Hello,
This is my first post on these forums, and I would like to dedicate my first post to an all-time classic: Euthyphro.
Now my question is not about the “Euthyphro Dilemma”, it is about the passage in which Socrates critiques Euthryphro’s third account of what piety is. For those who are not too familiar with the text anymore I will summarize and also reprint some of the more important lines onto here.
So Socrates delves into a discussion about piety with Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro(who claims to be an expert on such matters) to please explain to him what exactly piety and impiety is. Euthyphro then goes onto to give two definitions of what he believes piety to be, only to be rendered insufficient by Socrates. Now the third account of piety, according to Euthyphro, is what I am interested in. Socrates helps him out a bit but eventually it comes out to be this, “Yes, I say that what all the gods love is pious, and the opposite (that is, what they all hate) is impious.”
Socrates then asks the famous “The point that I first wish to understand is whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved by the gods”? Euthyphro is confused at this point and asks for some clarification, so Socrates relates the issue to some more concrete examples. Actions such as carrying, leading and seeing, all have the fundamental difference that Socrates is hinting at, the crux of the distinction being: A thing is not being affected because it is something affected, but it is something affected because it is being affected. Socrates goes on with this disparity between “a state of being affected” and “being affected” and applies it to the concept/word of “loved” and “being loved”.
S: “Is not that which is loved in some state either of becoming or being affected?”
E: “Yes”
S: “And the same holds as in the previous instances: The state of being loved follows from the act of loving; the act does not follow the state”
E: “Certainly”
S: “And what do you say of piety, Euthyphro? Is not piety, according to your definition, loved by all the gods?”
E: “Yes”
Okay and now that the supposition of piety being that which is “loved by all the gods” is agreed upon, Socrates begins his refutation of this version of piety; and, this is exactly where things get a little fuzzy because of the word choice. I do not feel that it is necessary to type out the argument in its entirety here because if one has the solution to the problem that I am asking, then I think it is safe to assume that you either have access to the dialogue or know which passage I am referring to.
This is my own interpretation of the argument. Socrates(who is “casted” by Plato) I think is trying to disprove this theory based on a critical piece of Western Logic: something can not be A and ~A(not A) at the same time. If we go back to the distinction that Socrates made earlier, which was that there is a huge difference between being pious because something is intrinsically pious and being pious because it is loved by all the gods(or in other words the gods deem it to be pious, is this a safe assumption to make?). We can see that there are two different possible versions of piety. But if we go back and take the supposition that pious=being loved by all the gods, then the distinction between the two forms seems to disappear making the two versions of piety one in the same. Piety, with the accepted supposition, becomes pious because it is pious or pious because it is pious(being loved by all the gods) which makes two different things the same thing, which is not possible because of what Plato believed to be an absolute rule: something can not be A and ~A. Is this what Plato was getting at or did I completely misread the passage? And why do some people call it the “-ing/-ed” distinction?
Sorry if the post is a bit long, but this is really bugging me.