Divine Command Theory and Plato's Euthyphro

Introduction to Plato's Euthyphro

  • This lecture focuses on Plato's dialogue, the Euthyphro, to explore divine command theory.
  • Plato: Ancient Greek philosopher; Socrates' student; Aristotle's teacher.

Review of Divine Command Theory

  • Definition: Morality is derived from a divine commander (God or gods).
  • Moral rules are religious in authority.
  • Why follow moral rules? Because God commanded them.
  • Key point: The rules given by God are the only rules of morality.
  • Skepticism: Moral truths are objective, universal, and mind-independent, but unknowable to humans except through divine revelation.
  • Moral claims are true only if "God said so."

Problems with Divine Command Theory

  • Identifying God: Determining the correct conception of God, religious text, or interpretation is challenging and conflict-ridden.
  • Moral Ground Version:
    • God is the standard of right and wrong; God's actions are neither right nor wrong.
    • God's actions are arbitrary; morality depends on God's causal responsibility.
    • Implication: If God commanded torture, torture would be moral.
  • Inability to Reason: Moral Ground Version hinders human reasoning about moral rules.
  • Diminishes humans as moral agents capable of using reason to discern right from wrong.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

  • Three significant figures in Western philosophy.
    • Socrates taught Plato.
    • Plato taught Aristotle.
  • Lived in the late 400s BCE.
  • Socrates didn't write anything down (as far as we know).
  • Plato's dialogues feature Socrates as the primary character.

Plato's Dialogues

  • Scholars distinguish between early, middle, and late dialogues.
  • Significance:
    • Euthyphro (early dialogues) vs. Republic (middle dialogues).
    • Early dialogues: Plato's record of Socrates' views.
    • Middle and later dialogues: Plato articulates his own views through Socrates.
  • Euthyphro presents Socrates' (historical Socrates) views.

Dialogues as Spoken Word Arguments

  • No rigid distinction between literature and philosophical arguments.
  • Socrates favored spoken arguments.
  • Dialogues are exchanges between two parties.
  • Reflect the ongoing collective enterprise of accumulating knowledge.
  • Acknowledge the limits of individual human reason and the value of engaging with others.

Analyzing the Euthyphro Dialogue

  • Not everything in the dialogue is crucial to the core argument.
  • Some parts are setup, digressions, or tangents.
  • Lacks thesis, description, and reasons structure.
  • Focus on pages 71-73 and 76 to the end for the core argument.
  • Plato's point: Morality is mind-independent, even of the gods.

The Central Question

  • The Question: Do the gods love an action because it is pious, or is the action pious because it is loved by the gods?
  • Focus on the middle of page 71.
  • Moral Ground Version is untenable.
  • Whatever morality is, it is independent of the minds of the gods.
  • Gods love moral actions because of some inherent feature of those actions or people.
  • Gods recognize morality; they don't cause it.
  • Rejects divine command theory in favor of Moral Index Version.
  • Gods have access to moral truths, which humans may or may not have.
  • Dialogue ends with Euthyphro's departure, leaving the question unanswered.

Dialogue Setup (First Four Pages)

  • Socrates and Euthyphro meet outside the Athenian court (Lyceum).
  • Socrates faces charges brought by Meletus.
    • Corrupting Athenian youth.
  • If found guilty, Socrates will be put to death.
  • Socrates questions Greek mythology and characterizations of the gods.
  • Socrates makes ironic remarks about Meletus and Euthyphro's intelligence.

Euthyphro's Situation

  • Euthyphro is at court to prosecute his father.
  • Socrates is shocked.
  • Euthyphro's father is charged with murdering a servant (slave).
  • One servant murdered another; the father tied up the murderer, who then died in a ditch while awaiting religious guidance.
  • Euthyphro charges his father with a crime against the gods.
  • Socrates seeks Euthyphro's religious knowledge to defend himself.

