Summary of Plato's Euthyphro

Socrates meets Euthyphro in the courtyard outside the Courthouse. Euthyphro is a professional priest. He is at the Courthouse because he is about to prosecute his father for the murder of one of his servants. The victim was himself a murderer. He murdered a fellow slave "in drunken anger." Euthyphro's father then ties him up, throws him in a ditch, and sends a messenger to find out what to do about him. The messenger is delayed in returning; meanwhile, the neglected prisoner dies. In Greek law and practice, the father might have been guilty of negligent manslaughter, but certainly not murder. Socrates is stunned that Euthyphro would disregard convention, as well as his obligations to kin, by prosecuting his father for murder. He asks Euthyphro whether he is confident that what he's doing is the right thing. Euthyphro replies, haughtily, that ordinary people don't really understand the divine attitude to piety and impiety, whereas, he does know what the gods think about such matters. And he knows that what he's doing is pious (i.e. morally correct.)

Socrates is at the Courthouse because he has been charged by Meletus of two crimes against the state: not believing in the Olympian gods (which is considered an act of "impiety"), and corrupting the youth. So, he is there to defend himself at trial. Socrates is being charged with impiety, and Euthyphro claims to know what piety is. Hence, Socrates seizes the opportunity to learn from Euthyphro what, exactly, piety (i.e. moral correctness or truth) is. If he knew what piety was, he'd be better able to defend himself against the accusation of violating it. So, he asks Euthyphro to define piety.

First Definition of Piety

Euthyphro answers that piety is doing what I'm doing here today, namely, prosecuting my father for murder and seeing that justice is done. Socrates does not challenge the truth of the statement, "What I'm doing today to my father is pious," but he does claim that that statement is not a definition of piety. The statement in question merely provides an example of piety, much like the statement that "What is in my garage is a car" might be true, but it can hardly be said to define the word 'car.' So, the first definition fails.

Second Definition of Piety

Euthyphro realizes his mistake, and tries again to define piety. His second try is, Pious acts are loved by the gods. Socrates thinks that this statement is not a good definition, because if you tried to apply it to a particular case, it is likely to lead to a contradiction. For instance, suppose I want to know whether my writing this summary is pious or not. So, I apply Euthyphro's definition, What is pious is what is loved by the gods. I have to find out what the gods love. This is a practical problem, because it might be difficult to find out what the gods love, but in principle it can be done. In Socrates' day, he would have gone to Delphi where the priestess can talk to the god Apollo. In a Christian culture, one might ask a priest or a minister, or pray to God for guidance, or read the divinely-inspired scriptures. However I manage to do it, suppose I find out what the gods think about my writing this summary. The problem that concerned Socrates was, What do I do if the gods don't agree among themselves - some of them approve of what I'm doing and some disapprove? In such a case, Euthyphro's second definition gives the result that what I am doing is pious (because it is loved by gods) and it is also impious (because it is not loved by gods.) Any definition that gives such results when applied in a concrete case must be regarded as a poor definition. Back to the drawing boards, Euthyphro.

Third Definition of Piety

All Euthyphro need do is replace the word 'the' in the second definition by the word 'all' in order to eliminate the problem that arose in trying to apply the second definition. The result is the third definition: Pious acts are loved by all the gods. It is still possible that the gods might not agree among themselves about particular cases, but if so, then the act in question would not be pious. So, this third definition does not yield contradictory results when applied to concrete cases, and hence, it solves the difficulty posed by the second definition. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is confident that all the gods surely love the fact that he is prosecuting his father. Hence, the third definition yields the result that Euthyphro's prosecuting his father for murder is a pious act. Socrates, no doubt, does not think that what Euthyphro is doing with his father is morally correct or pious, but he does not say this to Euthyphro because his disagreement with Euthyphro on that score is not strictly relevant to his concern with the definition of the word piety. Socrates' main concern is not with the particulars of Euthyphro's action; his main concern is to discover what the word piety means. So, for this reason, he doesn't announce his disagreement with Euthyphro's belief that all the gods love what he's doing to his father. In fact, for the sake of the argument, Socrates even indicates that he agrees with Euthyphro that all the gods love the fact that he's prosecuting his father.

At this point in the dialogue, we come to the heart of the philosophical dimension of the story. Plato asks Euthyphro the following question:

Euthyphro's Dilemma

Is what you're doing pious because it is loved by the gods, or do the gods love what you're doing because what you're doing is pious?

This question reveals Plato's brilliance. Philosophers today still admire this question. It poses such a deep, difficult problem for Euthyphro's attempt to define the word piety, that this question has been given a name. It is called 'Euthyphro's Dilemma.' In order to see more clearly what is going on here, let me introduce two other questions (of my own) which most of us can answer with confidence.

