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If there were any single document that deserved the title "Western Philosophy 101", I think the Euthyphro dialogue by Plato would make a fine candidate. There are a few good reasons for this: It is short and easy to read. It's presented in the form of a story, with an ethical dilemma at the heart. And it raises a seemingly innocuous question that contains the germs of formal logic, and that provoked and troubled philosophers and theologians from when it was written until the present day. Before jumping into discussions about the dialogue I would strongly urge you read it yourself to form your own thoughts and impressions. It's available for free online and in libraries. I'll put a link then put my thoughts/summary in spoiler.
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html
+ Show Spoiler +The story begins when Socrates (friend and teacher of Plato, whose execution deeply affected Plato) meets his friend Euthyphro going to court. It soon comes out that Euthyphro is on his way to prosecute his own father for manslaughter. What happened was a laborer on their estate murdered another laborer. Euthyphro's father had the murderer tied up outside while someone sought a judge in town. It took so long to find a judge that the murderer died of exposure.
So there are interesting problems right off the bat. Is it ever okay to prosecute the father that raised you? Is it wrong to kill someone who is guilty of murder? Is there any difference between letting someone die through negligence and killing them directly? These are all questions you are left to think about for yourself. The dialogue proceeds when Euthyphro says he is doing a pious act, and to not prosecute his father would be impious. Socrates asks what piety means, and they then struggle to find a definition.
Euthyphro says a pious action is one the gods love, and an impious action is one they hate. This leads to the difficult question that makes the dialogue so profound: "Is an action pious because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is pious?" At first glance this may seem like a trivial question. But yet it contains difference between objective and relative truth, the birth of formal logic, and the foreshadowing of Plato's "Theory of Forms".
After several attempts to revise the definition of piety the two are left empty handed. It seems that no matter how Euthyphro tries to phrase it, he can only give a definition of piety as something that the gods bestow based on their own caprices, rather than as something they reverence for it's own sake and is separate from them.
Anyway I don't want to lecture too much because I'm sure to confuse and muddle things. In my opinion this dialogue and the question at it's heart is well worth studying because almost every discussion involves disentangling the meanings we impute vs those that we are trying to understand. A lot of unfair rhetorical devices stem from obscuring the distinction that Plato was attempting to reveal. Things like "I'm right because this person agrees with me" and just the general abuse of stating cause and effect without any recourse to logic.
Have fun and enjoy if you do read it. Even if you're not interested in philosophy, I think it's still pleasurable as literature for it's own sake. It's also useful as historical knowledge, to know what people mean when they refer to the "Euthyphro dilemma".
 
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Thank you for the write up; I had not read Euthyphro.
Something I always come back to in Platonic dialogues is how to get people to examine their beliefs. Everyone has a philosophy and it effects their thinking. The only choice is whether to acknowledge and consider them critically. The "Even if you're not interested in philosophy." statement is a little mind boggling.
You can't fault the people who thought to turn these dialogues into plays. If you read them too quickly you just imagine it's a perfectly monotone discussion. I imagine Euthyphro was a bit annoyed at the prodding and length of the discussion at the end, though.
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On May 12 2014 06:54 Jerubaal wrote:
Thank you for the write up; I had not read Euthyphro.
Something I always come back to in Platonic dialogues is how to get people to examine their beliefs. Everyone has a philosophy and it effects their thinking. The only choice is whether to acknowledge and consider them critically. The "Even if you're not interested in philosophy." statement is a little mind boggling.
You can't fault the people who thought to turn these dialogues into plays. If you read them too quickly you just imagine it's a perfectly monotone discussion. I imagine Euthyphro was a bit annoyed at the prodding and length of the discussion at the end, though.
Heh yeah I think any of Socrates's "victims" must have felt pretty annoyed. Well since they executed him it would be hard to imagine it otherwise. I agree that philosophy is much more relevant and pervasive than people credit it with. As you say, it underlies and effects almost all thinking and choices. But sadly there is an image of it nowadays as existing only in an ivory tower, totally irrelevant to actual life.
I remember reading that Alan Rickman acted in a production of Plato's "Phaedo" dialogue, do you know of others that were dramatized? The Phaedo is my favorite... it's exceptional as a dramatic piece but it also deals with the hardest questions of life and death. Legend has it that Plato was a gifted poet before he turned to philosophy... I believe that whole heartedly because his writing is deeply moving some times.
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I'm not familiar with any adaptations. I thought it was just "Shakespeare in the park" type nonsense.
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I don't find it particularly insightful. I'm much more partial to the Phaedrus as an introduction for the particular reason that it is the first incident, so far as can be seen, of the paradoxes found in self-reference that have plagued analytic philosophy (liar paradox, Russell's paradox, and many more). This is the admonition not to trust anything "written down", which is certainly something that the Phaedrus is. If we're not to trust things written down, and the Phaedrus is written down, then we're not to trust it. It is undoubtedly foreshadowing that in this dialogue, just as in much of analytic philosophy, such paradoxes are often ignored.
