Reading Euthyphro Plato as a literary artist

Transcription

1 The objectives of studying the Euthyphro Reading Euthyphro The main objective is to learn what the method of philosophy is through the method Socrates used. The secondary objectives are (1) to be acquainted with a philosophical work by one of the greatest philosophers; (2) to appreciate the uniqueness of Plato s philosophical writings. Plato as a literary artist Plato was not a mere writer. It was said that he had been a poet and playwright before he met Socrates and that ever since he burned all his poems and plays. Some of the poems attributed to him survived. Being a literary artist, when he wrote his Dialogues he did not just have people talking with one another about philosophy; he constructed them in the form of a drama. This is particularly true with his early dialogues which were written for the purpose of preserving the memory of Socrates. Why he did this is a matter of conjecture. Probably, being an artist, he could not avoid doing it this way. Most probably, he did it this way because he wanted to keep his readers from being bored. The Euthyphro is a good example of his art, and in my opinion his best dramatic composition is the dialogue called Protagoras. His art as reflected in the Euthyphro can be observed thus: - The Euthyphro is about the nature of piety, and that is because one of the allegations against Socrates was that he was impious. Instead of starting right away with the discussion about piety, Plato depicts the scene of the chance meeting between Socrates and Euthyphro. The conversation begins naturally about the purpose of each being there and it is Euthyphro's stating of his purpose that leads to the topic of piety. Notice the careful characterization of Euthyphro as a man confident of his knowledge of religion and the ways of the gods. Notice also the nature of the case that Euthyphro is bringing to court. Plato intends it to be shocking and this is a common dramatic device. This also brings out the fact that Socrates is encountering an unconventional man, not just an ordinary one. This make the drama even more striking. - Socrates is best known for the Socratic irony; that is, he claimed to be ignorant and went around searching for people who had knowledge and were willing to teach him, and yet his questioning exposed these people as in fact ignorant. In trying to preserve the memory of Socrates, Plato sprinkles the irony all through the dialogue even though we can never know whether the real Socrates was capable of such sustained ironic performance. Plato's art is seen in his ability to put words into Socrates's mouth is such a

2 way that he seems to be sincere, and yet the reader can discern the mocking tone behind his speeches. Euthyphro is portrayed as being too serious to be conscious of the irony and thus is clueless about what Socrates is getting at. The reader cannot help being amused at the hapless Euthyphro. It is a part of Plato's art to be able to put wit and humour into a serious philosophical discussion. The central argument of the Euthyphro Euthyphro s definition: D1. Piety is what all the gods love, and what all the gods hate is impiety. Which can be put succinctly as: D2. What is god-beloved is the same as what is pious. The true statements both Euthyphro and Socrates agree upon: 1. What is pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, not pious because it is loved 2. What is god-beloved is god-beloved because the gods love it; and that they do not love it because it is god-beloved. If we substitute pious with god-beloved in 1. we get: 3. What is god-beloved is loved by the gods because it is god-beloved, not god-beloved because it is loved. The result is 3 contradicts 2. If we substitute god-beloved with pious in 2. we get: 4. What is pious is pious because the gods love it; and that they do not love it because it is pious. The result is 4 contradicts 1. [Piety has a defining property in itself independent of how the gods feel about it. What is god-beloved doesn t have such a property, its defining property depends upon the love of the gods] The last eight pages of Euthyphro we did not read in class Socrates offers to help Euthyphro find out what piety is. He points out that to be pious is morally right, but not all that is morally right is pious. That is, all pious actions are morally right but not all morally right actions are pious. There are morally right actions which are not pious. Thus pious actions are a kind of moral rectitude, and since there are many kinds of moral rectitude, what has to be found out is what kind of moral rectitude piety is. At this point, Euthyphro makes another attempt. He proposes that piety is the kind of moral rectitude that has to do with tendance of the gods. Socrates, as we can expect, seizes upon the

