Euthyphro is a dialogue between Socrates and a man named Euthyphro in “The Hall of the King” (Baird, 8). The discourse draws one to contemplate the nature of justice, piety, and epistemology. At the beginning of the discourse Euthyphro approaches Socrates in the hall (2a). Socrates informs Euthyphro that he is there because he is being prosecuted for “[corrupting] the youth…[and] inventing new gods and not believing in the old ones” (3a-b). Euthyphro is there prosecuting his own father for murdering a murderer (4d) To this Euthyphro proposes that it makes no difference “whether the murdered man were a relative or a stranger” (4b). Euthyphro finds himself completely just and pious in his actions and unbiased in his prosecution. Socrates asks Euthyphro five basic questions.
First, Socrates simply asks “what is piety and what is impiety?” (5d). Initially Euthyphro answers with the particular act of “prosecuting the unjust individual who has committed murder or sacrilege, or any other such crime, as I am doing now” (5e). This, however, does not satisfy Socrates. For he is looking for “what is characteristic of piety…” (6e). So, Euthyphro broadens his definition: “what is pleasing to the gods is pious, and what is not pleasing to them is impious” (7a). Here Socrates questions this because the gods fight all the time, so how could they agree on the nature of piety (7e-8a)?
After some prodding, Euthyphro proposes a more well-crafted definition of piety: “…piety is what all the gods love, and…impiety is what they all hate” (9e). To this Socrates asks his second question. He asks, “Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?” (10a). This puts Euthyphro in something of a quandary, because he has already asserted that “what is pleasing to the gods is pious” (7a) and “piety is what all the gods love” (9e). Socrates leads Euthyphro to agree that “it is loved by the gods because it is pious; it is not pious because it is loved by them” (10d). Therefore, “piety and what is pleasing to the gods are different things” (11a). Socrates reasons to this by virtue of the fact that the gods cannot love “piety because it is pious…[and] what is pleasing to them because it is pleasing to them…for one is of the sort to be loved because it is loved, while the other is loved because it is of the sort to be loved” (11a).
For his third question, Socrates considers the relationship of justice and piety: “…is all justice pious too? Or, while all piety is just, is a part only of justice pious, and the rest of it something else?” (12a). Euthyphro reasons that piety is that part of justice that pays “careful attention” to the gods, while the remaining part of justice is that which pays “careful attention” to man (12e). Also, this “attention” produces “many notable results” (13e).
The fourth question asks “what is the principle result of the many notable results which the gods produce?” (14a). Euthyphro maintains that service to the gods results in strong families and the maintenance of general order (14b). Thus Euthyphro agrees to define piety as “…the science of asking the gods and giving to them” (14d).
So, question five: “…[are] the gods…benefited by the gifts which they receive from us?” (15a). Euthyphro is emphatic that they are not, but he still asserts that the offerings are pious and loved by them (15b). Thus, they are back to the original definition, and Euthyphro leaves in a hurry.
This discourse reveals the difficulty of attempting to justify piety and justice without an epistemology rooted in an unchanging objective reality. Christianity, for example, would fare much better under Socrates’ scrutiny because it can lay hold of an unchanging God who has revealed himself in this world in the work and person of Christ.
Quotes from Forrest E. Baird, ed. From Plato to Derrida, 6th Ed . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2011.
Christo et Ecclesiae 