Divine command theories of metaethics are commonly rejected on the basis of the Euthyphro problem. In this paper, I argue that the Euthyphro can be raised for all forms of moral realism. I go on to argue that this does not matter as the Euthyphro is not really a problem after all. I then briefly outline some of the attractions of a divine command theory of metaethics. I suggest that given one of the major reasons for rejecting (...) such an analysis has been found to be unsound divine command theories deserve to be taken more seriously in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

Consent theory in sexual ethics, Jonathan Ichikawa argues, has a Euthyphro problem. -/- It is widely held that sexual violations are explicable in terms of nonconsensual sexual contact. But a notion of consent adequate to explain many moral judgments typical of sexual ethics — a notion that vindicates the idea that consent cannot be coerced, that it must be sober, that children cannot consent to sex with adults, etc. — cannot, Ichikawa argues, be articulated, motivated, or explained in a (...) way independently of moral judgments about sexual wrongs. Consequently, if there is as tight a connection between consent and sexual violation as many people think there is, there is good reason to suppose that that connection must ultimately explain consent in terms of sexual wronging, rather than vice versa. The paper highlights some costs and drawbacks to this horn of the Euthyphro dilemma in sexual ethics. One central upshot of the argument will be that mainstream accounts of sexual ethics fail in their explanatory ambitions. Consent cannot play its canonical explanatory role. (shrink)

The Euthyphro Dilemma is named after a particular exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato‟s dialogue Euthyphro. In a famous passage, Socrates asks, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (Plato 1981: 10a), and proceeds to advance arguments which clearly favor the first of these two options (see PLATO). The primary interest in the Euthyphro Dilemma over the years, however, has primarily (...) concerned the relationship between God and morality in the monotheistic religious tradition, where God is taken to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, having created the universe initially and still actively involved in it today. But as we will see at the end of this entry, there has also been a recent surge of interest in a version of the Dilemma which applies to so-called response-dependent accounts of normative properties in meta-ethics. (shrink)

The Euthyphro dilemma is widely deployed as an argument against theistic accounts of ethics. The argument proceeds by trying to derive strongly counterintuitive implications from the view that God is the source of morality. I argue here that a general crudeness with which both the dilemma and its theistic targets are described accounts for the seeming force of the argument. Proper attention to details, among them the distinction between the good and the right, reveals that a nuanced theism is (...) quite unscathed by it. (shrink)

In this paper I start with the familiar accusation that divine command ethics faces a "Euthyphro dilemma". By looking at what Plato’s ’Euthyphro’ actually says, I argue that no such argument against divine-command ethics was Plato’s intention, and that, in any case, no such argument is cogent. I then explore the place of divine commands and inspiration in Plato’s thought more generally, arguing that Plato sees an important epistemic and practical role for both.

This text is in Greek with extensive commentary in English and includes a general introduction, introductions to each of the two texts, appendices, glossary, and vocabulary. The Euthyphro and the Clitophon provide an ideal, exciting introduction to Plato and Greek prose.

If one answers the question ‘What is G-ness?’ with a biconditional of the form ‘x is G iff x is F,’ one can ask whether x is G because it is F, or whether x is F because it is G. This question, known as The Euthyphro Question, invites one to choose between one of two options which are presented as mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive: either x is G because it is F, or x is F because it (...) is G but not both. Each answer has its attractions and difficulties. The _Euthyphro Problem_ is the problem of choosing one rather than the other. This paper argues that holism in the theory of reasons — a view developed by Jonathan Dancy in a different context and for a different purpose — provides a novel and elegant solution to this age-old problem. (shrink)

Euthyphro is a Socratic interlocutor claiming enormous religious expertise, while his portrayal in the eponymous dialogue raises questions the reliability of his beliefs. This paper closely examines how Euthyphro justifies his case against his father, identifying an argument that relies on the concept of miasma (pollution). In so far as miasma is considered in isolation, Euthyphro has a good argument. Unfortunately, there is more than miasma at stake when considering why one could prosecute one’s own parent. Introducing (...) the other relevant concepts, honor and shame, we find his case reflects a dilemma at the source of ancient Greek religious thought. It would not be possible for Euthyphro or anyone else to know what to do in his case. (shrink)

