, the traditional conception of piety as the proper way for

humans to relate to the gods can be preserved. Socrates exemplifies in his words and

deeds this combination of traditional piety and revolutionary philosophical theology.

Two questions have dominated debates about how to interpret Plato’s Euthyphro. First,

readers wonder whether there is a positive conception of piety implicit in the argument

beyond its explicitly unsuccessful conclusion. Second, because of Socrates’ language of

i0de/a and ei]dov, there is some question as to whether a Platonic notion of form is at

work in the argument. In my view, these questions are intimately connected, and the

answer to both is affirmative. Through the course of the argument of Euthyphro, the

gods are purged of all their particular, personal characteristics, so that they become

universal causal essences or forms. Yet despite this revolutionary understanding of what

it means to be a god, it is suggested that the traditional conception of piety as the proper

way for humans to relate to the gods should be preserved. Socrates exemplifies in his

words and deeds this combination of traditional piety and revolutionary philosophical

theology. While it is important to recognize that the dialogue ends in aporia, the life and

deeds of Socrates as exemplified in Euthyphro offer a practical example of an attitude

towards divine and human things that ties together many of the strands which the

theoretical search for a definition cannot.

The charges against Socrates are twofold. He is guilty of having improper

relations with other human beings – corrupting the youth – and improper views about the

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gods.1 The Euthyphro answers both these charges. In the dialogue, Socrates sets up the

dialectical investigation of Euthyphro’s views as a cross-examination of the grounds for

his prosecution of his father in the following terms:

Whereas, by Zeus, Euthyphro, you think that your knowledge of the divine (peri\

tw~n qei/wn) and of piety and impiety (kai\ tw~n o9si/wn te kai\ a0nosi/wn), is so

accurate that, when those things happened as you say, you have no fear of having

acted impiously in bringing your father to trial.(4e)2

Euthyphro has just dismissed his family’s objections to his prosecution of his father on

the grounds that they do not know “how the divine stands to piety and impiety” (to_ qei=on

w(v e1xei tou= o9si/ou te pe/ri kai\ tou= a0nosi/ou - 4e). Socrates sets up the rest of the

dialogue as an investigation of Euthyphro’s views about these two distinct but

interrelated questions: 1) what is the nature of the divine? 2) what is the nature of piety

and impiety? The dialogue is an examination of these two questions, of what it is to be a

god, and what is the proper relation for human beings to these divinities.

1 The traditional Greek conception of piety includes both a religious and an ethical

aspect, and it is difficult to distinguish clearly between religious from a non-religious

virtue. As Versényi (1982: 1) writes, “Although the gods and all that concerned them

were certainly proper objects of eusebia, and to this extent piety was a religious term

even in the modern restricted sense of the word, eusebia did not in fact necessarily

involve a direct relationship of men to the gods or objects and acts directly pertaining to

their worship in a narrow sense. It also required reverence toward the dead, the

veneration of parents and ancestors, the proper relation toward all one’s blood relatives,

and indeed, in its most extended use, the right relationship of man to all other members of

his community.” On my interpretation of Euthyphro, Plato is making a distinction

between religious and non-religious duties, in the bifurcation of human and divine

qerapei/a, for example, but he is ultimately trying to show how true ethical virtue

towards humans is radically dependent upon true reverence and piety towards the gods. 2 All citations from the Euthyphro are from the G.M.A. Grube translation, in Plato:

Complete Works. ed. J. M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett) 1997.

All citations from other Platonic dialogues are also from this volume.

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In answer to the first question, the argument of Euthyphro rethinks what it means

to be a god by progressively suggesting that a god must be something more like a

Platonic form than a traditional Homeric divinity. Once the connection between the

essences and the traditional gods is made, the conception of what it is to be a god

undergoes a kind of philosophical purification. A god must be a universal beyond

particulars, it must be the cause of the particulars it governs, it must exclude all

difference and opposition within itself, and it cannot be opposed to other gods, i.e. the

differences among the gods must be held within the unity of the highest god. Yet once

the conception of what a god is has undergone the philosophical purification of Socrates’

elenchus, what it means to hold a pious attitude toward the divine is not substantially

changed.

It is not a new suggestion that a simple notion of Platonic form is present in

Euthyphro. In his classic work Plato’s ‘Euthyphro’ and the Earlier Theory of the Forms,

R.E. Allen has shown, quite convincingly, that a theory of forms is implied in the

dialectical search for a definition of piety in that dialogue,3 one which is not identical to

the more fully explicated view of forms in later dialogues, but which is not incompatible

with it either. Similarly, many readers find in the dialogue an implicit idea of what true

piety is, as exemplified by Socrates, beyond the Euthyphro’s explicitly negative

3 Allen summarizes the notion of form in Euthyphro as follows: Socrates “assumes, in

pursuing his inquiry, that there is an i0de/a, or ei]dov, a Form, of holiness, and that this

form is a universal, the same in all holy things (5d, 6d-e). He further supposes that the

Form may be used as a standard, by which to judge what things are holy and what are not

(6e); that it is an essence, by which or in virtue of which holy things are holy (6d); and

that it is capable of real or essential definition (11a, 12c-d). These assumptions constitute

a theory of Forms.” See Allen (1970: 67-8). My interpretation is in full agreement with

all these points, though it expands upon them.

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conclusion.4 That the highest god is equated with the good itself was once a common

reading of 13e5-14c5,5 and that philosophy is being in some sense divinized has also

been suggested.6 But I think it is only when we can draw all these suggestions into a

coherent whole that the real argument of the Euthyphro becomes clear. In the

interpretation that follows, I will attempt to show that the five definitions7 constitute a

continuous argument which redefines ta_ qei=a as the forms and the good as the form of

the forms, and then shows that the older piety reflects the proper reverence and awe

towards divinity. The Euthyphro is an important text for seeing how the Socratic-

Platonic philosophical purification of traditional Greek religion preserves rather than

undermines the subordination of the human to the divine and the primacy of our

obligations to the gods.

In his important study Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals,

Richard Bodéüs argues that identifying Greek metaphysics with theology is

anachronistic. Although the goal of his book is to argue that Aristotle’s perfectly

traditional view of Greek divinity can be read at face value only once one realizes that for

him the theoretical science of ousia has no theological significance, Bodéüs extends his

conclusion back to Plato, who does speak straightforwardly and uncritically of the Greek

4 C.C.W. Taylor claims that it contains “fairly clear hints of a conclusion which is not

explicitly drawn.” See Taylor (2008: 66). See McPherran’s account of the debate

concerning whether Euthyphro contains a positive doctrine of piety, in McPherran (1996:

29-31). 5 For a critical summary of these readings of the passage, see Versenyi (1982: 106-112).

6 See for example, Anderson (1967) where he argues that the dialectic is divinized. In

contrast, I hope to show that the forms are divinized, while dialectic reflects a properly

pious attitude towards these divinities. 7 Øyvind Rabbås (2005) offers another persuasive treatment of the attempted definitions

in which there are ultimately three principal definitions, the other definitions serving as

secondary attempts at revising these three central proposals. See Rabbås (2005: 291-

309).

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gods in Phaedrus, Timaeus and Laws: “The fact that Plato required a transcendent world

of Ideas did not place him in opposition to this perspective: the gods described in the

Laws, the Timaeus, and the Phaedrus do not belong to the world beyond, but are the

beings in our world who most perfectly attain knowledge of the immutable. This is why

Plato offers them as models for our imitation.”8 My interpretation of Euthyphro belongs

to the “prevailing view” of Plato’s thought which Bodéüs seeks to undermine. Without

considering Plato’s views of traditional religion more generally, I merely want to suggest

through this interpretation that Euthyphro contains indications, however tentative and

implicit, that Plato was indeed willing to judge the adequacy of traditional theological

conceptions in the light of his own metaphysical views.

First Definition

Consider Euthyphro’s very first definition, which contains many details of crucial

significance for interpreting the dialogue that have mostly gone unappreciated. I break

Euthyphro’s first attempt into 5 distinct points:

(1) I say that the pious is to do what I am doing now, (2) to prosecute the

wrongdoer, be it about murder or temple robbery or anything else, (3) whether the

wrongdoer is your father or your mother or anyone else, not to prosecute is

impious. (4) And observe, Socrates, that I can cite powerful evidence that the law is

so. I have already said to others that such actions are right, not to favor the

ungodly, whoever they are. (5) These people themselves believe (oi9 a!nqrpwpoi

8 Bodéüs (2000: 31-2).

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tugxa&nousi nomi/zontev)9 that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, yet they

agree that he bound his father because he unjustly swallowed his sons, and that he

in turn castrated his father for similar reasons. But they are angry with me because

I am prosecuting my father for his wrongdoing. They contradict themselves in

what they say about the gods and about me. (5d8-6a5)

Euthyphro’s definition contains important points about the nature of the gods, as well as

the nature of what constitutes piety and impiety, or the proper human relation to the gods.

