Plato’s Euthyphro, the Euthyphro Dilemma, and Why They’ll Never Leave You
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
The Euthyphro is one of Plato’s shortest dialogues—and one of his finest. It is funny, dramatic, and unexpectedly modern. What begins as a chance encounter outside an Athenian courthouse turns into one of the most profound and celebrated conversations in the history of philosophy.
On his way to answer a charge of impiety, Socrates meets the self-professed religious expert Euthyphro, who has decided to prosecute his own father for the manslaghter of a servant. Intrigued by his resolve, Socrates asks him an apparently simple question: What is piety? The answer proves far more elusive than either man expects. The problem has exercised philosophers ever since—not least the ‘last universal genius’ Gottfried Leibniz.
The core of the dialogue is the so-called Euthyphro dilemma: is something pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious? In modern terms, are things like justice, virtue, and beauty merely matters of authority, or are they woven into the very fabric of reality? Does God, or anyone else, decide what is good, or is there an independent standard?
Outline and Summary of Plato’s Euthyphro
Socrates is on his way to answer a charge of impiety for ‘corrupting young men’ and ‘creating new gods and not believing in the old ones’. The charge is being pressed by a certain Meletus, a little-known young man with a beak-like nose, long straight hair, and a sparse beard.
In the agora (market or central square), Socrates runs into the dogmatically religious Euthyphro. Following the death of a servant, Euthyphro has pressed a charge of manslaughter against his own father. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is prosecuting his father for inadvertently killing a servant who, in a drunken rage, murdered one of the household slaves. After binding the servant and throwing him into a ditch, Euthyphro’s father sent a messenger to a priest to enquire what ought to be done. Unfortunately, the servant died of hunger and cold before the messenger could return.
Socrates flatters Euthyphro, saying that he must be far advanced in wisdom if he is willing to prosecute his own father on so questionable a charge. Euthyphro responds that his relatives are angry at him for prosecuting his father on behalf of a murderer whom he did not deliberately kill. Although they would say that he is behaving impiously, he himself thinks that he is behaving piously—and that he has knowledge of the pious and impious.
Posing as ignorant, Socrates asks Euthyphro to define the pious and impious. Euthyphro replies that the pious is to prosecute a wrongdoer regardless of who he is, and the impious not to prosecute him. He cites the example of Zeus, ‘the best and most just of gods’, who bound his father Cronus for unjustly swallowing his children.
Socrates says that many actions can be pious: but what is it that makes all pious actions pious, and all impious actions impious? What, in short, is the essence of piousness? Euthyphro offers that the pious is that which is dear to the gods. An action or man that is dear to the gods is pious, whereas an action or man that is hated by the gods is impious.
Socrates points out that the gods may be at odds, so that what is pious to one god may not be so to another. Euthyphro replies that none of the gods would be at odds on a matter such as his. Socrates argues that while both gods and men agree that whoever has killed someone unjustly ought to pay a penalty, they might disagree about who the wrongdoer is, what he did, and so on. Can Euthyphro be sure that, in his case, all the gods are in agreement? Even assuming that they are, this merely signifies that the action is hated by the gods. It does not signify that what is hated by the gods is impious, or that what is loved by them is pious. Even assuming that it does, is that which is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? If the gods love something because it is pious, it cannot be their love that makes it pious. Whereas if something is pious because the gods love it, we still don’t know for what reason they love it.
Euthyphro complains that Socrates makes his arguments go around in circles. But Socrates points out that all he is doing is asking questions: it is Euthyphro’s answers and Euthyphro’s arguments that are going round in circles.
Socrates next argues that all that is pious is necessarily just. But whereas all that is pious is necessarily just, not all that is just is necessarily pious. Thus, where there is piety there is also justice, but where there is justice there is not necessarily piety, because piety is a part or aspect of justice. So what part of justice is piety? Euthyphro replies that piety is the part of justice that is concerned with the care of the gods, with the rest of justice being concerned with the care of men. Socrates asks Euthyphro what he means by ‘care’. In most instances, ‘to care’ means ‘to aim at the good of that which is cared for’. So does piety, which is concerned with the care of the gods, aim to make them better? Euthyphro suggests that piety, the care of the gods, is the sort of care that slaves have for their masters, and thus that it is a kind of service. If piety is a kind of service to the gods, asks Socrates, what is the goal of this service? The goal of service to doctors is health, and the goal of service to shipbuilders is the building of a ship. So what is the goal of service to the gods? Euthyphro answers that service to the gods is the knowledge of how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, for the preservation of private households and public affairs of state.
