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Plato 3: Power Sharing
Sep. 14th, 2008 03:18 pmEuthyphro
Question here is "What is piety?" (my translator Fowler tending to use "piety" or "holiness" interchangeably, whereas the translator used in class tends to stick with "piety"); the dialogue ends inconclusively, the point being that you shouldn't smugly think you know what something such as piety is unless you've given it a lot of thought, and the dialogue is an example of how to go about thinking.
The question is of interest to Socrates not just for its own sake but because he's about to go on trial for his life, one of the accusations being impiety, so it would help to have an idea of what piety is when he faces his accusers. Euthyphro, though certain that he already knows, turns out to be of no help in the matter and ultimately begs out of the conversation.
A basic question that Socrates asks but I think ends up sidestepping: Is something (some behavior) holy because the gods love it, or do they love it because it's holy?
I see this as a question about authority. Is something holy on authority of the gods, or is holiness holy on its own authority? And on what authority or whose authority can we say what holiness is? 2,400 years later, such questions still seem like good ones;* that is, not easy to answer, though looking back 2,400 years (how time flies when you're doing philosophy!), I think Plato is asking them wrong, or is asking the wrong questions. He's far too either/or in the choices he give us and is wrong to think that the question of authority needs or can get a general, universal answer.
Socrates: We speak of being carried and of carrying, of being led and of leading, of being seen and of seeing; and you understand - do you not? - that in all such expressions the two parts differ one from the other in meaning and how they differ.
Euthyphro: I think I understand.
Socrates: Then, too, we conceive of a thing being loved and of a thing loving, that the two are different?
This actually sets the conversation going in a poor way, from which it never recovers, the difficulty being that it leaves out a third possibility, that something is visible yet unseen owing to no one having yet looked. And furthermore, the question as to whether a loved thing deserves to be loved doesn't really get posed in this framework, even though that's a question that Socrates seems to be raising in regard to piety.
( The one becomes lovable from the fact that it is loved, whereas the other is loved because it is itself lovable )
*Except we're likely to ask the question in regard to "value" rather than "piety": is something valuable because we value it or do we value it because it's valuable?
Question here is "What is piety?" (my translator Fowler tending to use "piety" or "holiness" interchangeably, whereas the translator used in class tends to stick with "piety"); the dialogue ends inconclusively, the point being that you shouldn't smugly think you know what something such as piety is unless you've given it a lot of thought, and the dialogue is an example of how to go about thinking.
The question is of interest to Socrates not just for its own sake but because he's about to go on trial for his life, one of the accusations being impiety, so it would help to have an idea of what piety is when he faces his accusers. Euthyphro, though certain that he already knows, turns out to be of no help in the matter and ultimately begs out of the conversation.
A basic question that Socrates asks but I think ends up sidestepping: Is something (some behavior) holy because the gods love it, or do they love it because it's holy?
I see this as a question about authority. Is something holy on authority of the gods, or is holiness holy on its own authority? And on what authority or whose authority can we say what holiness is? 2,400 years later, such questions still seem like good ones;* that is, not easy to answer, though looking back 2,400 years (how time flies when you're doing philosophy!), I think Plato is asking them wrong, or is asking the wrong questions. He's far too either/or in the choices he give us and is wrong to think that the question of authority needs or can get a general, universal answer.
Socrates: We speak of being carried and of carrying, of being led and of leading, of being seen and of seeing; and you understand - do you not? - that in all such expressions the two parts differ one from the other in meaning and how they differ.
Euthyphro: I think I understand.
Socrates: Then, too, we conceive of a thing being loved and of a thing loving, that the two are different?
This actually sets the conversation going in a poor way, from which it never recovers, the difficulty being that it leaves out a third possibility, that something is visible yet unseen owing to no one having yet looked. And furthermore, the question as to whether a loved thing deserves to be loved doesn't really get posed in this framework, even though that's a question that Socrates seems to be raising in regard to piety.
( The one becomes lovable from the fact that it is loved, whereas the other is loved because it is itself lovable )
*Except we're likely to ask the question in regard to "value" rather than "piety": is something valuable because we value it or do we value it because it's valuable?