Starting with point #5, Euthyphro argues, in conformity with the traditional Greek

viewpoint, that there is one god (Zeus) above all the rest, a divinity which is the most

good and the most just. This highest god, he argues, should serve as a model for pious

human actions, in that the measure of what constitutes a pious human is the imitation of

this highest divine principle. Socrates will dispute the particular actions here being

ascribed to divinity, but not the way that the highest divinity should be the measure of

human actions.

That Euthyphro imitates his own conception of divinity is implicit in the very first

point of his definition –piety defined as “that which I am doing right now” (o3per e0gw_

nu=n poiw~). Taken in the context of the dialogue as a whole, this refers to more than just

the claim that Euthyphro’s present action – prosecuting his father for murder – is pious.

Rather, this answer contains both sides of what emerges as Euthyphro’s viewpoint, his

absolute confidence in the indisputable piety of his own particular actions and

9 I will argue later that Socratic piety contrasts with Euthyphro’s view in that it heeds not

what men happen to believe, but the divine forms beyond human opinion.

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perspective, and his conception of the gods, whom he imitates.10

He holds a voluntarist

concept of divinity – that a god constitutes what is pious simply through freely acting,

without reference to some measure of the pious independent of these divine actions. From

a voluntarist theological viewpoint, the gods make an act pious, by perceiving, saying, or

doing anything.11

If asked to define the pious, this is exactly the answer Euthyphro’s

Zeus would give - ‘exactly what I am doing right now’ – for it is the doing that causes

any particular act to be pious. Euthyphro’s imitation of the highest divinity applies not

only to the particular actions he is executing, but also to the causal source of their being

pious.

The second and fourth points made by Euthyphro are intimately connected: being

pious involves prosecuting people who act impiously.12

Piety involves living in

accordance with divine or religious law, and pursuing those who do not live up to this

law. The third point is that this law must be used to measure the actions of everyone

indifferently, without regard for the particular position or role of the law’s transgressor,

or the relation between the prosecutor and the prosecuted. Within the oikos, which is the

sphere of Euthyphro’s case involving the father, the household slave and the pela/thv,

this means that anyone should be prosecuted “whether the wrongdoer is your father or

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These two sides will be brought together in Socrates’ refutation of Euthyphro’s third

definition of piety, treated below. 11

A theological voluntarism is the divine version of the sophistic position which Plato

elsewhere opposes – that man is the measure of all things, that if he perceives something,

it is as he perceives it, with no independent measure of the truth or falsity of this

perception. 12

The wording here is important – piety demands that one not trust, rely upon, or yield to

the impious person (mh\ e0pitre/pein tw|~ a0sebou=nti – 5e4-5) – but rather, judge or

prosecute them. This idea of a duty to judge and evaluate is present in Socrates’ question

at 9e4-7: “Then let us again examine whether that is a sound statement, or do we let it

pass, and if one of us, or someone else merely says that something is so, do we accept

that it is so, do we accept that it is so? Or should we examine what the speaker means?”

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your mother or anyone else.” Relative to the city, which is the sphere of Meletus’ case

against Socrates, as well as Socrates’ own philosophical activity, this means that impiety

must be prosecuted regardless of the particular social role or status of the guilty party:

poet, artist, politician, craftsman, or even, as in the case of Socrates’ cross-examination in

this dialogue, prophet.

As Steven Burns notes,13

none of the points I have labeled 2-5 are refuted by

Socrates, and the possibility that these are retained in the Platonic conception of piety

must be seriously considered. Where Socrates does depart from Euthyphro’s account is

of course in the traditional characterization of the pantheon as comprehending different

and opposed perspectives and the conflicts and hatred that result. This is the heart of the

charges against Socrates. Socrates corrects Euthyphro’s original assumption that his

prosecution for religious innovation and introducing new gods refers to his daimon. But

in his rejection of divine discord, Socrates is a revolutionary theologian. In other words,

Socrates finds unacceptable the conception of a god as a particular, self-interested

perspective opposable to other particular, self-interested perspectives.

The logical problem with the definition is closely related to this theological

deficiency. This conception of the gods is not sufficiently universal for what are the best

and most just kinds of being. The problem with the definition is that Euthyphro has

given one or two particular instances of piety, but no perspective comprehensive of these

viewpoints which, until reconciled, can be opposed and even antagonistic to one another.

What is required beyond particular instances is “that form itself by means of which all

pious actions are pious (e0kei=no au0to\ to\ ei]dov w{| pa/nta ta\ o3sia o3sia/ e0stin)” (6d10-

13

See Burns (1985: 315).

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11). What must be disclosed by a definition, Socrates reminds Euthyphro, is a universal

cause of each particular instance’s being what it is, responsible for them all having this

characteristic. Socrates’ statement of this new demand shows that everything that had

been true of Euthyphro’s gods is taken up into Socrates’ forms:

Tell me then what this form (th\n i0de/an) itself is, so that I may look upon it, and,

using it as a model (paradei/gmati), say that any action of yours or another’s that

is of that kind is pious, and if it is not that it is not. (6e3-6)

In asking for the next definition in these terms, Socrates positively incorporates all the

acceptable points which Euthyphro has brought up in the first definition (points 2-5

above), thereby assimilating his own view of the idea to what it is to be a god, and

opening up the possibility that piety can involve the proper relation to the divine ei1dh in

things. The form is a principle by which one can judge acts to be either pious or impious,

serving as an objective measure or divine law to be obeyed and to be used to judge the

guilt of those who disobey (points # 2 and 4 above).14

This law applies to anyone’s

actions, regardless of who they are (point #3 above). Further, like Zeus in Euthyphro’s

initial response, the form can be imitated as a model or paradigm regulating one’s own

actions (point #5 above).15

Second Definition

14

Allen’s account of the forms as standards is excellent: “Knowing the form is a

condition for recognizing its instances: to ask what holiness is, is to ask for knowledge of

a criterion by which to distinguish things which are holy from things which are not.” See

Allen (1970: 72). 15

The point about Zeus as the highest god among the gods will only be taken up by

Socrates again in what I treat as the fourth definition. See my treatment below.

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Euthyphro then volunteers a second definition: “what is dear to the gods is pious, what is

not is impious” (7a). Socrates is pleased with the correction of the particularity of the

first logos – this is a universal definition which expresses what is common to all

instances. Further, insofar as Euthyphro is actually answering Socrates’ demand that the

definition yield a cause which is universal, this definition implies that “the form itself by

which all pious things are pious” is the loving activity of a god.16

Through the activity of

loving something, a god is responsible for the particular object’s being pious. At this

point in the argument, Euthyphro’s answer further suggests that the forms are gods,

active universal causes responsible for making particulars what they are.

Socrates immediately clarifies what is implied in Euthyphro’s conception of piety:

“Come then, let us examine what we mean. An action or a man dear to the gods is pious,

but an action or a man hated by the gods is impious” (7a). Euthyphro here assumes a

certain picture of the world and the relation between divinity and humanity within it. On

the one hand there are particular actions or particular men, and on the other hand there

are the causes of these particulars being what they are, the gods, with nothing in between.

This is essential to Euthyphro’s voluntarist conception of deity: no stable universals

stand beyond the gods and particulars, and nothing exists outside of the will of the gods

to measure the truth or falsity of their beliefs or actions. As a result, there is no way of

discerning the reason behind divine activity – the gods act freely, without the constraint

of any logical necessity. In this view of the relation between divinity and humanity, only

one person can actually communicate the divine will to humanity – the prophet who,

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Whether the gods, through holding something dear, are actually the causes of that

thing’s being pious, will become explicitly investigated in the discussion of the third

definition.

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through a privileged, otherwise inaccessible knowledge of divinity, reveals the divine

will to the ignorant, non-prophetic many. The prophet’s attitude is repeatedly manifested

by Euthyphro throughout the dialogue, through his references to his privileged

knowledge, inaccessible to others.17

Without any objective mediation between the gods

and particulars, in the absence of the immediate presence of a god pronouncing legal

judgments, it is the prophet who is the mediator between divine causality and sensible

particularity. For Socrates, the forms, as the philosophically accessible mediation

between the gods and the sensible world, relieve Euthyphro and other prophets of this

task.