Furthermore, I don't think that the piety arguments in Euthyphro are particularly relevant to contemporary thought. The big bugbear for such application is the fact that Plato is quite obviously speaking of the gods in his own day, which were anthropomorphic and capricious. Most importantly, they were tied to techne, rather than ethical norms, which is how Euthyphro is portrayed applying them. Euthyphro is portrayed basically as an idiot, and the dialogue quite obviously comes from Plato's own vitriol at the injustice done at the trial of Socrates.
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On May 12 2014 07:38 Arrian wrote:
I don't find it particularly insightful. I'm much more partial to the Phaedrus as an introduction for the particular reason that it is the first incident, so far as can be seen, of the paradoxes found in self-reference that have plagued analytic philosophy (liar paradox, Russell's paradox, and many more). This is the admonition not to trust anything "written down", which is certainly something that the Phaedrus is. If we're not to trust things written down, and the Phaedrus is written down, then we're not to trust it. It is undoubtedly foreshadowing that in this dialogue, just as in much of analytic philosophy, such paradoxes are often ignored.
Furthermore, I don't think that the piety arguments in Euthyphro are particularly relevant to contemporary thought. The big bugbear for such application is the fact that Plato is quite obviously speaking of the gods in his own day, which were anthropomorphic and capricious. Most importantly, they were tied to techne, rather than ethical norms, which is how Euthyphro is portrayed applying them. Euthyphro is portrayed basically as an idiot, and the dialogue quite obviously comes from Plato's own vitriol at the injustice done at the trial of Socrates.
Thanks it's interesting to hear differing viewpoints. I would say that though the Phaedrus puts forth distrust in the written word, in the Euthyphro and other early dialogues there's a perhaps more basic urging to distrust popular wisdom, or even ones own thinking. Maybe not distrust per se, but at least critically examine, which I'd say is not intuitive and is often bypassed in much of our education. I remember when I first read the Euthyphro it was a shocking and novel experience, even though you would think in all the time I spent in school growing up, I should have had an ample amount of questioning things in such a way.
I appreciate your giving me context of later philosophy's response to Plato, because I haven't studied these things formally and my reading is very incomplete. I'm unsure what techne is? I think the Euthyphro is relevant not because it gives us an idea of what piety is (it remains quite unclear), but rather for the method of thinking being exhibited. Even though the particular subject matter is only relevant to ancient Greece and it's religion, the application and ideas are still as useful today as it was back then.
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I think Socrates in Phaedrus was merely arguing against all writing which are not dialectical; the same arguments against "writing" are ones Socrates/Plato use elsewhere against poetry and rhetoric, in that both the poet and orator are unreflective, mimetic, and without full knowledge of their work and thus cannot defend or explain themselves.
From 276a in John M. Cooper edition:
Socrates
Now tell me; is there not another kind of speech, or word, which shows itself to be the legitimate brother of this bastard one, both in the manner of its begetting and in its better and more powerful nature?
Phaedrus
What is this word and how is it begotten, as you say?
Socrates
The word which is written with intelligence in the mind of the learner, which is able to defend itself and knows to whom it should speak, and before whom to be silent.
Phaedrus
You mean the living and breathing word of him who knows, of which the written word may justly be called the image.
Socrates was arguing in favor of elenchus as the true literary form. For a more detailed reading see Nussbaum's intro to her section on the Symposium in The Fragility of Goodness. Havelock, in Preface to Plato, details Plato's anti-mimetic, anti-poetic position in the Republic. Many scholars have misread the Phaedrus for a self-contradictory critique of writing. I think the distinction is mainly between classics scholars and all other academics. Yes I had recently researched this topic hence why I was able to bring up the quote so quickly.
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On May 12 2014 07:38 Arrian wrote:
Furthermore, I don't think that the piety arguments in Euthyphro are particularly relevant to contemporary thought. The big bugbear for such application is the fact that Plato is quite obviously speaking of the gods in his own day, which were anthropomorphic and capricious. Most importantly, they were tied to techne, rather than ethical norms, which is how Euthyphro is portrayed applying them. Euthyphro is portrayed basically as an idiot, and the dialogue quite obviously comes from Plato's own vitriol at the injustice done at the trial of Socrates.
In other dialogues, Plato admonishes the poets for portraying the gods as petty and quarrelsome, so an easy out for that conundrum is to say that the gods really aren't divided in what they consider pious. It's only false depictions that assert that.
It's easy to see why the Scholastics liked Plato when they already had the answers to his problems.
I disagree that the questions about what the use of piety is are outdated: Euthyphro asks the ubiquitous question For whose benefit do we adhere to principles? A Christian would ask whether he acted morally to please God or to benefit himself. Someone justifying altruism would ask if he helped others because it was right or because it gave him pleasure to do so. Both of these examples point to an external judge (even if the altruist's is somewhat murky). Even without an external judge, like a psychologist saying that you should behave a certain way to be well-adjusted, there is an indication in the belief of something. That something is a nature from which humans derive their standards. This is why the gods in Euthyphro do not make for a salient moral system because it is as if nature contradicts itself in their quarrels. The only way to get rid of these questions is to deny the existence of moral thought, nature or probably both.
