Plato’s “Euthyphro”

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Plato’s Euthyphro is a dialogue that poses the issue of right and wrong, and what makes an action be termed as right or wrong. The conversation between Euthyphro and Socrates leads to a dilemma. It becomes unclear to Euthyphro whether righteousness or holiness is ultimately defined by God, or whether God loves righteousness because it is good. This relates to Creel’s argument of “Perfect being Ethics” in his discussion of divine command ethics. Creel brings up an argument that God decides whether an action is right or wrong. He suggests that understanding “Perfect being Ethics” would require one to imagine how a perfect human being would act. Creel suggests that this offers alternatives, such as understanding the nature of God through studying the Bible, but another approach tries to compare what several religious scripts define as divine. Therefore, the approaches posed by the issue of “Perfect being Ethics” would need more elaboration to the understanding of God as a perfect being. This overcomes the self-contradictions brought about by those approaches.

The Euthyphro dilemma

The Euthyphro dilemma refers to the state Euthyphro found himself in after the conversation with Socrates, whereby it was difficult to decide whether God loves holiness because it is holy or whether holiness is holy because God loves it. Euthyphro believed that God ultimately defined holiness. He said that pious was pious because God loved it. Meanwhile, Socrates engaged him in a dialogue, which involved breaking down the matter in simple terms and allowed Euthyphro to decide what seemed right. The dialogue narrows down to two options. If pious is pious because it is as it is, then it is not determined by the subject in question. In this case, God deems to be pious because He decides it to be so, and piety becomes arbitrary. This is because, God can choose whatever is right, irrespective of the acceptable standards of ethics. This is a dilemma that faced Euthyphro and faces the believers of monotheism today.

A personal response to Euthyphro’s dilemma

Indeed, there is divinity, which we all cannot ignore. There is a divine power far beyond us all. God is perfect and according to the biblical scriptures, all He does is holy. The monotheists believe that God decides everything that is in place. I also believe that God made man in his image, so humans as well were supposed to be a perfect beings. However, after the fall of man in sin, as recorded in biblical scriptures, people lost the opportunity to maintain the state of ‘perfect being’. Before that, what pious was pious because God decided so. For instance, according to the Bible, the man was commanded not to eat the forbidden fruit. Eating fruit is not necessarily wrong. Yet the command was not to eat the fruit, and this was solely decided by God, which makes the argument of pious being pious because God says so, true in this case.

God is the source of ethics, yet I believe, He has everything put in place. The “holy” is holy even before He loves it; therefore, “holy” still becomes holy because he loves it. It is logical to assume that this issue is irrespective of who says or does so, and not that it is made to be in that state because someone says it is. Therefore, I believe that God loves what is right because it is right. The fact that He is holy means that He is the origin of all holiness, and declaring His love for what is holy does not necessarily make something holy.

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Plato’s “Euthyphro”

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