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A sizable literature exists concerning the structure of Socrates' argument at Euthyphro 9d–11b. Although there is some dispute, a substitutional reading has emerged as a leading interpretation. However, some rear‐guard maneuvers are in order to defend this reading against its competitors. In this paper, I articulate a substitutional reading and argue that it is invalid on two counts: one, Socrates oversteps the logic of his reductio ad absurdum, and two, he illicitly substitutes coreferring expressions in explanatory contexts. Next, I (...) defend the substitutional reading by (1) rebutting its leading contender, Sharvy's formal causation interpretation, and (2) showing how a similar substitutional argument is made in the Protagoras. (shrink)

A sizable literature exists concerning the structure of Socrates' argument at Euthyphro 9d–11b. Although there is some dispute, a substitutional reading has emerged as a leading interpretation. However, some rear‐guard maneuvers are in order to defend this reading against its competitors. In this paper, I articulate a substitutional reading and argue that it is invalid on two counts: one, Socrates oversteps the logic of his reductio ad absurdum, and two, he illicitly substitutes coreferring expressions in explanatory contexts. Next, I (...) defend the substitutional reading by (1) rebutting its leading contender, Sharvy's formal causation interpretation, and (2) showing how a similar substitutional argument is made in the Protagoras. (shrink)

It has been an interpretative dogma to condemn Euthyphro's attempt to account for piety in terms of the gods' wishes as one totally repudiated by Socrates, and in itself untenable. Still at 15c8-9 Socrates expresses some scepticism about whether his refutation of Euthyphro's original account of piety in terms of what the gods love has established that it must be abandoned altogether. He then goes on to say that he and Euthyphro ought to investigate again (πάλιν σ[unrepresentable (...) symbol]επτέον), from the beginning (ἀξ ἀρχ[unrepresentable symbol]ς), what piety is (15c11-12), which may be taken to imply that Euthyphro's original account should be revisited. Interpreting Socrates' refutation of that account as having shown that it is one he rejects completely implies that no weight should be attached to Socrates' later reservations, even though he exhibits considerable care in expressing them. Unfortunately, as I argue, this interpretative stand has not brought us any closer to understanding the conception of piety Plato may be attributing to Socrates. If only for the purpose of interpretative completeness, we owe it to Plato actually to do as Socrates suggests at the end of the dialogue that one ought to, and revisit Euthyphro's thesis. In this paper, I propose to break ranks with the dogma. Instead, I follow Socrates' recommendation at 15c11 that we should look into what piety is from the beginning, simply to examine whether there are any insights that might be uncovered by doing so. (shrink)

This paper argues that functionalist metasemantic views, such as Conceptual Role Semantics and Interpretivism, face a Euthyphro challenge. The challenge, put roughly, is this: functionalist metasemantic views reverse the order of explanation. According to such views, representational mental states have the contents that they do partly because they play certain roles in our mental lives. According to an intuitive picture of the roles that representational mental states play in our mental lives, however, these states play the roles they do (...) partly because they have the contents that they do. Since explanations—even partial ones—are asymmetric (call this principle ‘the Euthyphro Principle’), we can’t accept both this intuitive picture and a functionalist metasemantics. Hence, we should reject all versions of the latter. This paper can be seen as an attempt to better articulate an intuition that has been suggested in various forms in the literature. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it shows that functionalist metasemantic views imply certain ‘partly because’ claims. Second, it argues for the Euthyphro Principle. Third, it defends the intuitive picture of representational mental states and shows that it implies ‘partly because’ claims that conflict with those made by functionalist metasemantic views. Finally, it considers ways of relaxing the intuitive picture and finds them all wanting. (shrink)