Through their further consideration of Euthyphro’s traditional belief about the

differences of perspective, discord and hatred existing among the gods in the pantheon, a

mediating term will be implicitly introduced into the discussion. The question arises,

concerning what do the gods differ? They do not disagree about quantitative or

mathematical matters, such as number, size, weight, because such differences of opinion

can be easily settled through the existence of a measure or standard, equally applicable to

all similar quantities, against which any dispute can be easily resolved. Because of the

existence of a measure independent of the gods and independent of particular quantities,

the occasion for passionate disputes disappears. By extension, it is the absence of such

an independent measure that will make passionate disputes between the gods possible. If

Socrates is going to show that the ancient conceptions of divine discord are untenable,

these independent measures will need to be discovered for everything about which one

might disagree.

17

See below, pp. 15-17.

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Initially it appears that, as opposed to mathematical concepts, ethical concepts do

lack such an independent measure,18

and so it is subjects like the just, the beautiful and

the good, along with their opposites, that make gods and humans disagree passionately.

Here the content of this mediation between gods and humans begins to emerge. The

possibility of divine harmony on such ethical questions implies the recognition of

objective, universally recognized measures independent of particular perspectives,

whether human or divine. Up to this point in the dialogue, the ei]dov has been discussed

only in terms of the form of piety – now the possibility of a whole world of ei1dh is

opened up.

At this point the second definition breaks down. If gods perceive different things

as just, beautiful, and good, if perceiving something as just, beautiful, and good means

holding it dear, and if the pious is what is dear to the gods, then the gods cannot serve as

a genuine measure of determining whether something is pious or its opposite. While

there is nothing impossible about the same particular being pious in one respect and

impious in another19

, this is not possible of the form of piety itself,20

which is completely

self-identical (the same as itself). But the goal of disclosing this universal form and

expressing it in a definition is to have a standard against which particulars can be

measured and judged. This definition, when combined with the traditional theology, is

incoherent, and provides no way of measuring the piety of particulars. In the discussion

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This transition in the argument is like the ascent from the mathematical, dianoetic part

of the upper half of the Platonic line, to the eidetic, where one makes the transition from

objective quantitative measures to objective qualitative measures. This is also the concern

of the Meno, which seeks a definition of virtue adequate to the mathematical definition of

shape, as well as the Phaedo, which seeks to convert the Pythagoreans Cebes and

Simmias from their mathematical understanding of soul to an eidetic grasp of soul. 19

See Burns (1985: 316-17) who cites Allen (1970: 34) on this point. 20

“They are not the same, but quite opposite, the pious and impious.” (7a)

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that follows, this will be corrected through purging the discord and difference of ethical

perception from the divine pantheon.

Thus Socrates brings out the practical consequence of the failure of Euthyphro’s

second definition – if the pious is what the gods love, and the act can be loved by some

gods and hated by others, then Euthyphro cannot claim confidently that the prosecution

of his father is a pious act. Euthyphro wants to deny the uncertainty of his own particular

case, and he does so by moving from the particularity of the case to a greater level of

generality: “I think, Socrates, that on this subject no god would differ from another, that

whoever has killed unjustly should pay the penalty” (8b). Socrates’ brief response again

points to the forms as objective measures between the gods and particular men and

actions.

Socrates proceeds by focusing on human disputes, and then applying the

conclusion to divine disputes. Our disputes do not occur at the level of generality

suggested by Euthyphro, for everyone simply assumes the existence of the law and agrees

that deviation from the law must be punished. Humans do not

dispute that they must not pay the penalty if they have done wrong, but I

think they deny doing wrong….they do not dispute that the wrongdoer

must be punished, but they may disagree as to who the wrongdoer is, what

he did, and when. (8c-d)

The dispute occurs at the level of the application of the general law to the man or

deed in its particularity. Assumed here is that the existence of a standard of justice, that

justice is good, and that deviation from this measure is bad and must be corrected. There

exists an absolute which demands recognition beyond this difference of particular

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perspectives. A voluntarist perspective, at least in relation to human reason and action, is

not tenable, a consequence expressed beautifully by Socrates’ comment that, no matter

what claims men make in order to defend themselves, “[t]hey do not say or do just

anything” (8c9). This claim is then extended to the gods – even if they do disagree (a

possibility which Socrates denies) – they do not disagree about just anything – there are

certain general principles which must be recognized by both gods and men: that justice

exists, that it is the measure by which we evaluate the justice of particular actions, and

that actions or men which fall short must be prosecuted: “no one among gods or men

ventures to say that the wrongdoer must not be punished” (8d11-13). The existence of a

stable, rational measure of speech and action, both human and divine, further solidifies

the introduction of the forms as an objective, rational mediation between divinity and

humanity. Although it is not yet recognized by Euthyphro, this constitutes a rational

limit on the arbitrary freedom of the traditional divinities. Everyone, whether god or

human, acknowledges there is a standard, a measure, of justice – and the question that is

disputed is whether or not a particular instance lives up to this standard or falls short of it.

The existence of forms of the virtues is thus further secured through placing these

universals beyond the differences of opinion that pit god against god and human against

human.

To establish whether a particular case is or is not an example of injustice, Socrates

demands proof (tekmh/rion), that Euthyphro show forth something clear (safe\v

e0ndei/casqai) – and once he manifests this to him sufficiently (moi i9kanw~v e0ndei/ch),

Socrates will never stop praising (e0gkwmia/zwn) him for his wisdom (9a1-b2).

Euthyphro, like the gods in which he believes, does not show forth the clear reason for

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the piety of his particular action.21

What form would such a clear proof take? The

disclosure of the law or ei]dov against which the particulars are being measured, rather

than the unpredictable and arbitrary perception and actions of the traditional gods. A

disclosure of the form by which the truth of divine perception and love is measured

would disclose the reason for the gods’ love of the act.

As a result, rather than continuing to focus on the particularity of Euthyphro’s

actions, Socrates shifts the discussion back once again to the level of the ei]dov of piety.

In the same way that the clear piety of Euthyphro’s particular case presupposes the

purgation of divine discord on the subject of the action, the third definition begins with a

thorough purgation of divine discord from the ei]dov of piety. Euthyphro’s correction

relative to particulars, that a pious act is one that all the gods love, is thus drawn into the

logos itself (e0n tw|~ lo/gw| - 9d2) – one might add, into the object which the logos aims to

define, the eidos - and this purgation of any opposition from the self-identical universal

causes forms the basis for Euthyphro’s third definition of piety.

Third Definition

Euthyphro’s third definition has received by far the most philosophical attention

and scrutiny of any part of the dialogue, so I will not dwell on its details. The third

definition shifts the argument from judging particular cases back to the essence, now

purged of all conflict and difference at the level of the universal cause. The heart of the

discussion of this third definition is where causal priority is to be located: in the god’s

love, or the essence of the object loved? The basic point is clear – Euthyphro claims that

21

Euthyphro is here again imitating his conception of divinity – where the reasons for

divine actions are not given clearly. More praiseworthy would be the Socratic conception

of divinity, which pours forth such justifications for anyone to apprehend.

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to be pious is to be loved by all the gods, and to be impious is to be hated by all the gods.

An object’s being loved is a change to or affection of that object, although it is not caused

by the passive object, but rather by the active agent. If piety is being loved by all the

gods, the predicate of this definition, being loved by all the gods, is caused by the agent

and not the affected object.

Socrates asks whether the pious is loved by all the gods because it is pious, or

whether it is pious because it is loved by all the gods. Euthyphro’s answer is what yields

the breakdown of the third definition: the pious, he agrees, is loved because it is pious.

He does not have to concede this point, which leads him to inevitable contradiction, as

some interpreters have noticed.22

Why does he do so?

I suggest it is inherent in Euthyphro’s prophetic stance that he do so – for the

other side of his divine voluntarism is his absolute confidence in his own prophetic

insight into the truth of his own judgment on the piety of his prosecution. The

contradiction in Euthyphro’s viewpoint is thus forced by an essential feature of the

prophetic profession to which he belongs: Euthyphro’s divine voluntarism (a distinction

between completely free divinities on the one hand, and particular men, actions and

events on the other, with no mediation) conflicts with his total confidence in his own

prophetic analysis of particulars, in this case, the piety of his prosecution of his father.

The contradiction is generated through bringing the consequences of his voluntarism into

conflict with his confidence in the piety of his own actions. On the one hand the gods

determine what constitutes piety by their love, but on the other the act itself is lovable

because of the presence of piety within it. Euthyphro’s own action could not be reliably

22

See Allen (1970: 44).