Socrates says that, if the pious is the knowledge of how to pray and sacrifice, it is the knowledge of how to beg and give to the gods. To beg correctly would be to ask from them the things that we need, whereas to give correctly would be to give to them the things that they need—so that piety would amount to a sort of trading skill between gods and men. Euthyphro says, ‘Trading yes, if you prefer to call it that’—to which Socrates replies, ‘I prefer nothing, unless it is true.’
Socrates wonders what benefit the gods might derive from the gifts that they receive from us. Or do we have such a trading advantage over them that we receive all our blessings from them and they receive nothing in return? Euthyphro now claims that we give gifts to the gods so as to honour and please them. Socrates asks whether the pious is then pleasing, rather than beneficial or dear, to the gods—to which Euthyphro replies, ‘I think it is of all things most dear to them.’ Socrates points out that they have returned to Euthyphro’s original definition of piety, namely, that piety is that which is dear to the gods.
Socrates says that Euthyphro is more skilful than Daedalus, in that Daedalus could only make arguments move whereas Euthyphro can make them go round in a circle. Socrates suggests that they begin their inquiry anew, but Euthyphro says that he is in a hurry and leaves!
Analysis and Themes of Plato’s Euthyphro
The Euthyphro is often treated as an early Platonic dialogue, interesting only insofar as it introduces the Euthyphro dilemma. But that would be to miss much of its richness. It is also a brilliant study of dogmatism, intellectual humility, and the nature of dialectic and philosophical enquiry. And, chronologically, it is the first of the four dialogues that retrace the final days of Socrates—to be followed by the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. If Plato’s internal chronology is to be relied upon, the conversation in the Euthyphro takes place on the same day as the conversation in the Theatetus, which follows the preliminary hearing (anakrisis) at the porch of the King Archon.
At no point does Euthyphro realise that he may be ignorant, or even that his knowledge of impiety may be less than complete. He confidently prosecutes his own father, without questioning whether this is what the gods would really want. When Socrates challenges the source of his self-esteem—knowledge of the gods—he finds himself unable to refute Socrates—and so simply leaves. It is a masterclass in the psychology of self-deception. The irony, too, is striking. Socrates is on his way to answer a charge of impiety, yet proves far more concerned with piety than the supposed expert on religion.
Whereas Euthyphro mistakes certainty for knowledge, Socrates is content to admit his ignorance and continue the search. It is apparent, especially in the unabridged dialogue, that Euthyphro struggles to understand what Socrates is asking of him—in other words, he struggles to understand what Socrates means by a definition. The same might be said of other so-called experts who engage with Socrates, including Laches in the Laches and Meno in the Meno. The confusion of these experts, some of whom, like Meno, were philosophically trained or at least philosophically aware, suggests that Socrates’ search for rigorous definitions was something original and radical.
For Socrates, it is not sufficient simply to define an ethical concept in terms of itself or related concepts, or by a list of its instances, or according to convention or popular opinion (‘piety is what is dear to the gods’). Instead, a rigorous definition is one which, by picking out the nature or essence of the ethical concept, applies to all its instances and no more. For example, Meno’s definition of virtue as ‘the ability to rule over people’ is both too narrow for excluding children and slaves, and too broad for including those who rule unjustly. Today, we take the search for rigorous definitions so much for granted that it is easy to forget how revolutionary it once was.
If beauty, courage, justice, and piety can have an essence that can be defined, perhaps they can also have an independent reality. In time, Socrates’ search for essences would evolve into Plato’s Theory of the Forms. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle is quite clear that Socrates did not originate the Theory of the Forms: ‘Two things may properly be ascribed to Socrates, inductive reasoning and definition by universals… But Socrates did not assign to the universal or the definitions an independent existence.’ Nonetheless, the seeds of the Theory of the Forms are already present in dialogues such as the Euthyphro.
Leibniz and the Best of All Possible Worlds
In the modern era, Leibniz (1646–1716) followed the direction of Socrates’ argument while going beyond anything that Socrates himself explicitly claimed. God does not make something good simply by willing it; rather, he wills it because it is good. Eternal or necessary truths—including the standards of the beautiful, the good, and the just—depend on God’s understanding, but not on his will.
This is no mere point of theology. It underpins Leibniz’s most famous doctrine, that this is the best of all possible worlds. If goodness depended solely on God’s will, then whatever world God chose to create would de facto have been the best, rendering the claim empty.
The very idea that God chose to create the best of all possible worlds presupposes an objective standard of goodness by which the alternatives can be judged. Notice that, in the Bible, in Genesis, as God created the world, he kept on checking that what he had done was ‘good’—and even, at the end of the sixth day, ‘very good’. Had there not been an independent standard of goodness, he would not have needed to look.
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To delve deeper into Plato, see The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Plato’s Shadow: A Primer on Plato.
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