When Cicero said that Socrates “brought down philosophy from the heavens,” he’s usually taken to mean that Socrates shifted philosophical discussion from the natural world to the human realm of ethics, morality, and daily life. But he actually did far more than that; in the dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates brought ethics itself down from the heavens, placing it firmly and permanently into the secular sphere.
Euthyphro may be Plato’s most important dialogue, at least from this book’s perspective, in that it introduces a dilemma that would forever split moral philosophy apart from the pretensions of theology. The purpose of this chapter is to show how he did it—and why, as far as ethical deliberation is concerned, there is no going back.
Socrates Encounters Euthyphro at Court
The dialogue begins with Socrates—perhaps the West’s first moral philosopher, and mentor of Plato—encountering Euthyphro on his way to his own indictment at court. Euthyphro is quite surprised to see him there, as he finds it hard to believe that Socrates would be the one prosecuting a case. Alas, Euthyphro learns that Socrates has, in fact, been indicted by Meletus, under the charges of “impiety and corrupting the youth,” for creating new gods and not believing in the old gods.
Euthyphro, it turns out, is there for similar reasons, except, in his case, he is the one doing the prosecuting. To Socrates’s great surprise, he learns that Euthyphro is to be prosecuting his own father, who negligently, but unintentionally, killed a servant who himself murdered a household slave.
After admitting that most people think that prosecuting your own father under such circumstances is a bit eccentric, even impious, Euthyphro confidently proclaims that this is only because most people’s “ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety” are wrong.[i] Euthyphro proceeds to claim that, contrary to almost everyone else, he alone holds accurate knowledge of all things divine and righteous (as theists are wont to do).
In typical Socratic fashion, Socrates uses this as an opportunity to feign ignorance (there’s no real way to tell the ultimate sincerity of this) on the topic so that Euthyphro can educate him on the correct divine attitude to piety, so that he may use this knowledge in his own legal defense.
And so, the stage is set for Socrates to make Euthyphro eat his words.
Euthyphro as the Prototypical Overconfident Zealot
The respective cases for both Socrates and Euthyphro hinge on the definition of piety. Unless they can define what, exactly, piety is, it’s difficult to fairly level the charge of impiety against either of them. But lucky for Socrates, Euthyphro already has this knowledge—which he so confidently proclaims—and so Socrates can simply leverage Euthyphro’s infallible wisdom for use in his own legal defense. Socrates therefore sets about asking some questions.
Ultimately, he needs Euthyphro to define what pious actions are, in all cases, so that he can know whether or not any of his specific actions have been impious. But when he asks Euthyphro for a definition, Euthyphro simply tells him that piety is doing exactly what he is currently doing: i.e., prosecuting his father, who he believes has done wrong.
Socrates reminds him that he did not ask for a list of specific pious actions, but instead for a definition of what piety is in all cases, since Euthyphro had already agreed that all impious actions take one form, and that he knew what this form was. This is standard fare for Socrates; he forces his interlocutor to commit to a position that the simple listing of examples will not resolve. A standard must be established by which all specific cases can be judged.
So Euthyphro continues, only to keep spinning in circles. This time, he defines piety as “what is dear to the gods.” Socrates then reminds him that the gods themselves often can’t agree—that a single action may be considered pious by one god and impious by another—and, since an action can’t be pious and impious at the same time, that this definition of piety also cannot hold.
The remainder of the dialogue is a brilliant exposition of the Socratic method. Euthyphro continues to propose definitions, to which Socrates finds exceptions or contradictions, with the dialogue ending in aporia, without resolution. It turns out that the overconfident Euthyphro—the self-proclaimed master of all things divine—can’t even provide a simple definition of piety without tripping over his own words.
But let’s see if we can do any better. Over the course of the discussion, Socrates introduces a particular dilemma that Euthyphro ultimately can’t answer, but that is well worth exploring further.
The Euthyphro Dilemma
Since Euthyphro is more or less insistent on defining pious actions as those which are loved by the gods, Socrates poses the following question:
Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?[ii]
In other words, and to use a concrete example, is the prosecution of Euthyphro’s father loved by the gods because it is a pious action in itself, and that’s why they love it, or is his prosecution a pious action simply because the gods love it—by virtue of their preferences—independent of any objective or outside criteria?
Answering this turns out to be a little tricky, but I think it will help, before proceeding, to restate the dilemma in more familiar, monotheistic terms.
The Euthyphro Dilemma — Monotheistic Version
It’s safe to say that, since few people today believe in Zeus or the Olympian gods, restating the dilemma from the Judeo-Christian perspective might better convey the thrust of the problem. It may also help to change the term “pious” to “righteous,” a term that better signifies an action that is considered just and morally correct.
Here is the dilemma, then, restated:
Is a righteous action (1) loved by God because it is righteous, or (2) is it righteous because it is loved by God?