"Techne" is an art or a craft aimed at doing or producing something. I'm not sure what Arrian means in this context. Perhaps he is referring to the nature of Greek religion in that piety consists mostly of conduct rather than the interior piety of some other religions.
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And it raises a seemingly innocuous question that contains the germs of formal logic
Not sure exactly where this claim is coming from. Guess it took a surprising number of millienia for that germ to undergo mitosis...
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Thanks Jerubaal for the explanation of techne and the tying in to Christianity. That's another thing that surprised me when reading Plato; it's interesting the extent to which the Christian church borrowed from his ideas or reacted to them.
On May 12 2014 09:28 frogrubdown wrote:Show nested quote +And it raises a seemingly innocuous question that contains the germs of formal logic Not sure exactly where this claim is coming from. Guess it took a surprising number of millienia for that germ to undergo mitosis...
Is formal logic the wrong term? I mean the systematic treatment that Aristotle gave to logic. The ideas of genus, species and predication seem to surface in that question Plato poses (and develops more extensively in Statesman and Sophist).
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On May 12 2014 09:39 Mothra wrote:Thanks Jerubaal for the explanation of techne and the tying in to Christianity. That's another surprising thing when reading Plato; it's interesting how much the doctrines of the Christian church borrowed from his ideas or reacted to them. Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 09:28 frogrubdown wrote:And it raises a seemingly innocuous question that contains the germs of formal logic Not sure exactly where this claim is coming from. Guess it took a surprising number of millienia for that germ to undergo mitosis... Is formal logic the wrong term? I mean the systematic treatment that Aristotle gave to logic. The ideas of genus and species, and things being predicated seem to surface in that question Plato poses (and develops more extensively in Statesman and Sophist).
To be fair, people sometimes use the "formal" in "formal logic" ambiguously. For some it means that the logic is based on considering the "forms" of the argument, in some sense of "form". But today it more or less exclusively is used to refer to logic that has been formalized, i.e., which is given in a formal language. Aristotle is already relevant to the first notion (though I don't see how the Euthyphro is especially formative for it as opposed to any pre-Aristotelian philosophy), but the second kind of formal logic didn't exist until millenia afterwards.
Edit:
Also, to be a more productive member of the thread, I'll add that I side with Jerubaal over Arrian on the relevance debate. It's true (especially in intro classes) that philosophers tend to pay too little attention to how the very different kind of gods that the Greeks believed in affect the argument. But even for a God with a necessary and constant nature, as is commonly believed of the Christian God, there is still a question of whether that God's nature is a good one. And on top of this is the further question of whether it is its being God's nature that makes it good or the other way around.
Though it's less straightforward than in the case of capricious gods, I take it that considering these questions still puts a lot of pressure on any claim that morality can only come from a divine being.
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On May 12 2014 07:38 Arrian wrote:
I don't find it particularly insightful. I'm much more partial to the Phaedrus as an introduction for the particular reason that it is the first incident, so far as can be seen, of the paradoxes found in self-reference that have plagued analytic philosophy (liar paradox, Russell's paradox, and many more). This is the admonition not to trust anything "written down", which is certainly something that the Phaedrus is. If we're not to trust things written down, and the Phaedrus is written down, then we're not to trust it. It is undoubtedly foreshadowing that in this dialogue, just as in much of analytic philosophy, such paradoxes are often ignored.
On May 12 2014 09:14 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I think Socrates in Phaedrus was merely arguing against all writing which are not dialectical; the same arguments against "writing" are ones Socrates/Plato use elsewhere against poetry and rhetoric, in that both the poet and orator are unreflective, mimetic, and without full knowledge of their work and thus cannot defend or explain themselves.
I doubt that the ironic and apparently self-contradictory critique of writing in Phaedrus can be read so narrowly as only attacking dogmatic or unreflective writing. A broader reading of the critique of writing would dovetail very nicely with some ironic wordplay earlier in Phaedrus (230d-230e), where Socrates claims that he learns from city people and not from trees - we know from a few lines above that the tree Socrates and Phaedrus are under is a plane-tree (Greek platanos), which is often read as a pun on Plato's name. Plato seems here to imply that we can't even trust Plato, let alone written work in general. I tend to favor reading this contradiction/paradox as intentional, much as I think that Socrates' criticism of poetry in books 2 and 3 of Republic, which ends up advocating censorship of almost all poetry while quoting allegedly objectionable passages verbatim, probably is meant to provoke thought on the nature of censorship rather than to be read uncritically as a policy statement.
I also have some difficulty with the claim that Socrates is only criticizing non-dialectic writing at Phaedrus 276a because I don't see how a dialogue gets us much closer to elenchus than any other form of writing. Depicting elenchus between characters in a story isn't the same as engaging in dialogue with the reader because the words on the page can only speak for themselves and therefore "preserve a solemn silence" (275d) before the reader's response or counterargument. As a result, writing is inherently non-dialectic insofar as it never engages the reader in true dialogue - even on a forum where we can converse through writing, the writing only approximates conversation to the extent that we keep typing replies to each other.