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thought to be pious if it were radically dependent on the unpredictable will of the gods. It

must therefore be in itself lovable and pious.

The conclusion of the third definition is that being loved by the gods might be

true of all pious acts, but it is not the active cause of their being pious intrinsic to what

piety is, but rather a universal affection or accident that belongs to all pious things

through an external relation. Though it may be present in every case of piety, it is not the

causal ou0si/a of the thing’s being pious, but rather a pa/qov.

The fact that all the gods love the same things, and that they perceive the same

things as good, beautiful or just, means that the possibility for divergence between divine

perception and the object of divine perception has been eliminated – each god perceives

the true nature of the object, and thus all gods perceive these objects in the same way.

Here the gods are no longer the causes of a particular being a particular: the forms have

taken over their role as causal governors of the world of human actions and events and

sensible particulars. The causal role initially played by the gods’ love is now being

played by the justice, goodness, or beauty intrinsic to an object – what is loved are these

essential forms in the particulars.23

What is accomplished in this third definition is a purgation of subjectivity from

divine principles. The gods’ perception of an object and the like or dislike which follows

from the perception is subordinate causally to the object of love – it is not caused by

23

The digression which falls between the third and fourth definition (11b-e), in which a

confused Euthyphro accuses Socrates of destabilizing his statements which in and of

themselves are completely coherent and stable, follows the same logic as the point of the

third definition. Are Euthyphro’s views destabilized because they are unstable, or are

they destabilized because of Socrates’ dialectical activity? The answer to this question is

central to the question of whether Socrates is guilty of corruption, or whether he is

actually purifying the city of its false and contradictory views. [reference omitted for

blind review]

18

being loved, but being loved is caused by its intrinsic nature. While being loved by the

cause might be a universal property of the pious, it is not an essential property, because it

is not the cause of anything being pious – it is merely a pa/qov of the object. As a result,

insofar as the gods all love the pious act or man, but they are not the active cause of its

being pious, the traditional divinities lose their explanatory role in the pursuit of piety (or

justice, beauty, goodness, etc.), they become accidental to the piety, justice, or goodness

of a particular.24

The universal forms have now completely usurped the place in the of the

traditional gods as the active causes of particular instances and paradigmatic laws which

measure the adequacy of these particulars.

Fourth Definition

At this point in the argument, the role played by the gods as causes of particular men and

their acts being pious has been replaced by the form or ousia of piety. The gods, now

understood as the forms, have been purged of their subjective, particular character.

Universal essences have usurped the causative role of the gods in the sensible human

world. The fourth definition and its surrounding discussion restores Zeus, the one highest

divinity, beyond the divine causal essences.

24

The gods are not necessarily eliminated from this Platonic cosmos – but they are now

brought under the same divine laws and principles that govern human beings, and their

causal, governing role has been taken over by the causal essences. McPherran is

excellent on this point: “once Euthyphro insists on this latter idea and is thereby forced to

concede that the piety of an action is thus ultimately justified by reference to god-

independent standards of virtue, the authority of the gods and their commandments must

be acknowledged as derivative: one obeys the commands of the gods not because they

come from more powerful beings that one ought to fear and placate, but rather, because

as wholly good and virtuous beings the gods, more so than any human, must themselves

behave (and thus speak) in a fashion consonant with the universal dictates of nature.” See

McPherran (1996: 46).

19

Having implicitly established the existence of the forms, Socrates now takes over

the argument from Euthyphro. Whereas the previous definitions had been proposed by

Euthyphro, Socrates for the first time proposes his own definition, and in doing so

introduces the question of how the forms are related to one another. He asks Euthyphro

whether the pious is a more particular concept contained within the more general concept

of justice – what will after Aristotle be referred to as the relation of a species to a genus.

What this relationship between ideas or forms introduces is a multiplicity of distinct

forms which fall into a hierarchical relation, with more general and comprehensive forms

lying above the more particular ones they comprehend. In asking whether everything

pious is just, and conversely, whether everything just is pious, it is this hierarchical

relation that is introduced into the discussion.

This hierarchical relation of more and less universal forms is initially introduced

through the interpretation of a poetic reflection on fear and shame which Socrates cites:

You are not willing to name25

Zeus the doer, that is, the one who grew all

these things. For whenever there is fear, there is also shame. (12a9-12b1)

In this fragment from an unknown poet, we have the first mention of Zeus in the dialogue

since Euthyphro’s first attempted definition at 5e, where Zeus, the best and most just of

all the gods, served as the justifying model for Euthyphro’s prosecution of his father.

Here the name of Zeus, the god responsible for all things (who grows and does all

25

There is some dispute over how the text should read at this point. The manuscripts

have e0qe/loiv ei0pei=n, which Burnet has emended as e0qe/loiv neikei=n (you do not wish to

quarrel with Zeus). The manuscript version conforms more easily to my own reading of

the text, where Zeus as cause of all things is tacitly identified with the Good itself, though

this is never spoken.

20

things), remains unspoken out of fear and shame.26

This poetic idea, I think, frames how

one is to interpret the result of the discussion of this fourth definition, as we will see

below. A highest principle, the universal cause of all things, will be evoked but remain

unspoken.

It is striking that Socrates should bring the meaning of fear and shame into the

discussion to illustrate the logical relation of genus to species. Is this choice of example

meaningful? Fear is a recurring theme in the dialogue,27

since Socrates is astonished that

Euthyphro is so confident in his knowledge of the gods and piety that he does not fear

acting unjustly or impiously in his prosecution: “Whereas, by Zeus, Euthyphro, you think

that your knowledge of the divine, and of piety and impiety, is so accurate that, when

those things happened as you say, you have no fear of having acted impiously in bringing

your father to trial” (4e4-8). At the conclusion of the dialogue, this same idea is further

refined and brought in relation to the idea of shame: “If you had no clear knowledge of

piety and impiety you would never have ventured to prosecute your old father for murder

on behalf of a servant. For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk

lest you should not be acting rightly, and would have been ashamed before men, but now

I know well that you believe you have clear knowledge of piety and impiety” (15d4-8).

Do fear and shame, used in the fourth definition as an illustration of a logical

relationship, contribute something substantial to the concept of piety?

26

The word ai0dw&v has two possibly interconnected meanings. 1) reverence or high

esteem for another; 2) shame. One perhaps feels shame as a result of the reverence one

feels for another and the feeling of one’s own inadequacy in comparison. Both meanings

seem plausible until ai0de/omai is associated with ai0sxu/nomai and defined as fear of a

reputation for evil (12b9-10), suggesting that Plato means shame and not reverence. 27

In fact, the word eu0se/beia literally mean ‘well-fearing’, derived from the verb sebei=n.

See Versenyi (1982: 1).

21

It is helpful to pay close attention to the way Socrates sets up his parallel

examples. Fear is the more general concept (it is larger – ple/on), shame the more

restricted concept which falls under it. He explains the illustration with yet another

example:

Shame is a part of fear just as odd is a part of number, with the result that

it is not true that where there is number there is also oddness, but that

where there is oddness there is also number. (12c5-8)

The more extensive concept, fear, is associated with number, while shame, which is

defined as fearing and dreading a reputation for evil (do/can ponhri/av), is associated

with the odd. The even is associated with a kind of fear that is not explicitly identified.

The resulting divisions look as follows:

Fear Number

/ \ / \

Shame ? Odd Even

These examples are then used to clarify the original terms of justice and piety:

See what comes next: if the pious is a part of the just, we must, it seems,

find out what part of the just it is. Now if you asked me something of

what we mentioned just now, such as what part of number is even, and

what number that is, I would say it is the number that is divisible into two

equal (i0soskelh/v), not unequal (skalhno\v), parts. (12d5-10)

22

Euthyphro offers a definition of the two divisions of justice to complete the three parallel

bifurcations:

I think, Socrates, that the godly and pious is the part of the just that is

concerned with the care of the gods, while that concerned with the care of

men is the remaining part of justice. (12e5-8)

The three examples can be mapped out as follows

Fear Number Justice

/ \ / \ / \

Shame ? Odd Even Human28

Piety

justice

fear of ? number number justice justice

reputation divisible divisible about about

(do/can) into unequal into equal qerapei/a qerapei/a

for evil parts (scalene) parts (isosceles) of men of gods

Plato seems to have organized these three parallel bifurcations in a significant

way, beyond their merely illustrative value for the fourth definition. At the very least

there is an important correspondence between shame and human justice, the fear opposed

to shame. Shame is the part of fear concerning our appearance to other human beings,

and the word for reputation – do/ca – is the same Plato elsewhere uses for opinion as

opposed to genuine knowledge. Here we fear about how we appear. The other kind of

fear not explicitly named opposed to this shame before men is the fear concerning what

we actually are, our being as opposed to our mere seeming. While the second kind of fear

28

See Taylor (2008: 64): “Ordinary Greek wisdom would naturally appropriate the term

dikaiosune as the name of the virtue of social relations with human agents…”

23

in these divisions goes unnamed at this point of the dialogue, the (already cited) later

passage at 15d which closes the dialogue fills in this gap in a very suggestive way:

distinct from the shame one feels before men is the fear of the gods, which is glossed as a

fear of not acting rightly. As opposed to the fear of appearing evil in the eyes of another

human (one’s being relative to another), there is a fear of being and doing evil in reality,

measured by the gods or divine forms as the true measure of ethical virtues independently

of appearances before other humans.

