Plato Reading Group (Euthyphro)

This is a meetup for those who expressed an interest in reading Plato's dialogues. The first meeting is on Euthyphro, the theme of which is piety- what is it? And is it a virtue?

Where is this event? The Douglas library on Queen's campus, room 105

If you click attending please be sure to read the dialogue in advance of the meeting, all participants are expected to have read the assigned reading for this reading group.

An online copy of the dialogue is available here:
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html

And a short online lecture (not a substitute for reading the dialogue!) is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93S5IL9SXFI

Cheers,
Colin

PS: for February we will do a Valentine's day theme by reading Symposium, which is on love.

*** UPDATED SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER**

This was an interesting, and short, dialogue. I had not read it before, but the dominant themes emerge in other dialogues I have read.
Permit me to frame a few of the themes into some questions that may lead our discussion and debate on Saturday.

The key question this dialogue concerns itself with is the nature of piety (or holiness). Though this devolves into discussions of virtue/morality/justice as, for Plato, these are interdependent/interchangeable things.

This dialogue takes place a few weeks before Socrates’s trial, where he is charged (and condemned to death) for corrupting the youth and impiety (we will cover The Apology, the trial of Socrates, later his year). So Socrates’s interest in this question is not purely an intellectual one. Euthyphro, a few decades younger than the 70 year old Socrates, has the reputation as a prophet, or at least an expert on the topic of theology. Socrates runs into him at the Porch of the King Archon, the place where legal proceedings are sorted out. Euthyphro is there because he is prosecuting his father for murder (he killed a field labourer who, while drunk, killed one of their domestic servants).

Question #1. Let’s start first with the example of piety that Euthyphro provides to Socrates, before he attempts to define piety. Euthyphro is prosecuting his father for murder. But the person his father was responsible for killing (he bound him up and left him in a ditch until a diviner could be summoned to determine his fate, but the man died in the process) had also killed someone. Do you think that a son prosecuting their father in such a case is moral/pious? When justifying his stance Euthyphro notes that Zeus prosecuted his wrongdoing father. The suggestion is that piety is imitating the gods. Do you think Euthyphro is correct in taking this stance?

Question #2. How would you define piety or impiety? I myself, as an atheist, would not conflate morality/virtue with piety. I would characterize piety as adherence to some particular religious beliefs/convention, which may or may not be moral (depending on the details of the religion in question).

Question #3. When pushed to actually define, rather than provide an example of piety, Euthyphro suggests that piety involves doing what the gods do, imitating them. Reflecting on your own upbringing (I was raised Catholic, but have been an atheist since my mid-20s), did you find the religious teachings you were raised with provided a sound moral compass? Can you think of examples where mimicking the gods (or teachings of religion) captured moral wisdom and, conversely, expressed moral vice?

Socrates chips away at Euthyphro’s original formulation of piety, noting that the gods do not always agree about things. This leads to the conjecture that what all the gods love is pious, and what all the gods hate is impious. This then leads to what I found the dialogue’s most vexing discussion —is the pious beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved by the gods? It’s the chicken and the egg problem- which comes first or has priority. If you want to be pious, should you be primarily concerned with what is beloved by the gods or by what is holy?

Question #4. Euthyphro eventually offers a further articulation of the nature of piety by suggesting that it is knowledge of how to give to the gods- with sacrifice and prayer. What are your thoughts on these themes? What value (positive and negative) do you think they serve? To both individuals and society more generally?
The dialogue ends rather abruptly with Euthyphro saying he has to go as he is in a hurry. Perhaps he cannot tolerate the cognitive dissonance caused by the Socrates method, or perhaps it was Socrates’s back-handed insult that Euthyphro’s abundance of wisdom makes him lazy!! Ha ha

Look forward to our discussions.