Book review: Euthyphro

By Plato (insert std.p-or-s). Written on phone on hols may update once home.

E and S meet and discuss Piety.

Preliminary: S is sarcastic and ironic; in philosophy, these are flaws. E is a poor adversary so P is strawmanning, another flaw.

S asks E for a defn of Piety; he gives instead an example; S complains of this and E offers instead "what is dear to the gods". S says the gods often disagree (an answer no longer available and also rather dull). S, absurdly, asks E to prove that all gods agree murder is bad; E actually offers to do this but S wimps out and shifts to a more interesting matter: is the Pious holy because loved by the gods, or loved because holy? (in the dialogue E fails to understand and S does one of his lengthy explanations-by-dodgy-analogy, but really that is for the readers benefit). E goes for loved cos pious. S then goes aha-gotcha! Cos E has not defn pious, he's just given an attribute of it: something the gods love.

So, this is half what we now know as the E dilemma, but S/P fails to notice the other half: E could have chosen pious cos loved (and if P were honest he'd admit that was what E originally said: "piety is that which is dear to the gods"; only after S has done his characteristic confuzalum does E reverse the sense so S can attack... ah, and this is disguised by inserting but-gods-disagree digression). The std problem with this choice in modern terms is that if the gods loved murder, it would then be pious (the std.prob with the other choice is that it limits gods omnipotence; again, S doesn't notice this).

There's some more word-dancing to no purpose after this, then E very sensibly gets bored and leaves.

Wiki manages "One criticism... is that the dilemma implies you must search for a definition that fits piety rather than work backwards by deciding pious acts (ie. you must know what piety is before you can list acts which are pious)" which is correct but badly incomplete: P (as Popper says) really did believe in essentialist defns: there really is for him such a thing, only waiting for us to seize it. Whereas Popper believes the reverse: defns are just shorthands; in this way, E's attempt to define-by-example is correct.

Another item of interest: the specific reason for E is his prosecuting his father, who has (perhaps accidentally, by tying him up and throwing him in a ditch whilst waiting for an answer of what to do with him) killed a poor dependent of E's who in turn had killed a slave. Now (a) S is highly doubtful that E should prosecute, which means he has a low valuation of the lives of poor men, which is contra his good reputation; (b) that the opinion of the authority asked, though by now it must be available, is not quoted; this is strange: (c) it does not occur to them that prosecuting could be a way of determining guilt; instead, weirdly, S insists on absolute certainty in advance.