Why choose to illustrate these through the division of odd and even number,

characterized geometrically as scalene and isosceles? Allen’s note on this peculiar

division is instructive:

The terms ‘isosceles’ and ‘scalene’ are in fact simply metaphors, whose

explanation has been kindly suggested to me by Professor Cherniss. i0soskelh/v

means equal-legged; skalhno/v means uneven, unequal, or rough, and is probably

related to skolio/v, crooked, bent, or twisted. Even numbers, being divisible into

two equal and integral parts, are ‘isosceles’; odd numbers are scalene because they

are not so divisible – they limp.29

Even numbers thus characterized in this context represent what is uniform and equal to

itself, reminding us of the earlier characterization of the forms of piety and impiety by

Socrates as au0to\ au9tw|~ and au9tw|~ o3moion – the same as itself, like itself. This

thinkable self-identity is associated through the parallel divisions with justice in our

relation to the gods and fear of the gods understood as the forms, the fear of actually

being evil, measured by the true forms of the virtues. Odd numbers, characterized by

29

See Allen (1970: 50), fn. 1.

24

their inequality or difference from themselves, their roughness, their irregularity, are

associated with the instability and relativity of human convention and appearances, on the

side of shame as the fear for our reputation, and justice as characterizing inter-human

relations. To use a Platonic categorization not explicitly present in Euthyphro, fear of the

gods, piety as care for the gods, and even numbers are on the side of being, stability,

reality, the absolute, while shame, care for humans, and odd numbers are on the side of

becoming, change, appearance and relativity.

This distinction between our dealings with other imperfect humans and our

dealings with perfect gods is further reflected in the two senses of care (qerapei/a) to

which the dialogue then turns. The rest of the examination of the fourth definition – that

piety is the part of justice concerned with care for the gods – focuses on the meaning of

qerapei/a. Socrates and Euthyphro conclude that this is not the same as the care of

horses, dogs or cattle, all cases where the care aims at the good or the benefit of the

recipient of the care. These beings require the help of someone who knows how the

object is to be improved upon or perfected, so that it can attain its proper end from which

it is at present separated.30

Unlike the care of animals inferior to the caretaker, care for

the gods does not involve benefiting or improving the gods (making them better than they

are). Euthyphro proposes the opposite relation of inferiors to their superiors – the care

slaves give to their masters, which Socrates characterizes as u9phretikh/.31 Thus the

original bifurcation of human justice dealing with our qerapei/a of men and piety as

30

Versenyi (1982: 101) writes: “Thus all therapy presupposes that the thing or organism

it is practiced on has not yet attained its ideal state or it has declined from it; in any case it

is in some way deficient in its functioning and falls short of fulfilling its function in the

best possible way.” 31

It is worth noting that Socrates himself refers to his philosophical activity as “service to

the god” in the Apology at 30a6-7, although the term is u9perhsi/an.

25

justice about qerapei/a of gods has been further refined: the former is care appropriate to

imperfect beings which require help to attain their perfection or true end, the latter is care

(understood as service or u9phretikh/) for beings that already possess their perfection or

ideal end. Concerning the latter, Socrates brings out that every master served by a slave

has a certain function or work they seek to accomplish, and the slave’s service

contributes to the completion of that aim. He asks “to the achievement of what work”

(ei0v ti/nov e1rgou a0pergasi/an) does the servant contribute in the case of the doctor, the

shipbuilder, the house builder – clearly it is health, a ship, a house – the goal towards

which the master’s activity is striving.

Socrates then turns to a question that I believe is one of the most important in the

whole dialogue,32

one which Socrates ironically tells Euthyphro he should be able to

answer because his knowledge of divine things is the best of all men. Socrates’ phrasing

here is important to note at every point: he wants to know the all-good work (to\

pa/gkalon e1rgon) the gods complete, and to\ kefa/laion of their activity. to\ kefa/laion

(repeated 4 times)33

is usually adequately translated as “the sum of” or “the main point

of”. But besides summary, to\ kefa/laion means head, crown, summit.

The passage is full of dramatic tension, with Euthyphro again and again putting

off answering the question. When he finally does answer he deliberately avoids

32

Here I am recovering and elaborating a view that was prevalent in 19th

century

interpretations of Euthyphro, and which has been dismissed (unjustly, I think) by more

recent interpreters like Versenyi (1982: 106-111) and Allen (1970: 6). For a history of

these accounts which see this passage as the key to the positive implicit content of the

inquiry into piety, see Rabinowitz’s (1958: 113 ff.) brief survey of these interpretations. I

agree with Rabinowitz who writes: “It is inconceivable to me that Plato would have

Socrates speak and act so, had he not intended his readers to understand that the vital

point in the dialogue had been reached” (1958: 115). 33

The importance of the iteration is noted by Rabinowitz, (1958: 110).

26

identifying the ultimate goal towards which divine activity is directed. Instead he offers

the fifth and last definition of the dialogue, that piety is a knowledge of how to please the

gods in prayer and sacrifice. Socrates’ disappointed reply is remarkable in its

implications:

You could tell me in far fewer words, if you were willing, the sum (to\

kefa/laion) of what I asked, Euthyphro, but you were not keen to teach

me, that is clear. You were on the point of doing so, but you turned away.

If you had given that answer, I should now have acquired from you

sufficient knowledge of the nature of piety. (14b8-c3)

If Socrates’ response is to be taken seriously, an adequate answer to this question would

yield the definition of piety. If we are to understand the gods at this point in the dialogue

as the forms or universal causes, in the context of this fourth definition which treats the

hierarchical relation of forms from more particular to more general, what is the crown or

summit of this hierarchy? What is it that all the gods, understood as forms, strive

towards? Having in the previous section on justice and piety introduced the notion of

hierarchically related comprehensiveness with higher forms containing the lower within

themselves, here Socrates seeks what is the highest and most comprehensive form of all.

It seems to me that Plato is pointing towards the comprehensive cause of all the forms,

the idea of the good34

to which all ideas are ordered and in which they are all reconciled

34

Against interpretations which suggest the e1rgon under discussion might be the good,

Rabinowitz (1958: 115-16) objects: “What does surprise one...is to find that they all

manage, in one way or another, to import the Republic’s idea of good into it, some seeing

this concept in the pa&gkalon e1rgon of the gods, some equating it with the gods

themselves, others, making the gods and their e1rgon the subjective-objective content of

27

in an ultimate unity. It seems reasonable to believe that Plato gestures towards this

unspoken culmination of the dialogue by introducing this whole section with the poetic

fragment on not speaking the name of Zeus, who is the origin of all things.35

An

understanding of this divine principle and of how to relate to it would yield the nature of

piety. It is to this question of how one should relate to this perfectly good, self-sufficient

principle that the fifth definition turns.36

the idea of good...no definite sign ore clue can be found within the dialogue to indicate

Plato intends qeoi/ or e1rgon tw~n qew~n to be identified with the idea of the good.” But

now that we have shown how the gods are the forms, and that the discussion occurs in

the section which establishes a hierarchy of forms based in degrees of comprehensiveness

– what the kefa&laion of these takes on a new meaning, lending support to the earlier

suggestions of Bonitz and Heidel, rejected by Rabinowitz, that the Good is the implied

answer to the question. 35

The passage in question ends with a disputed section of text: “nu=n de\ a)na&gkh ga&r to_n e0rw~nta tw|~ e0rwme/nw| a0kolouqei=n o3ph| a!n e0kei=nov u9pa&gh|…” (14c3-4). to_n e0rw~nta tw|~ e0rwme/nw| (it is necessary for the lover to pursue the beloved) has often been

emended to to_n e0rwtw~nta tw|~ e0rwtwme/nw| (it is necessary for the questioner to follow

the answerer….) On the interpretation of the passage I am offering, it is the beloved that

the lover must follow, since here one pursues the ultimate object of love (the Good)

against all adversity, but one does so by pursuing the answerer of dialectical questioning.

