At some point perhaps soon after Socrates’ death and after the retreat to Megara, Plato seems to have put pen to papyrus and begun crafting dialogues starring Socrates as the questioner and assorted other figures as answerers. Plato provided a historical setting for each conversation and peopled them with characters often representing real people whom Socrates knew or might have known. Indeed, Plato provides a verisimilitude for his dialogues that seems to have surpassed that of other Socratics who began writing at about the same time. The dialogues seem to depict the methods and habits, even the idiosyncrasies, of the barefoot philosopher.
These dialogues present Socrates raising philosophical issues with individuals, some of whom are, or pretend to be, intellectuals and experts, but some of whom are ordinary citizens or even teenagers without any claim to education or expertise. The dialogues tend to be short and typically end without arriving at a satisfactory resolution of the problem or question being examined.
One of the best-known and most accessible of the Socratic dialogues is Plato’s Euthyphro, in which a chance encounter with a would-be expert generates a conversation with important philosophical and also dramatic implications. Having emerged from the Royal Stoa, the office of the King Archon, one of the magistrates of Athens, from an important meeting, Socrates runs into Euthyphro, a self-appointed religious expert. Socrates has just been arraigned on a charge of impiety and corrupting the youth, and had to make statements and arrangements for an upcoming trial. He will be on trial for his life for his alleged shortcomings in religious belief and practice.
“What is your case?” Socrates asks Euthypro. “Are you defending or prosecuting?”
“Prosecuting.”
“Whom?”
“Someone I would be thought mad to prosecute.”
“Really? Is it some fugitive?”
“He’s hardly likely to flee, since he happens to be quite old.”
“Who is it?”
“My father.”
“Your own father, sir!”
“Yes, indeed.”
In Athens there was no district attorney or public prosecutor. Citizens brought other citizens to trial, even on criminal charges. As a matter of fact, it was almost always a personal enemy or a political rival that a citizen accused. To go after one’s own kin, especially one’s father, was unheard of—shocking in fact. But Euthyphro is confident in his case, based as it is on his expert knowledge of what is right and wrong, proper and improper, in the service of the gods. Euthyphro’s father has arrested one of his servants who had killed another servant, thrown him in a pit, and let him die of exposure and starvation, contrary to the demands of religious duty as his son sees it.
Socrates professes to see in Euthyphro a man of great understanding who may help him to defend himself against the charge of impiety. What then is piety?, Socrates inquires. And so begins a study of the virtue of piety or reverence, inspired by the action of a religious expert and made urgent by the plight of Socrates as defendant in a capital trial.
Socrates asks Euthyphro to define piety for him: “What sort of thing do you say is godliness and ungodliness, concerning murder and everything else?”
“Well, I say,” Euthyphro responds, “that holiness or piety is what I am now doing, accusing the perpetrator for murder or theft or whatever crime he is guilty of, whether it is your father or mother or anybody else; and not to accuse is unholiness.”[1] He goes on to cite the way in which in Greek mythology, Cronus punished his father Uranus, and later Zeus punished his father Cronus. Socrates explains that he is uncomfortable with such stories, which seem to attribute violent and vengeful actions to the gods. Here we get a glimpse of Socrates’ own religious views, which he rarely shares in his discussions of ethical issues. Socrates seems to believe that the gods are always blamelessly moral in all their actions, and if the myths imply otherwise, so much worse for traditional mythology.
But here, as in other dialogues, Socrates insists that his answerer give him, not examples of virtuous actions, but a general definition, one which at least purports to apply to all cases of moral action. Examples might offer starting points for reflection, but they do not provide a general rule for behavior. What is it that makes holy actions holy?
“Well then,” says Euthyphro, “what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious.”[2]
Now Euthyphro is on the right track, for he has given Socrates a general account of piety. But, given Euthyphro’s commitment to the myths, there is a problem: traditionally, the Greek gods disagree with each other on fundamental points, and seem to hold different things dear. For instance, in Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus, the title character gets into trouble in the first scene by offering a sacrifice to Artemis, goddess of chastity, and ignoring Cypris or Aphrodite, goddess of lust. What pleases one goddess offends the other, and leads to the hero’s downfall. Ares the god of war and Irene the goddess of peace stand for opposing values, and so on. How can I as a mortal be sure my worship of one god and his or her values does not offend other gods?
Euthyphro sees the point, and offers a new and improved definition: “I would say that this is the holy: what all the gods love; and the opposite, what all the gods hate, is unholy.”[3] This definition could leave a large area of interaction with the gods undefined, so long as they are seen to have conflicting values, but it does at least offer an area in which pious action is recognized.
[1]. Plato Euthyphro 5a-e.
[2]. Plato Euthyphro 6e-7a, trans. Grube.
[3]. Plato Euthyphro 9e.