Jason Bowers and Meg Wallace have recently argued that those who hold that every individual instantiates a ‘haecceity’ are caught up in a Euthyphro-style dilemma when confronted with familiar cases of fission and fusion. Key to Bowers and Wallace’s dilemma are certain assumptions about the nature of metaphysical explanation and the explanatory commitments of belief in haecceities. However, I argue that the dilemma only arises due to a failure to distinguish between providing a metaphysical explanation of why a fact (...) holds vs. a metaphysical explanation of what it is for a fact to hold. In the process, I also shed light on the explanatory commitments of belief in haecceities. (shrink)

Plato of Athens, who laid the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition and in range and depth ranks among its greatest practitioners, was born to a prosperous and politically active family circa 427 BC. In early life an admirer of Socrates, Plato later founded the first institution of higher learning in the West, the Academy, among whose many notable alumni was Aristotle. Traditionally ascribed to Plato are thirty-five dialogues developing Socrates' dialectic method and composed with great stylistic virtuosity, together with (...) the Apology and thirteen letters. The four works in this volume recount the circumstances of Socrates' trial and execution in 399 BC. In Euthyphro, set in the weeks before the trial, Socrates and Euthyphro attempt to define holiness. In Apology, Socrates answers his accusers at trial and unapologetically defends his philosophical career. In Crito, a discussion of justice and injustice explains Socrates' refusal of Crito's offer to finance his escape from prison. And in Phaedo, Socrates discusses the concept of an afterlife and offers arguments for the immortality of the soul. This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition by Harold North Fowler, offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship." -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather (...) submits it to elenchus, and that Euthyphro does not embrace the ‘solution’ of theological voluntarism when Socrates explicitly offers it. Since the goal of this inquiry is neither to eliminate the noetic content of the holy, nor to eliminate the Gods’ agency, the purpose of the elenchus becomes the effort to articulate the results of this productive tension between the Gods and the intelligible on the several planes of Being implied by each conception of the holy which is successively taken up and dialectically overturned to yield the conception appropriate to the next higher plane, a style of interpretation characteristic of the ancient Neoplatonists. (shrink)

The traditional desire view of painfulness maintains that pain sensations are painful because the subject desires that they not be occurring. A significant criticism of this view is that it apparently succumbs to a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma: the desire view, it is argued, is committed to an implausible answer to the question of why pain sensations are painful. In this paper, I explain and defend a new desire view, and one which can avoid the Euthyphro Dilemma. (...) This new view maintains that painfulness is a property, not of pain sensations, but of a pain experience, understood as a relational state constituted by a pain sensation and a desire that the sensation not be occurring. (shrink)

In his article ???A New Euthyphro??? , pp. 65???83, Glenn Peoples constructs a new version of the famous Euthyphro dialogue, in which Euthyphro, rather than Socrates, prevails.

"This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition..., offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship"--Front flap of dust jacket, volume 1.

Socrates encounters Euthyphro as both are on their way to court, Socrates as a defendant against charges of blasphemy and Euthyphro as a prosecutor of his father for negligently causing the death of a slave—a human rights violation. While I argue that piety and pollution supply a productive way of thinking about human rights crime and punishment, Euthyphro is a very troubling model for the human rights prosecutor, since he is an almost paradigmatically unattractive character. Reading the (...) Euthyphro leads to appropriately troubling and ambivalent feelings about contemporary human rights prosecutions. (shrink)

The Euthyphro might well be given to undergraduates to read early in their philosophical training. The arguments are apparently simple, but some of them, as I shall show, lead naturally on to thorny problems of modern philosophy. Another benefit that could be gained from reading the Euthyphro is that the reader may learn to be forewarned against some common fallacies and debating tricks in moral disputes.