The Socratic Method

  • Exemplified in the dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro (starting on page 66).
  • Steps:
    1. Elicit the other person's position.
    2. Ask a series of questions prompting yes/no responses.
    3. Guide the person to either accept the truth or recognize flaws in their view.
  • Aims to modify the initial position to better accommodate the questions and answers.
  • Note: The Socratic method will not be prominent in the Republic excerpt.

Defining Holiness

  • Socrates asks Euthyphro to define what the gods find pious (holy).
  • Piety is related to religious obedience and moral correctness.
  • Socrates seeks the defining feature or essence of holiness.
  • Euthyphro's initial definition: Prosecuting wrongdoers is holy; failing to do so is unholy, irrespective of the relationship.
  • Socrates points out this is just one example and seeks the general defining feature.

Euthyphro's Second Definition

  • What the gods love is holy; what they despise is unholy.
  • Socrates: This is exactly what I was wanting.
  • On this view, pious and impious are opposites.
  • The gods disagree about morally right actions.
  • When there are conflicting set of opinions, they will frequently try to resolve those opinions by relying on some standards. So Socrates actually uses the example of a standard of measurement by using a meter.
  • There appears to be no such standard available in moral concerns, making it difficult to resolve disagreements.
  • This results in contradictions: some actions will be both holy and unholy.
  • Euthyphro concedes but claims some actions are universally loved or hated by all gods.

Socrates Changes his Tune

  • Socrates acknowledges that all the gods would probably agree that prosecuting a wrongful killing is desirable.
  • Disagreement focuses on establishing guilt.
  • Socrates shifts the burden of proof onto Euthyphro.
  • Euthyphro must show that all the gods would love the prosecution of his father, given his actual guilt.
  • Euthyphro is confident he can do it.
  • Socrates notes they've digressed and that his question needs a generalized definition of holiness.

The Central Argument (Page 71)

  • Fundamental question: Do the gods love an action because it is pious, or is the action pious because it is loved by the gods?
  • Two possibilities:
    1. Pious actions have a feature independent of the gods that causes them to be loved.
    2. The gods' love is what makes the action pious.
  • Socrates defends the first view through conceptual analysis by analogy.

Socrates' Analogies

  • Socrates uses the examples of being carried, being led, being loved, and being seen.
  • Being carried: A thing is not leadable because it is being led; it is led because it is leadable.
  • A thing is carried by another person because it is carriable independently of the fact that anyone is actually carrying it.
  • Lovable thing: Is lovable independently of its being loved.
  • The fact that some feature about it might cause it to be loved by another.
  • Feature of the object:
    • In the case of carrying, leading, seeing and loving, the objects that are being carried, led, loved and seen all have properties that allow for them to be seen, be carried, be loved and be led by any given individual properties. That are independent from the fact that they are being led or carried or loved or seen.
  • Conceptual Point: Pious is a property of the action or person.
  • Conclusion: The fact that the gods love it doesn't make it pious; they love it because it is pious.

Back and Forth

  • Euthyphro says I've made him reject the definition of holiness to where what the gods love and can't possibly be true to the moral ground version of divine command theory.
  • Socrates makes the explicit connection between justice and holiness aka morality.
  • Morality: All human actions and people.
  • Piety: Set of moral actions concerned with the ministering to the gods specifically
  • Socrates: That's the same answer we just said wasn't a good answer. By saying holiness is just what pleases them, those actions that please the gods or displease them.
  • There's some property of holy actions, correctly moral actions that exists independent of the gods, and it's that property that explains why the gods love those actions.
  • Socrates: We're going to have to start all over again.

Euthyphro's Departure

  • Euthyphro says I gotta go. Note he still has to prosecute his father still.
  • In the end, Euthyphro ends up leaving before answering the central question: What is the essence of holiness?
  • The dialogue partially answered the question:
    • Whatever morality is, it is not because of the gods.
    • The gods are not causally responsible for moral standards.
    • At best, they have access to moral truths that are difficult for humans to access.
    • Socrates rejecting the Moral Ground Version Divine Command theory.