On May 12 2014 07:38 Arrian wrote:Furthermore, I don't think that the piety arguments in Euthyphro are particularly relevant to contemporary thought. The big bugbear for such application is the fact that Plato is quite obviously speaking of the gods in his own day, which were anthropomorphic and capricious. Most importantly, they were tied to techne, rather than ethical norms, which is how Euthyphro is portrayed applying them. Euthyphro is portrayed basically as an idiot, and the dialogue quite obviously comes from Plato's own vitriol at the injustice done at the trial of Socrates.
I don't really think today's religions have gotten very far beyond "anthropomorphic and capricious" gods - certainly, most of us that doubt the validity of divine command ethics or the normal attempts at theodicy haven't yet seen a god that offers a good answer to Euthyphro's dilemma.
On May 12 2014 09:26 Jerubaal wrote:
In other dialogues, Plato admonishes the poets for portraying the gods as petty and quarrelsome, so an easy out for that conundrum is to say that the gods really aren't divided in what they consider pious. It's only false depictions that assert that.
It's easy to see why the Scholastics liked Plato when they already had the answers to his problems.
The scholastics actually didn't know very much at all about Plato because most of Plato's work had been lost to Western Europe during the collapse of the Roman Empire (and the destruction or erasure of many manuscripts of Greek thought by Christians who wanted to copy over their own sacred texts) and wasn't available until it was reintroduced through Byzantine and Arabic scholars in the 14th century or so. This is why Aquinas, for example, hardly ever references Plato at all even though he cites Aristotle and Cicero frequently in the Summa. I don't actually disagree with your overall point, just providing some information.
Edit, to continue the flow from frogrubdown's edit: The Christian claim of God's constancy doesn't actually exempt the Christian God from the accusation of caprice, at least for versions of Christianity that believe in predestination of some sort. After all, if God chooses to send some people to hell and others to heaven for apparently arbitrary reasons, there's no shortage of caprice. It's just constant and reliable caprice and arbitrariness.
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Interesting post chris. I'm gaining all kinds of new perspectives because of people's responses. I guess it shows the importance of discussing stuff rather than just reading by yourself in isolation.
Back to the point of Plato's views on writing, wasn't one of his main criticisms of it that by relying on written word, people would not use their memories and they would weaken? Let me try and find the passage I'm thinking about. Here:
"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows."
(Plato, Phaedrus 275a-b)
That seems surprisingly apt in this age where we hardly remember things any more since we can just google them (like I just did). But as others have pointed out, I think he's going further to say that the written word can't truly teach, but only remind of what is already taught. Or worse, it can impart facts and knowledge without a guiding wisdom.
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Sorry, yes, Chris, I misspoke. I always forget that, but Aquinas must have been at least familiar with Augustine and Boethius. My comment wasn't that interesting anyway.
I don't think I follow why the Christian God has to be capricious. As frogrubdown said, that gets more into "does God have to be the way he is or do what he does?". When dealing with a transcendental power, it seems like a certain acceptance of the limits of human understanding is required. That doesn't mean it's arbitrary. Would an atheistic universe be less arbitrary and capricious?
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On May 12 2014 10:04 chris` wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 07:38 Arrian wrote:
I don't find it particularly insightful. I'm much more partial to the Phaedrus as an introduction for the particular reason that it is the first incident, so far as can be seen, of the paradoxes found in self-reference that have plagued analytic philosophy (liar paradox, Russell's paradox, and many more). This is the admonition not to trust anything "written down", which is certainly something that the Phaedrus is. If we're not to trust things written down, and the Phaedrus is written down, then we're not to trust it. It is undoubtedly foreshadowing that in this dialogue, just as in much of analytic philosophy, such paradoxes are often ignored. Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 09:14 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I think Socrates in Phaedrus was merely arguing against all writing which are not dialectical; the same arguments against "writing" are ones Socrates/Plato use elsewhere against poetry and rhetoric, in that both the poet and orator are unreflective, mimetic, and without full knowledge of their work and thus cannot defend or explain themselves. I doubt that the ironic and apparently self-contradictory critique of writing in Phaedrus can be read so narrowly as only attacking dogmatic or unreflective writing. A broader reading of the critique of writing would dovetail very nicely with some ironic wordplay earlier in Phaedrus (230d-230e), where Socrates claims that he learns from city people and not from trees - we know from a few lines above that the tree Socrates and Phaedrus are under is a plane-tree (Greek platanos), which is often read as a pun on Plato's name. Plato seems here to imply that we can't even trust Plato, let alone written work in general. I tend to favor reading this contradiction/paradox as intentional, much as I think that Socrates' criticism of poetry in books 2 and 3 of Republic, which ends up advocating censorship of almost all poetry while quoting allegedly objectionable passages verbatim, probably is meant to provoke thought on the nature of censorship rather than to be read uncritically as a policy statement. I also have some difficulty with the claim that Socrates is only criticizing non-dialectic writing at Phaedrus 276a because I don't see how a dialogue gets us much closer to elenchus than any other form of writing. Depicting elenchus between characters in a story isn't the same as engaging in dialogue with the reader because the words on the page can only speak for themselves and therefore "preserve a solemn silence" (275d) before the reader's response or counterargument. As a result, writing is inherently non-dialectic insofar as it never engages the reader in true dialogue - even on a forum where we can converse through writing, the writing only approximates conversation to the extent that we keep typing replies to each other.