3 meaning of tendance. He points out that one use the term 'tendance' is in animal farming. Farmers tend to horses and other animals to make them better so we can use them or sell them. But it is impossible for humans to make gods better. They can make us better but not the other way round (otherwise they wouldn't be gods!). So Euthyphro has to modify his definition. He proposes that piety is a sort of service to the gods. Again when Socrates asks what the gods get from our service, Euthyphro fails to specify what it is. But he explains that it has to do with saying and doing the right things in prayer and sacrifice. Socrates then points out that sacrifice consists in making presents to the gods and prayers in making requests to them; we do all of this to ask for what we need from the gods and we offer them something in return by means of sacrifice and prayer. Would not piety then be, Socrates asks, the art of commerce between man and gods? Euthyphro gives assent without seeing Socrates' sarcasm in this question. Socrates then returns to the point that the gods, being what they are, cannot get any benefits from us. Euthyphro senses an opening here and he claims that even though the gods cannot get benefits from us in terms of material things, they can be pleased by our actions. Then Socrates retorts that this means piety is what is pleaing to the gods and once more piety is the same as god-beloved. He accuses Euthyphro of leading him back in a circle to try to conceal the truth from him. Euthyphro realizes he has been cornered, so he says goodbye to avoid further humiliation. You should appreciate Plato's wit in turning this serious-sounding dialog into a comedy. But the idea is not just to make the reader laugh. Plato's point is that the method Socrates uses is a therapy. People have to be made aware of their ignorance before they can be set on the path of truth. Of course not very many people respond to this therapy; instead of accepting their ignorance they become angry and resentful. The execution of Socrates is a testament to this. The What is X? question What is the point of Socrates question in the form of what is X? (What is piety? What is justice? What is courage? Etc.). The point is in every society people are taught virtues and vices so they can perform virtuous actions and avoid vicious ones, but we are rarely taught why certain acts are virtuous or vicious. Instead we are presented with a list of actions that are virtuous and another list of them that are to be avoided. Some actions are clearly courageous, or just, or pious etc., but others are not clearly so. How do we know whether we should perform this latter group of actions or not? Since society gives us only a list, but doesn t tell us the unique characteristic of each virtue, we will be either at a loss of what to do or probably do the wrong things. Take benevolence as an example, it is surely a virtue that we should be kind to people. Helping the blind cross the street is unquestionably laudable. But if we help the poor by just giving them money instead of helping them help themselves, we are making them depend on us and hurting them in the long run. Someone might help a person out of compassion without considering the possibility that that person might use our help to harm others. Are these two cases benevolent actions? They surely are cases of people

4 helping people. There are two ways to think about it. Either they are cases of benevolence but must be avoided, or they are not. If they are, then some benevolent actions are not good. Since we believe benevolence is a virtue, that is, all benevolent actions are good, it s more reasonable to think that these are not benevolent actions. But then we have to think deeper than looking at the list society gives us. We have to seek a definition of benevolence that rules out these two cases. This is the point of Socrates insistence on the what is X? question. Philosophy requires that we think deeper than common sense in order to find the truth. The positive doctrine implied by the Euthyphro Having reached the end of the dialogue, we tend to think that it doesn t tell us what piety is, only what it is not, and so we might think that we get nothing positive from it. But this is not so, this dialogue points the way to an understanding of the universe that is subversive of the common Greek beliefs. Socrates central argument hinges on his success in getting Euthyphro to share his conviction that piety has the property that is independent of the gods likes and dislikes, the property which all the gods love and yet doesn t depend for its existence on that love. In other words, piety is something objective in the sense that it depends on neither gods nor humans. Piety can t be the only thing that has this objective nature; justice, courage, benevolence etc., which are virtues on the same level with piety, must also be objective. These are moral truth and thus other kinds of truth, for instance, scientific truth, must also have the same status. If truth does not depend on the gods, then the gods cannot be the ultimate authority in the universe. Since the ancient Greek thinkers believe that truth can only be reached by reason, this leads to the belief that the universe is a rational order. Even though this conception undermines the supremacy of the gods in the Greek mythology, it is not incompatible with another form of theology. For some thinkers the idea that the universe is a rational order suggests the existence of God. Any kinds of rational order must be caused by reason and thus by an intelligent being; therefore, the rational order of the universe must be caused by a super intelligent being, the supreme being of all beings and that must be God who is identified with reason itself. This is the idea held by stoicism that we will study next week. This idea of objectivity implicit in the Euthyphro was developed by Plato in his later dialogues into his famous Theory of Forms. Of course, the idea that virtues are objective has been challenged all through the history of philosophy. Quite a large number of thinkers believe that virtues are relative to societies: different societies hold different conceptions about what virtues are, and there is no objective truth in this matter. In fact, during Socrates time this idea was held by some of the most famous Sophists. In his later dialogues, Plato spent a lot of effort trying to present elaborate arguments to combat this kind of thinking.