(A) Is driving on the right side of the road correct because the legislators of old ruled that driving on the right side of the road is correct, or did the legislators of old rule that driving on the right side of the road is correct because they recognized that driving on the right side of the road was correct?

(B) Is E = mc² true because Einstein said that E = mc², or did Einstein say that E = mc² because he recognized that that equation is true?

Regarding (A), most of us would say that the left alternative is correct. Before the legislators of old made a law that stated which side of the road was the correct side to drive on, neither side of the road was the correct side to drive on. That was the precise reason why a law was needed! In England, as you know, when the legislators considered the same issue, they ruled that driving on the left side of the road is the correct place to drive, just the opposite of American law. But American law is not more correct than British law in this regard. It's arbitrary which side the legislators made the correct side. Once the American legislators made the ruling, then when everyone obeyed the ruling by driving on the right instead of the left, then a convention was established. A convention is an arbitrary agreement among people to adopt a particular practice. They could have adopted a different practice just as easily and without violating what we know ahead-of-time to be true.

Regarding (B), most of us would say that the right alternative is correct. If Einstein hadn't discovered the truth behind this famous equation, probably someone else would have done so. And even supposing that no one ever discovered this truth, it surely would not thereby acquire the status of a falsehood. In other words, E = mc² would have been true even if no one had ever discovered its truth. Surely, there are millions and millions of truths about the mysterious universe we live in that no one yet has discovered, and many that never will be discovered. Human beings don't have the ability (even if they so desired) to legislate or bring into existence the laws that govern the physical world.

So, (A) and (B) differ in a fundamental way. Now, Euthyphro's Dilemma is to decide whether morality is more like civil, conventional matters such as (A) or more like physical, objective matters such as (B). But Euthyphro, being an ancient Greek, had no difficulty deciding. He answered that the gods love his prosecuting his father because his prosecuting his father is correct. In other words, Euthyphro thought that questions about what is pious or morally correct are on a par with the laws of the physical universe, i.e. they are objective and fixed and universal. For Euthyphro, morality is not conventional or arbitrary. To say otherwise, to say that morality is closer to civil law judgments than to judgments of physicists and chemists is to fall into the error of the Sophists. Euthyphro disagreed with Protagoras, that "man is the measure of all things." Man is not the measure (or standard) of what is right and wrong. Reality is the measure of piety! And if humans believe they know what is morally correct, then either they're right or they're wrong. And, if they are right in their moral judgments, they're not right simply because they have made honest moral judgments. In other words, in morality (as opposed to conventional issues in the law) saying so doesn't make it so. This is Euthyphro's tacit reasoning behind his answer to Socrates' question.

Now we are ready to consider Socrates' criticism of Euthyphro's third definition of piety. We have seen that he asked Euthyphro the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma question. And we have discussed Euthyphro's answer to his question. The next fact should startle you: Socrates states that Euthyphro gave the right answer! But if so, then what's his criticism of the third definition? Or, otherwise put, if Euthyphro's answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma was correct, then why do we consider the question to be a dilemma? A dilemma is a bind, it's an either/or situation, such that if you opt for the left alternative (the either) you're in trouble, and if you opt for the right alternative (the or) you're in trouble. So, a dilemma is a bind that you can't get out of no matter which of the offered alternatives you choose. Now our question is why is Euthyphro in a dilemma in spite of the fact that his choice of the left alternative, akin to (B), was the correct choice?

Socrates' complaint against the third definition of piety is that, although the statement, "Whatever all the gods love is pious," is true (or at least can be considered true for the sake of the argument), it is not a definition. It's not a definition because a definition of X is supposed to tell us what the essence of X is - i.e. what makes something to be an X? For example, the definition of "horse" should state what characteristics constitute something as a horse. If I told you that all cowboys love horses, I might have told you something true about horses, but I wouldn't have told you what makes something to be a horse. Similarly, Euthyphro's third definition, although it does tell us something true about piety, namely that all the gods love pious actions, it doesn't tell us what makes some action to be a pious action. For example, granted that the gods all regard Euthyphro's prosecuting his father to be something they love, the question remains: What exactly do they see about that action that they find loveable? For this reason, Socrates complains that all the third definition gives is a "quality or characteristic" of piety, not the essence or definition.

Euthyphro does go on to attempt another definition at this point in the dialogue, but the fourth definition ends up, after being clarified somewhat, to be equivalent to the second one. So, once Euthyphro realizes that he has come full circle in his attempt to define piety, and he also realizes that he has exhausted his creative juices, he becomes frustrated by Socrates' questioning. So, he makes up an excuse to leave. He says that he has urgent business elsewhere. Socrates complains that his expectation of learning about the essence of piety has been dashed. The end.