Thus the original reading includes the sense of the emendation without unnecessarily

limiting it. On the text in question, see Allen (1970: 57 fn.1) and Emlyn-Jones (2007:

92). 36

Rabinowitz’s excellent article makes the claim, against those views close to his own

that Plato is here pointing to the Good, that he is in fact pointing to Nous, or thought as

the apprehension of the ideas, as the e1rgon of the gods. He points mainly to later

Platonic dialogues to suggest that for Plato, Nous is intermediary between forms and

phenomena. This is a huge question which would involve looking to the Phaedo to

consider the relation between Nous as first principle there and the Good as first principle

in Republic. It is noteworthy that in Phaedo, what it means for Nous to be the principle

of all things is that “the directing Mind would direct everything and arrange each thing in

the way that was best. If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes

to be or perished or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be

acted upon, or to act. One these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about

this and other things, what is best….Once he had given the best for each as the cause for

each and the general cause for all, I thought he would go on to explain the common good

for all” (Phaedo 97c-98b). It is not clear from this passage whether nous is identical to

this common good, or responsible for ordering all things to this good.

28

Before moving to the fifth and final definition, there is one further consequence of

this reading of the dialogue worth noting. Recall that at the outset of the first definition,

Euthyphro frames piety as imitating the actions of Zeus as the god who is most good and

most just. I argued that Euthyphro’s character in the dialogue serves as an imitation of

the notion of the highest divinity to which he adheres: voluntarist deities who control

human affairs without any mediating rational causes. On this view, there are nothing but

particulars on the one hand and gods on the other – particulars are what they are because

the gods perceive or will them to be that way, without any reason independent of their

own perception and will. Euthyphro conceives divine causes as principles that are by

nature inscrutable and unpredictable. They are anything but self-manifesting principles

accessible to human thought. These gods are self-concealing, sharing with humans

neither their own natures nor the reasons behind their actions. One might think here of

the characterization of gods as jealous rejected in Timaeus: “he was good, and one who is

good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted

everything to become as much like him as possible.”37

Aristotle38

takes up this criticism

of the god as jealous, and, importantly for our purposes, associates the flawed conception

of the jealous god with the poetic tradition, showing how it makes philosophy impossible.

Based on the incompatibility of jealousy and divine goodness, Aristotle denies the

consequence of this jealousy for the possibility of philosophy – jealous divinity would

not be self-revealing or self-manifesting of its own nature due to its perfect goodness, and

so the quest for knowledge of these highest principles would be futile. Because it cannot

37

Timaeus 29e. See also Phaedrus 247a: “Inside heaven are many wonderful places from

which to look and many aisles which the blessed gods take up and back, each seeing to

his own work, since jealousy has no place in the gods’ chorus.” 38

Aristotle, Metaphysics I.2, 982b29-983a11.

29

be jealous, the highest must of its very nature make itself manifest to us, and allow us to

become like it by coming to know it. Euthyphro’s attitude towards other human beings

perfectly models the conception of the divine as self-concealing and jealous of

maintaining its wholly unique goodness. He, alone among men, must have knowledge of

the gods and of the nature of piety, since, as he says, “I should be of no use, Socrates, and

Euthyphro would not be superior to the majority of men, if I did not have accurate

knowledge of all such things.” (4e-5a)39

In fact, it is the private guarding of this secret

knowledge of the divine, this refusal to teach and to make others like himself, that makes

Euthyphro so unremarkable and for the most part anonymous40

to the Athenian populace.

A conception of the divine which is opposed to making others as like it as possible,

reflected in the actions of a prophet like Euthyphro who does not try to make anyone like

himself, presents no real threat to the polis. When Euthyphro complains, despite his

apparently infallible41

record of prophecy, that people jealously laugh at him, and

consider him crazy, Socrates answers:

My dear Euthyphro, to be laughed at does not matter perhaps, for the Athenians do

not mind anyone they think clever, as long as he does not teach his own wisdom,

but if they think he makes other like himself they get angry, whether through envy,

as you say, or for some other reason.(3c-d)

39

See also 6b-c, where Euthyphro claims to know not only what he has already said

about the gods, “but even more surprising things, of which the majority has no

knowledge…I will, if you wish, relate many other things about the gods which I know

will amaze you.” 40

Like Meletus (see 2b), Euthyphro is characterized by Socrates as unknown: “I know

that other people as well as Meletus do not seem to notice you, whereas he sees me so

sharply and clearly that he indicts me for ungodliness.” (5c) 41

From the prophetic point of view, infallibility is required, since the only proof or

justification given for his prophecies is their predictive success. Nothing is explained or

taught.

30

In the Timaeus passage, it is argued that the best divinity would not begrudge that which

it causes to be as like it as possible. Euthyphro desires to be absolutely unique in his

possession of divine knowledge, distinct from the rest of us who have no immediate

access to the divine without Euthyphro’s prophetic mediation, and this desire for

uniqueness flows from his emulation of this jealous picture of divinity. This puts him in

direct contrast with Socrates’ politically dangerous desire to make himself and others as

god-like as possible through philosophical scrutiny.

Opposed to this conception of divinity as jealous is the Socratic conception of the

highest god, the Good determining itself through a hierarchy of universal causal essences

in principle knowable to human beings, which can even lead back to knowledge of it and

emulation of it in actions. Just as the jealous Zeus provides the model for Euthyphro’s

constant concealing of his supposed knowledge,42

the highest principle characterized as a

self-diffusing source provides the model for the character of Socrates throughout the

dialogue. Socrates characterizes himself in opposition to Euthyphro in the following

terms:

Perhaps you seem to make yourself but rarely available, and not be willing

to teach your own wisdom, but I’m afraid that my liking for people

(filanqrwpi/av) makes them think that I pour out (e0kkexume/nwv) to

anybody anything I have to say, not only without charging a fee but even

glad to reward anyone who is willing to listen.(3d5-9)

In contrast to the self-concealing stance of Euthyphro, Socrates is a spontaneously

overflowing being like the sun – he indiscriminately pours out whatever he knows to

42

The dialogue ends with Socrates imploring Euthyphro not to conceal (a)pokru/ptein)

from him what he knows about the essence of piety and impiety.

31

anyone, as long as they have a willingness to receive what he is saying. Socrates is here

imitating the self-revealing productivity of the Good diffusing itself into ideal and

sensible reality, allowing itself to be mediated to human understanding, if people only

seek to know the true nature of reality. One can, of course, ignore these truths and live

the unexamined life of mere opinion, but the possibility of knowing is in principle

available to all humans.

It is with this conception of divinity in mind – universal causal essences ordered

hierarchically towards the Good itself - that Socrates discloses the problems with

Euthyphro’s fifth and final definition.43

Fifth Definition

Having disappointed Socrates with his unwillingness or inability to disclose the crowning

result of all divine activity, the dialogue closes with what can seem like a somewhat

anticlimactic discussion of a fifth definition proposed by Euthyphro. If the fourth

definition is about the hierarchical order of divine forms or essences of things as

contained by the highest of these causes, the Good itself, the fifth definition serves to

clarify what is the pious human attitude towards this novel concept of divine being as a

principle which is as good as could be, the source of every single other good thing, a

wholly self-sufficient end in itself.44

Almost as a divisionary tactic, Euthyphro proposes

43

The Good itself makes an implicit appearance in other similarly early Socratic

dialogues – the first friend argument of the Lysis (219c-220b), or the question of a

knower than knows itself immediately without an object other than itself from Charmides

(168e-169c), for example. 44

As opposed to the earlier discussion of the divine causal essences in definitions 2-3,

with the fourth definition, the examination already moves, in the word of Steven Burns,

to a consideration of piety “as a virtue of persons.” See Burns (1985: 320) fn.10.

