For this week, I would like to collect other's thoughts on our discussion towards the very end of class. Because class is not as nearly long enough as it should be we really only surfaced upon the question: Is something pious because the gods love it or do the gods love it because it is pious?
Comment your thoughts. Is there a straight answer? Also do you also believe that this was one of Plato's more intense/interesting questions?
I look forward to the comments and hope that I can agree or interject how I feel as I am still working through the question myself.
The problem with Socrates' solution isn't that there is no straight answer--the problem is that he presents the answer as two equally undesirable alternatives (what logicians call a "dilemma") that lead to basically the same conclusion.
ReplyDelete1) The gods get to choose what's pious.
2) They're just (to borrow Matt's phrase) "along for the ride."
1 reduces the gods to ruling by might alone. They say a thing is good (i.e. to be charitable) but the only reason it's good is because they're powerful and will make your life terrible if you don't adhere to their rules, a sort of divine tyranny.
2 is undesirable because it means that there are forces in the universe which the gods either don't control (making them less than omnipotent) or that we would have to resort to some very convoluted and self-contradictory thinking to explain (something to the effect of: "the gods used logic to make logic such that they were bound by it..."?).
In either case it doesn't look good for Euthyphro.
I agree with your analysis Brett. I think you definitely are able to portray the run around of the dilemma that Plato poses. Part of me really wants to think though that right and wrong are completely separated from "godliness". Like Matt said, we know the difference between right and wrong whether or not the gods or god are involved. I feel like a pious action, although its definition is that it is a religious act, is more so just something good. Therefore I believe that is is something that can be separated from the gods. Although it may please them if one were pious, I do not believe it is only pious because it pleases them.
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