Religion
Related: About this forumEuthyphro's Dilemma
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Posted by Neno December
Socrates has been called to court on charges of impiety by Meletus (whom Plato names as the chief accuser). Specifically, Socrates accusers cite two impious acts:
failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges
introducing new deities
This was going to be the most famous trial of all time (that is, until O.J. Simpson came along). Socrates encounters Euthyphro outside of king-archons court, which he has come to prosecute his father for having unintentionally killed a murderous hired hand. Having heard this, Socrates is not convinced that Euthyphro was committing a pious act by prosecuting his father, so he asks Euthyphro to teach him about what piety and impiety are. Euthyphro makes five attempts at piety before ending the dialogue due to frustration. The most memorable and important was his third attempt which he defined piety as:
the pious is what all the gods love, and the opposite, what all the gods hate, is impious.
Socrates responds by asking Euthyphro,
the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or is something pious because it is loved by the gods?
In other words Socrates asked,
"does god command this particular action because it is morally right, or is it morally right because god commands it?
http://untemperedintellect.blogspot.com/2014/07/euthyphros-dilemma.html
Jim__
(14,090 posts)Euthyphro's own description of his action (from Euthyphro):
Euthyphro's father bound a laborer, threw him into the ditch, and left him to die. Even if we believe that the servant had murdered another man, he should not be just be left to die of cold and hunger in a ditch. Sure, Euthyphro is young and arrogant in claiming to know what the gods think - Socrates is having some fun with that. I don't think we are concerned with questions of piety and impiety today. The dilemma today is whether or not we should turn in a family member that we believe committed a murder. Is there any real doubt about what we consider to be the right choice?
rug
(82,333 posts)The state, in many ways, has assumed the role of virtue that was occupied by the gods of Socrates' time. While, then, the state sought to divine, and carry out, the piety of the gods, the judicial arm of the state now tries to interpret and carry out the will of the people as embodied in their statutes.
The problem is, imo, that the state to a very large extent has forfeited any moral authority to do so.
The laws for the most part do not reflect the will of the people as much as they reflect the economic interests of the wealthy and their corporations.
It is hard to read about this alleged murderer starving in a ditch without thinking of what's going on at the border, or of the millions living not only on the edge of poverty, if not in it, but on the edge of sanity, while trying to live, work, rear children and to simply be happy in the bosom of this state.
So, yes, Euthypro is right that his father should be prosecuted. His dilemma today is not whether he should turn him in, but that there is no one with the "piety" to whom he should be reported.