I should say that Socrates's self critique should no only be read as a general critique of all writing, and hence Plato's own dialogues. This would in fact be the narrower reading I believe. The tree part is interesting, I had not heard of it.
Elenchus is the dialogue. Both Phaedrus and Symposium portray a kind of search for a literary form of the philosopher, one that appeals not to madness and passion but to intellect. That medium had not been invented during Socrates's time, hence whenever he speaks of "writing," he is only referring to the modes of writing practiced by the rhetoricians. Just as Plato's conception of the poets is wholly foreign to our society that has been so heavily influenced by critical, Platonic education that we don't understand what it's like to have poets as the only sources of education; so is writing in its foreignness to a transitional oral-literate culture. Only after writing has become so advanced, and so ingrained into our culture through modes completely different from dramatic writing, can we read the Socrates in Phaedrus as criticizing the basic technology of writing rather than as illustrating a theme Plato had shown infinitely greater interest in, that of philosophy vs. art and rhetoric. Part of that reading also comes from the influence of orality literacy studies which often cites Phaedrus, and sometimes wrongly, as a critique of writing as technology. 275d talks about the mimetic mindset, the kind of "written word," or speaker/writer without a full understanding of the topic, as compared to the "the dialectician" who "choose a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge -- discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the characters of others" (277a). Socrates is more concerned with the subject of discourse, the speaker or writer, rather than the form of the discourse itself. The formal (as in relating to form) conundrum is amended by the dialogue itself, that there is before us a text which is not only self-critical, but chooses its audience, attacks and defends itself, and does not make false claims to knowledge.
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On May 12 2014 11:06 Mothra wrote:
Interesting post chris. I'm gaining all kinds of new perspectives because of people's responses. I guess it shows the importance of discussing stuff rather than just reading by yourself in isolation.
Back to the point of Plato's views on writing, wasn't one of his main criticisms of it that by relying on written word, people would not use their memories and they would weaken? Let me try and find the passage I'm thinking about. Here:
"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows."
(Plato, Phaedrus 275a-b)
That seems surprisingly apt in this age where we hardly remember things any more since we can just google them (like I just did). But as others have pointed out, I think he's going further to say that the written word can't truly teach, but only remind of what is already taught. Or worse, it can impart facts and knowledge without a guiding wisdom.
Yes it does seem a particularly timely critique of modern technology, and in some ways it is. Right after the passage Socrates compares a farmer who plants seeds for amusement to one for who actually cares that his seeds bear fruit. An analogy is made to a writer who merely writes without regard to who his writing reaches, and that his audience understands his writing and learns anything, compared to the dialectician who plants in his discourse true seeds of knowledge which multiply in the characters of others. Again, this is, I believe, another critique of education rather than technology. Education should be interactive, engaging, practiced through dialectics rather than passive preaching, which was how poets and historians educated the Athenian youths at the time. Does this critique apply to us? In some ways sure. Teachers should promote discussion, should tailor their curriculum to fit their students. Texts should be discussed and interpreted and not just read at face value. All of these values are practiced in our (American) educational system.
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Well, this discussion is getting fragmented and complex awfully fast. I'll try and keep the main threads of conversation discrete.
On May 12 2014 11:06 Mothra wrote:
Interesting post chris. I'm gaining all kinds of new perspectives because of people's responses. I guess it shows the importance of discussing stuff rather than just reading by yourself in isolation.
I believe that would be the dialectic we were talking about. 
On May 12 2014 11:06 Mothra wrote:
Back to the point of Plato's views on writing, wasn't one of his main criticisms of it that by relying on written word, people would not use their memories and they would weaken? Let me try and find the passage I'm thinking about. Here:
"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows."
(Plato, Phaedrus 275a-b)
That seems surprisingly apt in this age where we hardly remember things any more since we can just google them (like I just did). But as others have pointed out, I think he's going further to say that the written word can't truly teach, but only remind of what is already taught. Or worse, it can impart facts and knowledge without a guiding wisdom.
Right, so this is one of the things in Plato (and in philosophy in general) that we're just now catching up to in terms of neuroscience. Our brains wire themselves to access information in the most efficient way possible; since it takes less effort to memorize a library decimal system (much less the techniques for writing good Google search terms) than to memorize actual texts, access to the former trades off fairly seriously with the ability to do the latter.
On May 12 2014 11:38 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I should say that Socrates's self critique should no only be read as a general critique of all writing, and hence Plato's own dialogues. This would in fact be the narrower reading I believe. The tree part is interesting, I had not heard of it.