32

to Socrates that “if a man knows how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer

and sacrifice, those are pious actions such as preserve both private houses and public

affairs of state” (14b2-5). Socrates summarizes the definition of piety as “a knowledge of

how to sacrifice and pray,” with sacrifice defined as “giving to” and prayer defined as

“begging from” the gods. While the first definitions seek to determine piety as an

activity of the gods (# 2-3), or as a relation between divine forms (# 4), this last

formulation, expanding the notion of qerapei/a from the fourth definition, defines piety

in terms of human attitudes and activities in relation to the gods. Thus the dialogue

culminates with a reflection on what traits and actions characterize the pious person.45

This definition, framed as a “trading skill (e0mporikh/)”,46

is corrected relative to

the Platonic-Socratic conception of divinity as the Good and the forms that has been

disclosed by the argument to this point. On the one hand there is nothing that needs to be

begged from the gods (now understood as the Good and the forms), for, as Socrates says,

“What [the gods] give us is obvious to all. There is no good that we do not receive from

them” (14e11-15a2). The Good produces being and intelligibility not because it is asked,

but because it is its nature to do so. But how can such gods be benefited when they are as

good as they can be – they cannot be improved and they lack nothing. Socrates asks: “do

45

In the light of this claim of piety’s preserving effect in human life, note that the entire

dialogue is framed around two possible pollutions, one in the oikos (Euthyphro’s

prosecution of his father) and one in the polis (Meletus’ prosecution of Socrates). 46

Notice that when Socrates asks whether this definition be called a form of trading skill,

Euthyphro answers “if naming it in this way is more pleasant (h3dion) to you.” (14e8) For

Euthyphro, as from the beginning of the dialogue, this criterion of something being pious

is being perceived as good by the gods and consequently loved by them – here he imitates

this criterion in discussion with Socrates. Socrates’ response is instructive – “nothing is

more pleasant to me, unless it happens to be true.” (14e9) Here Socrates imitates his own

conception of divinity – something is not true because it is loved, but is loved because it

is true. And the love is an affection of the agent in relation to an object, not affecting the

intrinsic nature of that beloved object.

33

we have such an advantage over them in the trade that we receive all our blessings from

them and they receive nothing from us?”(15a3-4)

What seems preposterous about characterizing our relations with the gods as a

business deal is the suggestion that the relation between human and divine is one of

equality, a symmetrical reciprocity. But could complete and radical asymmetry be true,

where the gods (the Good and the forms) give us everything and we give them nothing in

return? (“Or do we have such an advantage over them in the trade that we receive all our

blessings from them and they receive nothing from us?” [15a2-4]) The gods are

responsible for every good thing, and we have nothing we could ever give back even

remotely commensurate. This, it seems, is in fact the character of the Platonic relation to

divinity – the Good is the source of all being and intelligibility – but does not require any

repayment for the generosity of its self-diffusion. This all-giving nature of divinity with

no need or expectation of repayment is reflected in the very character of Socrates who

uses this highest god as the model for his own activity – recall his statement: “I pour out

to anybody anything I have to say, not only without charging a fee but even glad to

reward anyone who is willing to listen.”

What then is the proper human attitude towards the divine if the gods need

nothing from us and no gift to them could be commensurate with the goods we receive

from them? What are we meant to make of the gifts to the gods suggested by Euthyphro –

that what we give back to the gods in return for what we receive is honour, reverence,

and gratitude? Socrates takes the last of these, xa&riv (thanks or gratitude), and through a

slight verbal twist, brings out how Euthyphro’s conception of divinity has not been in the

least transformed through the course of the argument. He asks Euthyphro if he means

34

that the pious is pleasing (kexarisme/non) to the gods - if so, it is also beneficial

(w0fe/limon) to them, and dear (fi/lon) to them. The question of usefulness or benefit to

the god has been made moot by the implicit result of the fourth definition – the end

towards which all divine activity is directed is goodness or the good itself, a completely

self-sufficient end.

Of course Euthyphro’s original answers – honour, reverence, gratitude - were not

about the way the gods relate, react, or feel towards our actions – all three were ways we

humans should be disposed towards these divine beings. These three ways of relating to

the divine can be true, so long as they are not taken to constitute observations about the

nature of the gods as needing, desiring, being pleased by these attitudes. These gods

have been through the course of the argument radically de-personalized. But that a pious

human attitude demands some form of honour, reverence, and gratitude for what the

Good and the divine essences of things provide to us does not entail any re-

personalization of these principles. Socrates, by making this shift from xa/riv to

xari/zesqai toi=v qeoi=v, demonstrates how Euthyphro has remained unaffected by the

argument, but not that there is not something plausible and important about the way a

pious human being must show honour, reverence and thanks to the highest philosophical

principles.

Conclusion

After the failure of the final definition, in his last words to Euthyphro, Socrates

exemplifies the picture of what true piety might look like. The entire second-last

paragraph is worth citing to disclose the contours of this novel, yet deeply traditional

piety:

35

So we must investigate again from the beginning what piety is, as I shall

not willingly give up before I learn this. Do not think me unworthy, but

concentrate your attention and tell the truth. For you know it, if any man

does, and I must not let you go, like Proteus, before you tell me. If you

had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety you would never have

ventured to prosecute your old father for murder on behalf of a servant.

For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk lest you

should not be acting rightly, and would have been ashamed before men,

but now I know well that you believe you have clear knowledge of piety

and impiety. So tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not hide what you

think it is. (15c11-e2)

The first point to take from this is the demand that one inquire into and keep

constantly before one’s mind true objects of thought, the objects sought in the dialectical

quest for definitions. As Socrates said at the beginning of the dialogue, “in the past too I

considered knowledge about the divine (ta_ qei=a) to be most important.” (5a5-6) The

gods, understood as the good and the forms, the divine essences which are the causes of

all things and the principles of understanding them, must be revered and honoured as

objects of the highest concern. This attitude of reverence towards these divine truths

beyond human opinion and convention is evoked in the idea of turning one’s mind to

these objects – prose/xein to_n nou=n – evoked at 14d4 and 15d1-2, an expression evoking

attentive devotion to the object. This devotion requires a kind of philosophical courage,

not to willingly give up in the face of either failure, or opposition from the perspective of

merely human opinions (Socrates will not willingly flinch [e9kw_n…ou0k a)podeilia&sw]

36

until he understands the form). That one’s chief and primary concern should be these

objects, and that they should be sought out and known before acting, is what Socrates

means by “fear of the gods.”

The second point to take from Socrates’ statement above is that the proper

relation to others follows naturally upon this primary obligation to the gods, to the forms

as divine laws. Not to think someone unworthy (a)timia&sh|v) involves focusing on the

truth and adequacy of what they say, and the rightness of their actions. Honouring

another human being properly means not letting their words and deeds go by

unexamined, prosecuting by holding them to the standard of truth and rightness in the

forms as divine law, by not letting them escape like the formless Proteus into the unstable

world of merely human opinions, relativity and inattention to the divine. This should be

seen as a form of purification, expelling the pollution and impurity of any false opinions

and evil acts opposed to divine law.47

This qerapei/a of men can happen only by

recognizing the difference between the service owed to imperfect, defective beings

always on their way to or away from their true good, and the service to perfect gods

beyond any possible defect. Insofar as the primacy of our service to the divine is

neglected, proper service to other humans is rendered impossible. This devotion to one’s

interlocutor is evidenced throughout the dialogues by Socrates, who, as a lover, must

pursue his beloved (14c3-5): “because 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” (14d4-5).

47

See Versenyi, (1982: 17): “The sole function of Socratic thought is therapy. A therapy

that is to begin with a therapy of thinking: a clearing up of confusion and eliminating of

contradictions within our various, so often internally incoherent, beliefs and opinions; a

conceptual clarification of the terms we use so thoughtlessly in everyday discourse. Its

aim is a type of catharsis: a purification of concepts that cleanses our ignorance about the

subjects under discussion.”

37

The total attentiveness to the divine is reflected in a total attentiveness to other human

beings.

In his prosecution of his father, Euthyphro accused his father of insufficient care

for another human being due to excessive scrupulousness to religious obligation:

[Euthyphro’s pela&thv] killed one of our household slaves in drunken anger, so my

father bound him hand and foot and threw him in a ditch, then sent a man here to

inquire from the priest what should be done. During that time he gave no thought

or care (w)ligw&rei te kai\ h0me/lei) to the bound man, as being a killer, and it was

no matter if he died, which he did. (4c5-d3)

For Euthyphro, because his father, governed by a very traditional piety, neutralizes the

wrongdoer and waits for the will of the gods to be made manifest though the instruction

of the e0chghth/v, he neglected the human needs of Euthyphro’s dependent. In the same

way, Socrates neutralizes his rash interlocutors while devoting his attention to the divine

measures of human actions, until these divine laws are made manifest in human thinking,

i.e. until a true definition adequate to the one form or causal essence governing sensible

particulars is grasped in thought. While Euthyphro opposes this unconditional duty to the

divine to the care for human beings, Socrates shows that genuine care for humans arises

as a by-product of one’s unconditional devotion to the knowledge of divine forms under

the form of the Good.

