Good Vs. God: Euthyphro's Dilemma

Good vs. God – Euthyphro’s Dilemma

Amber Qi 齐靖琮
2016080415
美619

ABSTRACT
Is there an objective goodness, or does god dictate the meaning of goodness? Impiety and corrupting the youth are the two accusations that directly led Socrates to his death. But what is “impiety” and is Socrates guilty of it? Demonstrated in “Euthyphro”, by Plato, before Socrates’s trial, Socrates and Euthyphro engage in a conversation about the definition of “piety” and attempts to uncover the nature of being good and its relationship to the existence of god. Socrates examines Euthyphro’s opinion of being “pious” and challenges Euthyphro to elaborate on his definition, and eventually, confuse and contradict himself. In true Socratic spirit, Socrates chooses

The divine command theory means that what is morally right is judged and decided by the gods. Socrates questions Euthyphro’s belief in pleasing the gods to be “pious” by stating, “They have differences of opinion, as you say, about good and evil, just and unjust, honourable and dishonourable: there would have been no quarrels among them, if there had been no such differences – would there now?” (119). Even though Euthyphro answers that “pious” must mean that it is pleasing to all gods, it is obvious that actions will mean different things to different gods. The gods then are different from the God now, and without a constant definition of “God”, Euthyphro’s definition of “piety” would not be the same in different cultures and not be a universal answer that applies to all. In the society in which Socrates lives in, the people’s moral values and thinking is dominated by the predisposition of the existence of the Greek gods. Greek gods have strong personalities and are each driven by different interest, so it is extremely difficult to please all