Elenchus is the dialogue. Both Phaedrus and Symposium portray a kind of search for a literary form of the philosopher, one that appeals not to madness and passion but to intellect. That medium had not been invented during Socrates's time, hence whenever he speaks of "writing," he is only referring to the modes of writing practiced by the rhetoricians. Just as Plato's conception of the poets is wholly foreign to our society that has been so heavily influenced by critical, Platonic education that we don't understand what it's like to have poets as the only sources of education; so is writing in its foreignness to a transitional oral-literate culture. Only after writing has become so advanced, and so ingrained into our culture through modes completely different from dramatic writing, can we read the Socrates in Phaedrus as criticizing the basic technology of writing rather than as illustrating a theme Plato had shown infinitely greater interest in, that of philosophy vs. art and rhetoric. Part of that reading also comes from the influence of orality literacy studies which often cites Phaedrus, and sometimes wrongly, as a critique of technology. 275d talks about the mimetic mindset, the kind of "written word," or speaker/writer without a full understanding of the topic, who is compared to the "the dialectician" who "choose a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge -- discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the characters of others" (277a). Socrates is more concerned with the subject of discourse, the speaker or writer, rather than the form of the discourse itself. The formal (as in relating to form) conundrum is amended by the dialogue itself, that there is before us a text which is not only self-critical, but chooses its audience, attacks and defends itself, and does not make false claims to knowledge.
This is a very thought-provoking perspective, but at the moment I find it rather unsatisfying. Plato's dialogues often depict elenchus occurring, but I'm not sure we can expect that they cause the phenomenon of elenchus in the reader. The text doesn't interact with the reader in the same way that a teacher interacts with a student. If a student doesn't understand a teacher, a teacher rephrases and explains and finds another way around the discussion. If a student thinks a teacher is wrong, she can challenge and counter the teacher and pry an improved answer or a synthesis from the teacher. A text can't do that. Even amazing, nearly timeless texts like Plato's dialogues don't explain themselves. If we can't understand them properly upon our own reading, the texts are not themselves able to correct us and Plato isn't around to do it - so we argue with each other in an effort to try and find a better interpretation. The dialectic is not in the text, nor is it happening between the text and the reader; it's happening between readers. I don't disagree with you that Plato's a great deal more conducive to dialogue than a less reflective, less ironic, more dogmatic writer would be; however, it seems to me that the text still cannot present itself to us in the same way that we present our views to each other through conversation.
I don't think that this is a criticism of writing as technology. Our conversation here is occurring through a written medium, but that doesn't seem to alter it too much beyond the distractions my kids cause while I try to type. But the ways in which our conversation functions as dialectic are ways in which our conversation transcends medium rather than subjects itself to the medium. If some user comes across this thread eight months from now, she won't be able to ask for clarification in the thread without raising the dead and bringing the mod apocalypse. On the other hand, our conversation will be on Google eight months from now, so there's that.
On May 12 2014 11:13 Jerubaal wrote:
Sorry, yes, Chris, I misspoke. I always forget that, but Aquinas must have been at least familiar with Augustine and Boethius. My comment wasn't that interesting anyway.
Aquinas was certainly familiar with Augustine and Boethius. (One of the best lines in the Summa is Aquinas' apparent deadpan in Article 8 that "... to argue from authority would be beneath [sacred doctrine's] dignity, since “authority is the weakest kind of proof,” as Boethius says.") The difficulty is that Augustine's Platonism seems mostly to be lingering fragments of youthful interest that he almost entirely repudiates, and Boethius is a fairly good Platonist but an extremely late one, a century after Augustine when Augustine was already on the tail end of Neoplatonism. This means Aquinas gets his Plato second-hand at best, and if one buys Allan Bloom's argument that the Christian church fathers (those who had any interest in philosophy to begin with) badly mangled Neoplatonism in an effort to synthesize it with Christianity, Aquinas' Plato might well be third-hand or worse. We certainly have no reason to believe that Aquinas had access to any of Plato's major writings.
Also, nice name. Do you particularly favor wool for your divinations?
On May 12 2014 11:13 Jerubaal wrote:
I don't think I follow why the Christian God has to be capricious. As frogrubdown said, that gets more into "does God have to be the way he is or do what he does?". When dealing with a transcendental power, it seems like a certain acceptance of the limits of human understanding is required. That doesn't mean it's arbitrary. Would an atheistic universe be less arbitrary and capricious?
Arbitrariness and caprice are properties of conscious beings, so in a very basic sense any naturalistic universe is less capricious in its essence than a universe controlled and directed by a conscious being. A naturalistic universe may well be devoid of any meaning and purpose other than what conscious beings impute to it, but there's nobody there that we could accuse of blatant and obvious disregard for the well-being of the creatures he/she/it made.
That's not really my point, though. Euthyphro's dilemma can be summarized as "Do the gods love a thing because it is good, or is a thing good because the gods love it?" People who believe in a single god whose commandments are the basis for human morality are, in my opinion, stuck with a very simple reformulation of the dilemma: "Are God's commandments good because He commands them, or does God make commandments because the commandments themselves are good?" I think that this causes some real difficulties for believers in the more traditional forms of the Abrahamic religions.
