• All philosophy a footnote to Plato
• A belief in absolutes
• Justice is an absolute
• Not what people, the state or the gods say it is
• Knowledge is passive
• A kind of contemplation or vision
• Like mathematical or religious insight

The Euthyphro

• What is justice?
• Euthyphro
• A "smug fool"
• Indicting his father
• For murder & disloyalty to the state
• Euthyphro’s father killed a farm hand
• Bound him while he sent to Athens
• To ask the priest what to do

Relativism vs. Essentialism

• Euthyphro’s definition of piety & impiety
• What the gods do should be our standard
• Cronos castrated his own father
• For wrongfully devouring his own children
• Socrates wants to know
• The characteristic that makes all actions pious
• Not one or two examples of pious acts

Euthyphro’s definition of piety

• What is pious is
• What is pleasing to the gods
• What is impious is
• What is not pleasing to them
• Socrates objects
• But the gods disagree

Socrates’ criticism of Euthyphro

• People agree that
• The unjust & only the unjust should be punished
• People disagree about
• Who is just & who is unjust
• Socrates asks Euthyphro how he can know
• The gods would find what he did just & what his father did unjust

Socrates’ crucial question

• Do the gods love a pious act
• Because it is pious?
• Or is an act pious
• Because the gods love it?

My dog Lolly

• Am I loveable
• Because Lolly loves me?
• Or
• Does Lolly love me
• Because I am loveable?

Inherent vs. relative properties

• The Socratic method
• Get someone to "see" the true nature of things
• If what the gods love is a criterion
• Then, the gods love an act b/c it is pious
• Not, an act is pious b/c the gods love it

Summing up

• Euthyphro hasn’t explained
• The essential nature of piety
• Hence should not prosecute his old father
• Contemporary children who
• Prosecute parents for child abuse
• Does their saying they were abused mean that they were?