5 What do we learn about philosophy from reading the Euthyphro? 1. The nature of philosophy The fact that philosophy requires us to go deeper than the common sense leads us to the essential characteristic of philosophy. Going deeper means philosophy cannot avoid challenging conventional wisdom. In the dialogue, when Euthyphro proposes definitions, these involve common understanding about the gods and their actions that forms the foundation of Greek morality. Socrates' criticism of these definitions is a way of questioning the reasonableness of this understanding. Do the gods really make wars among themselves? Is worshipping the gods the offering them things they need? To think philosophically is basically to challenge common beliefs. In each society, we are taught a certain worldview mostly associated with religion. We are taught what the universe is like, the place of man in nature, how should we behave towards others, how should we live etc. The justification for this worldview is not elaborated or often is never offered, partly because society has subsisted upon this worldview for so long and so there is complacency about it. In its attempt to use reason to explore this worldview, philosophy might find it not rational enough or even irrational. In the first case it has to find deeper reasons to support the current worldview, in the second case it might have to abandon it altogether and offer a better system. Philosophy can be subversive sometimes, but as Plato has Socrates said in the Apology: an unexamined life is not worth living. In short, philosophy teaches us to construct a rational worldview which will guide us in our living. 2. The method of philosophy Socrates criticizes Euthyphro's definitions by pointing out that they can't be correct because they lead to contradictions. Valid reasoning must not lead to a contradiction. This is the basic law of logic, and thus we learn from Socrates' method that logic is the main instrument of philosophy. Questioning beliefs is not a matter of rhetoric or debate, but is the use of reason to test them. Logic helps us separate what we should believe from what we should not. 3. The nature of progress in philosophy Socrates and Euthyphro start out from trying to understand what piety is. In the end they depart without getting the answer. Is all of this futile? Not at all; at least we learn what piety is not, that is, some answers have been ruled out as irrational. This is the kind of progress in philosophy. Though philosophy aims at the truth, at present there is no consensus among philosophers what the answers to the main philosophical problems are. Nevertheless, along the way from the time of ancient Greece, a lot of unreasonable answers have been discarded, paving the way to more reasonable answers. Maybe philosophers will never reach a consensus, but at least the reasonable answers have been narrowed down and we are left with a manageable choice of answers.

6 Levels of philosophical investigation, from the most concrete to the most abstract. What leads humans to enter upon the enterprise of philosophy is the problems we face in trying to live our lives. The most pressing problem is of course that of how we ought to live, that of the meaning of life. From that point on, thinking about it philosophically leads us to further questions that are more and more abstract. 1. How should we live? (How should I lead my life in order to be happy? How should I behave towards others?). To answer the question adequately, we are led to ask: 2. Who are we? (What are human beings? What is the human nature? What is the kind of life that is most appropriate to human beings?). Trying to get a satisfactory answer leads us to ask further: 3. What is the universe? (Is the universe governed by laws? Is there a God? Why am I here? What is my place in the universe? Are humans special?). Even if we thought we got the answer to this, philosophy would require us to ask: 4. Do we really know? (Can we have knowledge of reality? If we can, how do we obtain this knowledge?) The branch of philosophy that deals with the first question is called Ethics and Social Philosophy; that deals with the second and third questions is called Metaphysics; that deals with the last question is called Epistemology. All these levels constitute a system of philosophy.