Arrian made the comment earlier in the thread that the gods of Athens in the 5th century BCE were "anthropomorphic and capricious", which I take to describe the way in which they behaved in a very human manner - irresponsible, careless of the impact of their actions on humans, often quarreling among themselves, and generally not people who behave in a manner we see as morally admirable. But this is exactly where one has some very deep moral qualms about the God of (traditional) Christianity. There are any number of times in the Old Testament where God's commandments seem arbitrary or morally reprehensible or where He is described as changing His mind and regretting His actions, just to name a couple examples. Christians who believe both in hell and in any scheme of salvation controlled partly or entirely by God are saying that God chooses some people to go to heaven and others to go to hell, apparently on a whim. So I don't see how the Christian or Jewish God (or for that matter the Muslim God, although I'm not as closely familiar with the Qur'an as with the Bible) is any less subject to the critique in Euthyphro than the gods of Plato's Athens and so I think the dialogue is highly relevant to contemporary discourse.
A brief disclaimer: I'm aware that many Christians believe that God is entirely unchanging and constant and have ways of reasoning around the biblical texts that seem to contradict these beliefs; others have discovered ways to reinterpret the Bible in the context of humane moral intuitions; still others have embraced one of the many variants of universalist theology and/or open theism that avoid claiming God is responsible for the eternal torture of random dudes. My point isn't to claim that a few lines of a Platonic dialogue destroy all religious beliefs ever, I just don't think the ship has sailed on Euthyphro's relevance for the possible bases of ethical and moral reasoning.
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Also, nice name. Do you particularly favor wool for your divinations?
No, but you may plead with me.
Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 11:13 Jerubaal wrote:
I don't think I follow why the Christian God has to be capricious. As frogrubdown said, that gets more into "does God have to be the way he is or do what he does?". When dealing with a transcendental power, it seems like a certain acceptance of the limits of human understanding is required. That doesn't mean it's arbitrary. Would an atheistic universe be less arbitrary and capricious? Arbitrariness and caprice are properties of conscious beings, so in a very basic sense any naturalistic universe is less capricious in its essence than a universe controlled and directed by a conscious being. A naturalistic universe may well be devoid of any meaning and purpose other than what conscious beings impute to it, but there's nobody there that we could accuse of blatant and obvious disregard for the well-being of the creatures he/she/it made.
This is true, but I think you should decide whether there is a God first before deciding if He is unjust. Arguments about the injustice of a God treat him as a delinquent divine landlord without considering all of the aspects of divinity. It seems to me that the picture is distorted to suit the need. The universe cannot be an amazing place full of wonder in a naturalistic account and an intolerable hellhole if there is a God. I just think it's very strange to say "I've decided God isn't just, so there's no God".
That's not really my point, though. Euthyphro's dilemma can be summarized as "Do the gods love a thing because it is good, or is a thing good because the gods love it?" People who believe in a single god whose commandments are the basis for human morality are, in my opinion, stuck with a very simple reformulation of the dilemma: "Are God's commandments good because He commands them, or does God make commandments because the commandments themselves are good?" I think that this causes some real difficulties for believers in the more traditional forms of the Abrahamic religions.
Arrian made the comment earlier in the thread that the gods of Athens in the 5th century BCE were "anthropomorphic and capricious", which I take to describe the way in which they behaved in a very human manner - irresponsible, careless of the impact of their actions on humans, often quarreling among themselves, and generally not people who behave in a manner we see as morally admirable. But this is exactly where one has some very deep moral qualms about the God of (traditional) Christianity. There are any number of times in the Old Testament where God's commandments seem arbitrary or morally reprehensible or where He is described as changing His mind and regretting His actions, just to name a couple examples. Christians who believe both in hell and in any scheme of salvation controlled partly or entirely by God are saying that God chooses some people to go to heaven and others to go to hell, apparently on a whim. So I don't see how the Christian or Jewish God (or for that matter the Muslim God, although I'm not as closely familiar with the Qur'an as with the Bible) is any less subject to the critique in Euthyphro than the gods of Plato's Athens and so I think the dialogue is highly relevant to contemporary discourse.
I can see why Arrian might say the questions of Euthyphro seem irrelevant, but that's only because, for the most part, these questions have been considered and taken into account. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep examining them. "Causes real difficulties for" and thoroughly or even satisfactorily answered are not mutually exclusive. It's clear that Socrates and Euthyphro are stuck at an impasse with their gods; Plato has to say that the poets are basically liars to rectify the situation. Abrahamic apologists are not so defenseless, though. The Greek gods live in their own little fiefdom of logos and even jostle with each other for power. What may please one god may displease another and it's unclear if any rules apply in the swirling chaos that surrounds Olympus. The benefit of obeying a god is to gain favor with that god. You're not necessarily aligning yourself with some cosmic truth. That's not the case with the Abrahamic God; everything is logos. It's not a stretch to say that God is synonymous with nature in this respect. It's worth differentiating two types of caprice: Caprice in consistency and caprice in the state of creation. The Greek gods are faulted for the first type; the Abrahamic God is usually accused of the second. The complaint is not that the exact circumstances of suffering are random and inscrutable, but that it exists at all. (You might say that the seeming insecurity of life adds to the terror, but I don't think I have to be a Deist to allow for natural agency. I don't believe that God crashed that plane nor that he "chose" to give this or that person cystic fibrosis in a way that suggests caprice.)