This care for humans exhibited by Socrates should be contrasted with Euthyphro's

behaviour. Rather than show his own ignorance by pursuing Socrates’ line of

questioning, Euthyphro turns away (a)potre/pein) from investigation into the form of

piety (14c1-3), to be compared with Socrates holding his mind towards these objects and

38

the words that strive to express them. While Socrates hangs on every single word spoken

by Euthyphro, Euthyphro’s voluntarism seems to extend even to the meaning of words.

When Socrates asks him if by knowledge of sacrificing and praying he means a trading

skill (e0mporikh/), Euthyphro replies affirmatively, “ei0 ou3twv h93dio&n soi o0noma&zein – if

so naming it is more pleasing to you” (14e8). For Socrates, what is pleasing to others is

not the measure of the adequacy of words, but rather the truth itself: “Nothing is more

pleasing to me, unless it happens to be true” (14e9). One cannot simply treat words

carelessly, but must treat them as vehicles for the disclosure of divine truths. Finally, at

the very end of the dialogue, Euthyphro is in a hurry to go away, leaving Socrates without

the knowledge of piety or of divine things that he would require to defend himself from

execution in his trial. To preserve his reputation and his appearance of wisdom,

Euthyphro is willing to neglect working with Socrates to improve him and save him.48

In

other words, by ignoring his primary duty to the true divinities, he is neglectful of his

secondary obligations to other human beings.

Given this Socratic re-grounding of our obligations to other human beings in our

prior obligation to the divine, the dialogue’s conclusion also offers some explanation for

the more conservative relation to the laws and ancestral customs exhibited by Socrates in

the Crito, for example. In the absence of clear and accurate knowledge of the divine

forms through definition, one should not lightly overturn or compromise ancestral

48

Socrates ends the dialogue by claiming he has been thrown down from his high hopes

and abandoned by Euthyphro. The word for throwing down – katabalw&n – is the same

word used for Euthyphro’s father throwing the dependent down into the ditch and

abandoning him. Thus Euthyphro is guilty of the same fatal neglect for which he

prosecutes his own father. [reference omitted for blind review]

39

authority.49

Without this knowledge, we can and must use the authority of law and

ancestral beliefs as the grounds for our action.50

Until the time that the forms of the

virtues which should form the basis of good human action are disclosed in definitions,

dialectical investigation respects the authority of tradition, using it as a ground for action

in the absence of clear and accurate knowledge. This ensures that one does not act

according to a merely private measure, to “rashly improvise (au0tosxedia/zein) and make

innovations (kainotomei=n)” about divine things (16a2).51

Socrates clearly expresses

horror that one could neglect the reverence due to one’s father as the source of one’s

natural and spiritual being (see 4a-b). It is shocking to him that the authority of the

paternal source and ruling principle of the oikos, along with the authority of the

customary views of the polis which the murder prosecution of a father overturns, could

be undermined without clear and accurate knowledge of the grounds for this anti-

conventional act. Just as he thinks that the father is due special reverence in the oikos,

the laws and customs are also due a special reverence. It is for this reason that, rather

than dialectically investigating the older men and their traditional understandings,

Socratic investigation focuses on the youth and their novel views. He endorses Meletus’

focus on the corruption of the youth before turning his attention their elders.

In principle, Socrates agrees with the way Meletus is proceeding, if only he were

serious about his charges. For the charges of corruption emerge out of a concern or care

49

See 4e4-9: “you think that your knowledge of the divine, and of piety and impiety, is

so accurate that, when those things happened as you say, you have no fear of having

acted impiously in bringing your father to trial.” 50

That these have survived in being handed down to us suggests perhaps that the source

of their stability could be conformity with the divine will – or compatibility with the

Good and the forms beyond human convention. 51

See also 5a7-8, where Socrates says he is accused of improvising and innovating about

divine matters: “…au0tosxedia&zonta&…kai\ kainotomou=nta peri\ tw~n qei/wn.”

40

that the young be as good as possible (2d1-3a5), while the charge of impiety is laid for

the sake of the old gods (3b1-4). But without investigating the essential, divine truth

about what the gods are, what the good of a human being is, or what is the best way for

humans to relate to the gods, Meletus cannot claim that he knows what true piety is, or

what real corruption is. As Socrates shows in his cross-examination of Meletus at the

trial (Apology 24c-28a), Meletus is acting based on purely human opinion, without the

slightest attention to the divine truth of the grounds for his prosecution. By the argument

of the Euthyphro, both Meletus and Euthyphro are convicted of impiety, insofar as they

refuse to investigate the divine truth beyond human opinions when the actions which

result from these unexamined opinions are of such a serious nature.

In contrast, when the gods are shown to have the nature of the forms, the Socratic

dialectical quest for a definition adequate to these divine measures as the prior grounds

for human action should be seen as traditionally pious activity, analogous to Euthyphro’s

father’s consultation of the divine will while neutralizing the wrongdoer. It is a recovery

of the traditional radical subordination of human concerns to the divine will which has

been lost in the actions of a Euthyphro or a Meletus. Philosophy involves this radical

subordination of the human to the gods who govern all our thinking and action. It is true

that the Socratic stance undermines prophetic modes of subordination to the divine,

where the divine will is essentially mysterious but immediately accessible to the

prophetic few. In its place, human rationality, through devotion to the dialectical search

for definition, has access to these self-manifesting divinities. But this is not the collapse

of the divine-human distinction, but rather a re-affirmation of the traditional separation,

with a rationally accessible mediation which demands a pious reverence to these supra-

41

human principles. Taylor’s view, that moral virtue is directly identified with service to

the gods in Euthyphro, cannot stand.52

Moral virtue follows upon but is not constitutive

of true piety. Piety is the attitude of theoretical reverence toward the forms in the light of

the good, and as such makes possible virtuous activity in our relations with other humans,

since humans can be then improved rather than corrupted when measured according to

human opinions but a divine law.

Versenyi offers a possible criticism of the kind of view I am presenting. Insofar

as the gods become objects of thought and piety is redefined as a philosophical

orientation to these objects, Versenyi argues that the gods become superfluous, replaced

by a human reason which has become deified – a view suggested by Anderson’s claim

that it is thinking inquiry or dialectic which “has by the end of the dialogue taken on a

number of deific characteristics.”53

For Versenyi, a consequence of this view is that “any

reference to the gods in the definition of piety becomes entirely gratuitous,”54

and “the

gods become a mere surrogate for rationality.”55

Essential to the idea of religion and

piety, Versenyi argues, is some notion of heteronomy, being legislated by something

other than oneself, but the interpretation Versenyi criticizes apparently ascribes to Plato a

“quasi-Kantian restoration of the autonomy of human reason.”56

But on the interpretation

I have presented, there is a fundamental heteronomy in Plato’s view. The divine nomoi

of the forms and the Good are wholly other than and prior to any human thinking. While

it is true that these principles are essentially accessible to human thinking as the objects

52

“True hosiotēs, the real service of the gods, turns out to be nothing other than aretē

itself.” Taylor (2008: 67). 53

Anderson, (1967: 5). 54

Versenyi (1982: 107). 55

Versenyi (1982: 108). 56

Versenyi (1982: 108).

42

towards which all philosophical thinking strives, these objects are given, not made. It is

not “more a relationship between equals than one of subordinates to superiors.”57

Rather,

our relation to the divine is a relation to perfect divine forms, while our relation to equals

is a relation to imperfect beings on the way towards or away from these perfect measures.

Our care for imperfect human beings must be founded on the prior and more primary

relationship to divinity.

This devotion to and reverence for this philosophically purified conception of the

divine is thus at once revolutionary (which Socrates himself recognizes – see 6a6-9) and

profoundly traditional. It is the perspective of those who allow either their own private

opinions or purely human concerns to guide their actions, as if nothing were simply

divinely given and every meaning were created by us, the perspective exemplified by

Meletus and Euthyphro, which runs against traditional Greek piety in a more profound

way. In a sense, the whole dialogue is an answer to the opening question of the dialogue

– ti/ new&teron – what is more new? While Socrates will be executed for theological

novelty, it is the unphilosophical rashness of Euthyphro and Meletus that truly innovates.

Socrates both restores and preserves the traditionally pious devotion to the divine through

his philosophical devotion to divine causes which transcend human power.

57

Versenyi (1982: 109).

43

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