A familiar problem is here viewed from an unfamiliar angle. The familiar problem is the Euthyphro dilemma: if God wills something because it is good, then goodness is independent of God, so God becomes, morally speaking, de trop. On the other hand, if something is good because God wills it, then, given the absence of constraint on what God may will, moral truths are – counterintuitively – contingent. An examination of the kinds of necessity and possibility at work in (...) this conundrum leads us to the most promising solution: there is a metaphysical connection between God and goodness. What he wills is an expression of his nature. But (and this is the unfamiliar angle), that solution now poses an acute problem for an understanding of the Incarnation. For if God is constitutive of goodness, and Christ is God incar- nate, then Christ is constitutive of goodness. But Christ, as a human, is subject to external moral evaluation and obligation, which entails that he is not constitutive of goodness. This meta- ethical difficulty is not easily met by the usual strategies by which Christ is understood to have two natures. Reflection on our moral relations to our past selves, however, suggests a way forward. (shrink)

In this paper we argue for a simple version of Divine Command Morality, namely that an act’s being morally right consists in its being in accord with God’s will, and an act’s being morally wrong consists in its being contrary to God’s will. In so arguing, we contend that this simple version of Divine Command Morality is not subject to the Euthyphro dilemma, either as Plato or as contemporary critics have ordinarily proposed it. Nor, we maintain, is our position (...) incompatible with the most adequate formulation of natural law ethics. Finally we explain why Euthyphro could not have made a better case for his own position. (shrink)

The central question of the Euthyphro is “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved?” A baseball analogy explains this to students: “Does the umpire say ‘Out’ because the runner is out, or is the runner out because the umpire says ‘Out’?” The former makes the relevant knowledge public, making Socrates the appropriate secular moral authority, while the latter makes it religious, invoking Euthyphro’s expertise. Foucault’s aphorism that power is (...) knowledge illuminates how the aristocracy stands behind Euthyphro, while Socrates empowers the democracy. An abstract epistemological question has important political consequences. (shrink)

A familiar problem is here viewed from an unfamiliar angle. The familiar problem is the Euthyphro dilemma: if God wills something because it is good, then goodness is independent of God, so God becomes, morally speaking, de trop. On the other hand, if something is good because God wills it, then, given the absence of constraint on what God may will, moral truths are – counterintuitively – contingent. An examination of the kinds of necessity and possibility at work in (...) this conundrum leads us to the most promising solution: there is a metaphysical connection between God and goodness. What he wills is an expression of his nature. But (and this is the unfamiliar angle), that solution now poses an acute problem for an understanding of the Incarnation. For if God is constitutive of goodness, and Christ is God incarnate, then Christ is constitutive of goodness. But Christ, as a human, is subject to external moral evaluation and obligation, which entails that he is not constitutive of goodness. This metaethical difficulty is not easily met by the usual strategies by which Christ is understood to have two natures. Reflection on our moral relations to our past selves, however, suggests a way forward. (shrink)

The Euthyphro might well be given to undergraduates to read early in their philosophical training. The arguments are apparently simple, but some of them, as I shall show, lead naturally on to thorny problems of modern philosophy. Another benefit that could be gained from reading the Euthyphro is that the reader may learn to be forewarned against some common fallacies and debating tricks in moral disputes.

In this paper, I argue that informational semantics, the most well-known and worked-out naturalistic account of intentional content, conflicts with a fundamental psychological principle about the conditions of belief-formation. Since this principle is an important premise in the argument for informational semantics, the upshot is that the view is self-contradictory??indeed, it turns out to be guilty of a sophisticated version of the fallacy famously committed by Euthyphro in the eponymous Platonic dialogue. Criticisms of naturalistic accounts of content typically proceed (...) piecemeal by narrowly constructed counterexamples, but I argue that the current result is more robust. It affects a broad family of accounts, and provokes a wider doubt about the possibility of successful execution of the naturalistic project. (shrink)