Let’s take the second option first. Answering in the affirmative—that an action is righteous because it is loved by God—places you in a fairly compromising ethical position, for you would have to agree, to maintain consistency, that any action loved by God would be righteous. If God, for instance, told you to murder your son (as he did Abraham), you’d have to agree that this would be a perfectly righteous thing to do if, in fact, this action was—for reasons your small and limited human mind cannot comprehend—loved by your infinitely wise God.
You can probably think of additional, equally appalling examples, but the point stands: As long as you admit that there is something you’d refuse to do, even if commanded by God to do it, then the second option must be rejected.
If we reject the second option, then we must select the first: namely, that an action is loved by God because it is righteous. For instance, caring for your child, and not murdering them, is loved by God because it is, independently (and biologically), a good thing to do. But notice the key term independently. If an action is good before it is loved by God—which is why He loves it—then the goodness of the action cannot be dependent on God’s acceptance. And if that’s the case, then we can no longer rely on divine instruction, but must examine the goodness of each action independently and critically, taking into consideration the costs and benefits, pains and pleasures, of all involved. In other words, the atheist and the theist must approach ethical problems in much the same way, even if God exists. No one, that is to say, is absolved from the responsibility of critical thinking.
Theistic Responses to the Euthyphro Dilemma
Right at this point, theists would tell us that we’ve overlooked an important solution. The Euthyphro “dilemma” is, really, they would say, a false dilemma—in fact, there’s a third option. While it’s true that an action is righteous because it is loved by God, it is loved by God because it is in God’s nature to be all-loving and good. God creates the standards of goodness through his nature and character, so He would never love any action that was either evil or did anyone any unnecessary harm.
This position is often called Modified Divine Command Theory, and it has been developed most rigorously in contemporary philosophy by thinkers such as Robert Merrihew Adams.[iii] On this account, moral obligations depend on God’s commands, but moral goodness itself depends on God’s character. God’s commands are therefore neither arbitrary nor morally blind; they express a stable and perfectly good nature.
There are a couple of problems here. First, notice the circularity: A good action is loved by God because it’s in his nature to love good things. But what makes a thing “good” is precisely the question. Is it good because it’s in God’s nature to love it, or is it good according to some independent criteria? (The original dilemma stands.) Simply saying that it’s in God’s good nature to love “good” things doesn’t tell us the standard by which they are made to be good, i.e., by the fact that God loves them or by some other means.
This response simply recasts the dilemma in different terms, pushing it back a step, without resolving it. You can ask if an action is righteous because (1) it’s in God’s nature to love it, or (2) it’s in God’s nature to love it because it is righteous. If (1), then you are still admitting that you would follow any commandment of God blindly and without question.
Theists often explain that God “works in mysterious ways,” implying that we cannot—and should not even try to—understand the mind of God. It follows, therefore, that we have no basis for questioning His commands, and, once again, must—if He commands it—commit atrocious acts, as He in fact does throughout the Bible. Consider, as an example, the following verse:
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys (1 Sam. 15:3).
Divine Command Theory, in any form, can produce some terrifying results. Dangerous is the person who says they’d do whatever God commands without question, especially since it’s always debatable whether we can know for sure (1) what God really wants and (2) whether we’re actually in communication with Him (or with a figment of our imagination). If God (or the voice in your head) tells you, like He told Abraham, to murder your own child at the summit of a mountain—or, as in Samuel, to put children and infants to death—the appropriate response is, “absolutely not,” not, “well, since it’s in God’s nature to be good, I had better not question the command.” You should always, as Socrates taught us, question everything.
The Divorce of Religion and Morality
Euthyphro is truly a remarkable dialogue, not because it settles our knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, but because it does precisely the opposite—it keeps morality an open question. It effectively counters the assertion that there can be no possibility of morality without religion, by reminding us that we are always, ultimately, responsible for evaluating the ethical ramifications of any action—even and especially actions we may consider to be divinely inspired or sanctioned.
So, the next time someone asks you if morality can exist without religion, you can tell them, not only that it can, but that it must. The establishment of independent moral standards is the only way to navigate the often-conflicting verses and interpretations we find in the Bible itself. And, in any case, regardless of what is in the Bible, the ultimate arbiter of what is considered morally justifiable is the actual harm or benefit it produces in those affected by the action. This secular, moral calculus is not always straightforward and without tradeoffs—which is what makes morality so complicated in the first place. The only real danger is in pretending it’s not.
Now that morality has been divorced from religion, the next step is the development of a fully functional secular ethics, a true alternative to religion. That momentous step—the demonstration that belief in gods is not required for living a good life—is covered next.
Notes
[i] Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 5.
[ii] Plato, Plato: Five Dialogues, 11.
[iii] See Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
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