Title: Euthyphro
Author: Plato


INTRODUCTION.

In the Meno, Anytus had parted from Socrates with the significant words:
'That in any city, and particularly in the city of Athens, it is easier
to do men harm than to do them good;' and Socrates was anticipating
another opportunity of talking with him. In the Euthyphro, Socrates is
awaiting his trial for impiety. But before the trial begins, Plato would
like to put the world on their trial, and convince them of ignorance in
that very matter touching which Socrates is accused. An incident which
may perhaps really have occurred in the family of Euthyphro, a
learned Athenian diviner and soothsayer, furnishes the occasion of the
discussion.

This Euthyphro and Socrates are represented as meeting in the porch of
the King Archon. (Compare Theaet.) Both have legal business in hand.
Socrates is defendant in a suit for impiety which Meletus has brought
against him (it is remarked by the way that he is not a likely man
himself to have brought a suit against another); and Euthyphro too is
plaintiff in an action for murder, which he has brought against his
own father. The latter has originated in the following manner:--A poor
dependant of the family had slain one of their domestic slaves in Naxos.
The guilty person was bound and thrown into a ditch by the command of
Euthyphro's father, who sent to the interpreters of religion at Athens
to ask what should be done with him. Before the messenger came back the
criminal had died from hunger and exposure.

This is the origin of the charge of murder which Euthyphro brings
against his father. Socrates is confident that before he could have
undertaken the responsibility of such a prosecution, he must have been
perfectly informed of the nature of piety and impiety; and as he is
going to be tried for impiety himself, he thinks that he cannot do
better than learn of Euthyphro (who will be admitted by everybody,
including the judges, to be an unimpeachable authority) what piety is,
and what is impiety. What then is piety?

Euthyphro, who, in the abundance of his knowledge, is very willing to
undertake all the responsibility, replies: That piety is doing as I do,
prosecuting your father (if he is guilty) on a charge of murder; doing
as the gods do--as Zeus did to Cronos, and Cronos to Uranus.

Socrates has a dislike to these tales of mythology, and he fancies that
this dislike of his may be the reason why he is charged with impiety.
'Are they really true?' 'Yes, they are;' and Euthyphro will gladly tell
Socrates some more of them. But Socrates would like first of all to have
a more satisfactory answer to the question, 'What is piety?' 'Doing as
I do, charging a father with murder,' may be a single instance of piety,
but can hardly be regarded as a general definition.

Euthyphro replies, that 'Piety is what is dear to the gods, and impiety
is what is not dear to them.' But may there not be differences of
opinion, as among men, so also among the gods? Especially, about good
and evil, which have no fixed rule; and these are precisely the sort of
differences which give rise to quarrels. And therefore what may be dear
to one god may not be dear to another, and the same action may be both
pious and impious; e.g. your chastisement of your father, Euthyphro, may
be dear or pleasing to Zeus (who inflicted a similar chastisement on his
own father), but not equally pleasing to Cronos or Uranus (who suffered
at the hands of their sons).

Euthyphro answers that there is no difference of opinion, either among
gods or men, as to the propriety of punishing a murderer. Yes, rejoins
Socrates, when they know him to be a murderer; but you are assuming the
point at issue. If all the circumstances of the case are considered, are
you able to show that your father was guilty of murder, or that all the
gods are agreed in approving of our prosecution of him? And must you
not allow that what is hated by one god may be liked by another? Waiving
this last, however, Socrates proposes to amend the definition, and
say that 'what all the gods love is pious, and what they all hate is
impious.' To this Euthyphro agrees.

Socrates proceeds to analyze the new form of the definition. He shows
that in other cases the act precedes the state; e.g. the act of being
carried, loved, etc. precedes the state of being carried, loved, etc.,
and therefore that which is dear to the gods is dear to the gods because
it is first loved of them, not loved of them because it is dear to them.
But the pious or holy is loved by the gods because it is pious or holy,
which is equivalent to saying, that it is loved by them because it is
dear to them. Here then appears to be a contradiction,--Euthyphro has
been giving an attribute or accident of piety only, and not the essence.
Euthyphro acknowledges himself that his explanations seem to walk
away or go round in a circle, like the moving figures of Daedalus, the
ancestor of Socrates, who has communicated his art to his descendants.

Socrates, who is desirous of stimulating the indolent intelligence of
Euthyphro, raises the question in another manner: 'Is all the pious
just?' 'Yes.' 'Is all the just pious?' 'No.' 'Then what part of justice
is piety?' Euthyphro replies that piety is that part of justice which
'attends' to the gods, as there is another part of justice which
'attends' to men. But what is the meaning of 'attending' to the gods?
The word 'attending,' when applied to dogs, horses, and men, implies
that in some way they are made better. But how do pious or holy acts
make the gods any better? Euthyphro explains that he means by pious
acts, acts of service or ministration. Yes; but the ministrations of the
husbandman, the physician, and the builder have an end. To what end do
we serve the gods, and what do we help them to accomplish? Euthyphro
replies, that all these difficult questions cannot be resolved in a
short time; and he would rather say simply that piety is knowing how to
please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. In other
words, says Socrates, piety is 'a science of asking and giving'--asking
what we want and giving what they want; in short, a mode of doing
business between gods and men. But although they are the givers of all
good, how can we give them any good in return? 'Nay, but we give them
honour.' Then we give them not what is beneficial, but what is pleasing
or dear to them; and this is the point which has been already disproved.

Socrates, although weary of the subterfuges and evasions of Euthyphro,
remains unshaken in his conviction that he must know the nature of
piety, or he would never have prosecuted his old father. He is still
hoping that he will condescend to instruct him. But Euthyphro is in a
hurry and cannot stay. And Socrates' last hope of knowing the nature
of piety before he is prosecuted for impiety has disappeared. As in the
Euthydemus the irony is carried on to the end.

