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The Euthyphro: The Definition Of Goodness

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Goodness is a central question of life. Humankind tends to be good. Everything routes to the question of what is goodness. People throughout the history have changed notions of good so strongly and as result it has caused difficulties in defining goodness. Also it is obviously that people often correlate good and bad to their current requirements and needs. Since the beginning of human existence people use such words as morality, generosity, ethics, kindness to describe the goodness; and immorality, coarseness, infirmity to describe badness. People see goodness and badness in a way they want. However, overabundance of sources which define goodness and badness such as society, religion and mass media have made lots of confusions in describing …show more content…

Socrates as a wise man understands that if religion forms humans’ personality and views on surrounding, then it means that there is no place for you as a human being. Thus, Socrates tries to argue with Euthyphro to find the definition of goodness and asks Euthyphro questions. Euthyphro gives several definitions of goodness such as prosecuting his own father is an act of goodness, but Socrates quickly responses to him that it is only instance but not the definition. Then, he replies to Socrates that goodness is something that is pleasant to gods. However, Socrates is not satisfied with such definition and responses to Euthyphro that many of conflicts exist among the gods and what is pleasant to one god might be unpleasant to another. Consequently, Euthyphro says that goodness is something pleasant to all gods. So at end of dialogue, Socrates have not agreed with Euthyphro and says “So I think you’ve just been playing games with me, Euthyphro. I asked you to tell me what holiness really is, and it seems you’ve sneakily refused to tell me” (Plato, 1984, p.49). Thereby, the dialogue leaves readers with unanswered question “Does goodness exist?” and if it exists what goodness is? In the other words, it means that Euthyphro tries to find answer but due to lack of knowledge and a straight thinking he could not find it. Nevertheless, Socrates …show more content…

Every act of goodness and badness have their own purpose and do not have something in common. Because some people do good deeds in order to satisfy themselves or to feel themselves worthy of something. Even if going against society is unpleasant and difficult it is worthy of trying because going through the frames of society allows you define what goodness means for

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