So what were we talking about again? Oh yes, the original question: "Is an action pious because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is pious?" In Socrates and Euthyphro's case, it can't be either because the gods' capriciousness make a universal piety unworkable. The best you can say is a particular god finds it pious, but maybe not all or all the time. Plato, like I said, solves this by giving them a universal piety, but the answer then must become "they love it because it is pious" because the gods are not masters of the universe. They must be acknowledging a power higher than themselves. The Abrahamic God, on the other hand, is the absolute master of the universe. That's why Christianity is sometimes called the end of mythology because there's nothing beyond. Thus, I can't make a direct comparison then between the Greek gods and the Abrahamic God. Wanting and Being are nearly synonymous to that God. This could take us away to ask the question does God have to be a particular way. I think, however, that the answer is that both parts are true for the Abrahamic God: Because the authority of God aligns with the nature of the universe, a thing is pious because God loves it and God loves it because it is pious. Or, put another way, God is his own good.
A brief disclaimer: I'm aware that many Christians believe that God is entirely unchanging and constant and have ways of reasoning around the biblical texts that seem to contradict these beliefs; others have discovered ways to reinterpret the Bible in the context of humane moral intuitions; still others have embraced one of the many variants of universalist theology and/or open theism that avoid claiming God is responsible for the eternal torture of random dudes. My point isn't to claim that a few lines of a Platonic dialogue destroy all religious beliefs ever, I just don't think the ship has sailed on Euthyphro's relevance for the possible bases of ethical and moral reasoning.
I'm not sure if you mean to say that you've heard the common rebuttals to all of the evidence you've submitted and are not convinced or are only acknowledging the plethora of viewpoints. I've rambled on long enough as it is, so I'll refrain from doing a blow by blow and conclude by saying that 1) I feel that I could easily, if not simply (or is it the other way around?) answer those objections 2) It seems to me that the bones of contention are the Abrahamic God's particular justice and not that this justice is capricious 3) Calvinism is a small segment of Christianity and it's not clear to me that Calvin would say that even the selection of the Elect is an arbitrary act. Although he might. 4) We do seem to be in agreement that the Euthyphro poses important questions.
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The Euthypro argument is very relevant today because it is an argument against all forms of authoritarian ethics, no matter what kind of God is at play. This is because it tries to affirm two claims that are at odds with one another, a normative and a meta-ethical one:
Normative claim (NC): You should do what God commands because God commands what is right. (the gods love acts that are pious -because- of the piety of those acts)
Meta-ethical claim (MC): Being right just -is- being commanded by God. (being pious -just is- being loved by the gods)
Holding both views leads to a logical circle: God's decision to command X depends on his prior belief about the rightness of the act commanded, but a rational belief about rightness depends precisely on what God decides to command. Just as in Euthyphro: The gods love acts that are pious just because those acts are loved by the gods.
If you give up the MC claim, God's moral goodness is reduced to him not acting against his own will, since rightness is purely a matter of God's will and not something external of it. In that case, God could have commanded murder and it would have been good; the only reason why he didn't is.. - there is none! It's purely arbitrary, since God cannot rely on anything other than his own will for determining rightness. Whether this is acceptable I leave for you to decide.
If you give up the NC claim, rightness is independent of God and God's will, so although God might know what is right and then command it to us because he is a nice God, what actually is right is something other than what God wills or commands. So to figure out what to will, God would first have to do some meta-ethics himself, namely figure out what is the right is. This hits his omnipotence in some ways.
Now feel free to replace 'God' by the king, society, the majority, the party, the - dare I say it: the subject! Yes, the euthyphro dilemma hits subjective normative ethics as well, which makes it so interesting:
(1) Action X is right (for me?) because I have Y towards X. (where different subjectivist theories will define 'Y' differently, as for example belief, intention, feeling, desire etc)
(2) My reason for having Y towards X is based on me believing X to be morally right.
The only way to affirm both claims is to say that the belief that X is morally right in (2) is itself not based on (1) because that would make it vulnerable to the euthyphro dilemma. And the only way to do that is to claim that what I believe to be the source of moral rightness is something illusory, i.e. that I deceive myself about the source of moral rightness: The source really is me having Y towards X, but I have Y towards X because of some other (false) belief, e.g. because I believe that X is natural or commanded by God (rather than determined by me having Y towards X). This belief is false if I accept subjectivism, but it is necessary for subjectivism to work, which makes it a very strange ethical theory.
One final point: This leeway that the subject has with regards to the euthyphro dilemma is impossible for God, since God is supposed to be omniscient and cannot possibly deceive himself, but we as fallible beings can.
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EPT