It is widely believed that the Divine Command Theory is untenable due to the Euthyphro Dilemma. This article first examines the Platonic dialogue of that name, and shows that Socrates’s reasoning is faulty. Second, the dilemma in the form in which many contemporary philosophers accept it is examined in detail, and this reasoning is also shown to be deficient. This is not to say, however, that the Divine Command Theory is true—merely that one popular argument for rejecting it is (...) unsound. Finally, some brief thoughts are presented concerning where the real problems lie for the theory. (shrink)

Abstract: According to a higher-order theory of consciousness, you are in a conscious (psychological) state if and only if you are conscious of being in that state. This paper develops and discusses a Euthyphro dilemma for theories of this sort; that is, a dilemma which asks whether the state is conscious because you are conscious of being in it, or, alternatively, whether you are conscious of being in it because it is conscious. I focus on two different versions of (...) the higher-order theory: the higher-order thought theory, defended by David Rosenthal, Hakwan Lau and Richard Brown, among others, and the higher-order acquaintance theory, defended by Brie Gertler, Martine Nida-Rümelin and David Chalmers, among others. I argue that both versions of the view face a Euthyphro dilemma though the issue takes a different form in each case. (shrink)

Gerald Harrison identifies two Euthyphro-related concerns for divine command theories and makes the case that to the extent that these concerns make trouble for divine command theories they also make trouble for non-naturalistic moral realism and naturalistic moral realism. He also offers responses to the two concerns on behalf of divine command theorists. I show here that the parity thesis does not hold for the most commonly discussed version of divine command theory. I further argue that his responses to (...) the two concerns fail. Finally, I draw on some of Harrison’s ideas to identify an advantage that non-naturalistic moral realism has over divine command theories and naturalistic moral realism. (shrink)

In his excellent introduction to metaethics, Alexander Miller argues that there are affinities between G. E.Moore's open-question argument and Socrates’ argumentation in Euthyphro dialogue. Miller is also led toask how Moore's argument can be disdained without being unsympathetic to Socrates’ argument. Thispaper answers to Miller's question by showing that the two arguments are quite different. It is also arguedthat the two arguments merit different assessments: one may well appreciate Socrates’ reasoning and yetbe unconvinced by Moore's.

There has been endless debate about the exchanges regarding the relation of divine love and piety in Plato’s Euthyphro. This debate has mostly missed what is truly puzzling about these exchanges—and hence the import of the dialogue as a whole—which is why Socrates is able to refute Euthyphro, the man. What is particularly puzzling is why Euthyphro accepts the suggestion that leads to his refutation. In answering this question by analyzing the drama of the dialogue, I discuss (...) the deeper issue in the dialogue—the significance and nature of human autonomy. (shrink)

Haecceitism is the thesis that, necessarily, in addition to its qualities, each thing has a haecceity or individual essence. The purpose of this paper is to expose a flaw in haecceitism: it entails that familiar cases of fission and fusion either admit of no explanation or else only admit of explanations too bizarre to warrant serious consideration. Because the explanatory problem we raise for haecceitism closely resembles the Euthyphro problem for divine command theory, we refer to our objection as (...) the haecceitic Euthyphro problem, or the Haecceitic Euthyphro for short. We conclude that the objection is decisive against haecceitism. (shrink)

Complete translation of Plato's Euthyphro.

The paper argues that everyday ethical expertise requires an openness to an experience of self-doubt very different from that involved in becoming expert in other skills—namely, an experience of profound vulnerability to the Other similar to that which Emmanuel Levinas has described. Since the experience bears a striking resemblance to that of undergoing cross-examination by Socrates as depicted in Plato’s early dialogues, I illustrate it through a close reading of the Euthyphro, arguing that Euthyphro’s vaunted “expertise” conceals a (...) reluctance to submit himself to the basic process of self-redefinition that results from learning the limits of one’s knowledge. I show how the dialogue itself models the disruptive experience of selfquestioning that leads to moral maturity, providing further evidence that expertise has an important non-cognitive element, as well as casting doubt on the ethical value of seeking “definitions” of the virtues. (shrink)