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Taking Action In Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma

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Imagine that you and a friend are exploring the moonlit streets of downtown Seattle on foot. As both of you approach the crosswalk, you happen to notice a car speeding down the hill that precedes the crosswalk, but your friend, being from elsewhere and engrossed in awe, fails to notice the speeding car and continues to the crosswalk with no sign of planning to stop from both your friend and the speeding car. For the sake of ease let’s assume that only two actions can be taken. The first one being that you shove your friend out of the way and you get hit by the speeding car and suffer injuries that diminish the quality of your life. The second option is that you, instead of sacrificing your well-being, allow the car to hit your friend which will result in their death. This scenario, with both decisions resulting in unwanted consequences, illustrates what a dilemma is and will help in understanding the specific dilemma I plan to discuss for the remainder of this essay. The Euthyphro dilemma has plagued the minds of great thinkers since the time of antiquity. This dilemma finds its origins in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro which features Socrates and Euthyphro, his son as well as an ancient religious prophet of Athens, engaging in discourse that touches on the relationship between the gods and piety. Socrates, while engaging in civil discourse with the prophet, presses him four different times in order to bring forth a …show more content…

In his article Religion and The Queerness of Morality, he explores the idea that morality, in a Russellian world, is considered to be an absurdity. However, in tying morality back to Christianity, concludes that morality that is tied to God is not the deepest thing and is merely “provisional and transitory” (Mavrodes, 226). Transitory to what? I do not believe to be capable of possessing such an answer to

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