The Euthyphro is manifestly designed to contrast the real nature of
piety and impiety with the popular conceptions of them. But when the
popular conceptions of them have been overthrown, Socrates does not
offer any definition of his own: as in the Laches and Lysis, he prepares
the way for an answer to the question which he has raised; but true to
his own character, refuses to answer himself.

Euthyphro is a religionist, and is elsewhere spoken of, if he be the
same person, as the author of a philosophy of names, by whose 'prancing
steeds' Socrates in the Cratylus is carried away. He has the conceit and
self-confidence of a Sophist; no doubt that he is right in prosecuting
his father has ever entered into his mind. Like a Sophist too, he is
incapable either of framing a general definition or of following the
course of an argument. His wrong-headedness, one-sidedness, narrowness,
positiveness, are characteristic of his priestly office. His failure
to apprehend an argument may be compared to a similar defect which
is observable in the rhapsode Ion. But he is not a bad man, and he is
friendly to Socrates, whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest.
Though unable to follow him he is very willing to be led by him, and
eagerly catches at any suggestion which saves him from the trouble
of thinking. Moreover he is the enemy of Meletus, who, as he says, is
availing himself of the popular dislike to innovations in religion in
order to injure Socrates; at the same time he is amusingly confident
that he has weapons in his own armoury which would be more than a match
for him. He is quite sincere in his prosecution of his father, who has
accidentally been guilty of homicide, and is not wholly free from blame.
To purge away the crime appears to him in the light of a duty, whoever
may be the criminal.

Thus begins the contrast between the religion of the letter, or of the
narrow and unenlightened conscience, and the higher notion of religion
which Socrates vainly endeavours to elicit from him. 'Piety is doing
as I do' is the idea of religion which first occurs to him, and to many
others who do not say what they think with equal frankness. For men are
not easily persuaded that any other religion is better than their own;
or that other nations, e.g. the Greeks in the time of Socrates, were
equally serious in their religious beliefs and difficulties. The chief
difference between us and them is, that they were slowly learning what
we are in process of forgetting. Greek mythology hardly admitted of the
distinction between accidental homicide and murder: that the pollution
of blood was the same in both cases is also the feeling of the Athenian
diviner. He had not as yet learned the lesson, which philosophy was
teaching, that Homer and Hesiod, if not banished from the state, or
whipped out of the assembly, as Heracleitus more rudely proposed, at any
rate were not to be appealed to as authorities in religion; and he is
ready to defend his conduct by the examples of the gods. These are the
very tales which Socrates cannot abide; and his dislike of them, as he
suspects, has branded him with the reputation of impiety. Here is one
answer to the question, 'Why Socrates was put to death,' suggested by
the way. Another is conveyed in the words, 'The Athenians do not care
about any man being thought wise until he begins to make other men wise;
and then for some reason or other they are angry:' which may be said to
be the rule of popular toleration in most other countries, and not at
Athens only. In the course of the argument Socrates remarks that the
controversial nature of morals and religion arises out of the difficulty
of verifying them. There is no measure or standard to which they can be
referred.

The next definition, 'Piety is that which is loved of the gods,' is
shipwrecked on a refined distinction between the state and the act,
corresponding respectively to the adjective (philon) and the participle
(philoumenon), or rather perhaps to the participle and the verb
(philoumenon and phileitai). The act is prior to the state (as in
Aristotle the energeia precedes the dunamis); and the state of being
loved is preceded by the act of being loved. But piety or holiness is
preceded by the act of being pious, not by the act of being loved; and
therefore piety and the state of being loved are different. Through such
subtleties of dialectic Socrates is working his way into a deeper region
of thought and feeling. He means to say that the words 'loved of the
gods' express an attribute only, and not the essence of piety.

Then follows the third and last definition, 'Piety is a part of
justice.' Thus far Socrates has proceeded in placing religion on a
moral foundation. He is seeking to realize the harmony of religion and
morality, which the great poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Pindar had
unconsciously anticipated, and which is the universal want of all men.
To this the soothsayer adds the ceremonial element, 'attending upon the
gods.' When further interrogated by Socrates as to the nature of
this 'attention to the gods,' he replies, that piety is an affair of
business, a science of giving and asking, and the like. Socrates points
out the anthropomorphism of these notions, (compare Symp.; Republic;
Politicus.) But when we expect him to go on and show that the true
service of the gods is the service of the spirit and the co-operation
with them in all things true and good, he stops short; this was a lesson
which the soothsayer could not have been made to understand, and which
every one must learn for himself.

There seem to be altogether three aims or interests in this little
Dialogue: (1) the dialectical development of the idea of piety; (2) the
antithesis of true and false religion, which is carried to a certain
extent only; (3) the defence of Socrates.

The subtle connection with the Apology and the Crito; the holding back
of the conclusion, as in the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, and
other Dialogues; the deep insight into the religious world; the dramatic
power and play of the two characters; the inimitable irony, are reasons
for believing that the Euthyphro is a genuine Platonic writing. The
spirit in which the popular representations of mythology are denounced
recalls Republic II. The virtue of piety has been already mentioned
as one of five in the Protagoras, but is not reckoned among the four
cardinal virtues of Republic IV. The figure of Daedalus has occurred in
the Meno; that of Proteus in the Euthydemus and Io. The kingly science
has already appeared in the Euthydemus, and will reappear in the
Republic and Statesman. But neither from these nor any other indications
of similarity or difference, and still less from arguments respecting
the suitableness of this little work to aid Socrates at the time of his
trial or the reverse, can any evidence of the date be obtained.
