5) Plato's "Euthyphro" part I

Rufe hair is all weird today all right hmm oh my gosh so much to do today I've budgeted two days for this if we can knock it all out in one day that's gonna be so awesome it's gonna free up more time to do other stuff uh we're starting play-doh today you had a reading what do you think different right yeah you liked it it was a night it's enjoyable right yeah it's got a it's with that it was an interesting story yeah definitely it's it's a story right that's like one very big difference there's a dramatic arc to it in fact it it reads almost like a play we'll talk just a second about about the style that Plato is writing in and and what it signifies and what else is going on with that first before we do any of that it seems kind of necessary to talk a little bit about the historical context that Socrates is is kind of entering into that ease that he's speaking within there are a couple of reasons for why we want to do this one Plato's audience is a whole bunch of other Athenians right it's a whole bunch of other folks at the time who would have known the context that he's writing in right they would have been aware of all kinds of all kinds of little gestures and and all kinds of little contextual tidbits that add a whole lot of meaning to what's going on in these dialogues so I'm gonna kind of sketch this out really quick for us and then hopefully we can just start talking about the dialogue a little bit well first we're going to talk about Socrates the person then we're going to talk about platonic platonic dialogue in general then we'll talk about this particular dialogue Euthyphro so Athens is Athens is a character in Plato's dialogues it's the this is this is something that's kind of difficult to avoid the city itself is almost never speak actually that's not true the city itself does speak in one of the dialogues that we're going to read socrates kind of pretends that he's talking to the laws of athens at one point and and so some sense of like what it what it like what what is Athens and how did it come about what's the story of Athens that's necessary people are living in and around Athens for a long time before this dialogue is written so going all the way back to like somewhere around 1400 BCE the my see any civilization kind of early Bronze Age stuff is going on here not much is happening it's not a city-state of note until somewhere around 594 BCE this is around the time of Baileys and my legions so there there is no real athens of any kind of there's no noteworthy athens at least around the time that the my legions are working at this time a person named Solon goes to Egypt comes back having been kind of informed of like well how does he gypped run their stuff and helps put together the first constitution of Athens little less than a hundred years later around 510 BCE there's a democratic revolution it's not bloody or anything like that there's a fellow named Cleisthenes and an aristocrat who came into power and then willingly put the power down he was he was just like I don't want the power I'm gonna give it to everybody the power now goes to to the deans to the de mas right like the various common tribes this is why it's called a democracy right Crassus means rule the de mas is the people right the common people so it's rule of the common people 490 BCE shortly after the democracy is founded we have the first Persian war and the Battle of Marathon some folks will speculate that without Athens being a democracy maybe they don't win the Battle of Marathon so if you guys are not familiar at all with the first Persian war Darius and for Persia comes tries to invade not Athens but the entirety of the Greek Peninsula and if we want to tell this story that like plays up how important democracy is what you have is a whole bunch of people who are not fighting for a king they're not fighting for some other leader they're fighting for themselves right they're fighting to defend their own their own homes and their own homeland who which they have a stake in because it's a democracy the Greeks are the Athenians are greatly outnumbered at the Battle of Marathon they win nonetheless and turn the invading Persian forces back it's a huge big deal and and then there's you know all kinds of apocryphal stories like fadap ADIZ runs all the way from marathon back to Athens to tell everybody the good news that they've won and that's how we get our modern marathon race very very long race where everybody runs a very long distance in sandals just like fit if ADIZ did what's that what's that and yeah as the story goes dies as soon as he arrives right there's also a version of the story where he runs from Athens all the way to Sparta to ask the Spartans to come and help turn back the invading Persian hordes and Sparta declines and says no thanks we're not getting involved in this Sparta so right after this Battle of Marathon a big huge vein of silver is discovered running through the hills and cliffs and mountains in and around Athens and everybody in Athens it's like we're rich and they're trying to figure out like what are we gonna do with all of this wealth and they're a democracy so they decide you know publicly like what are we going to do with all this wealth a fellow named Themistocles who's a military guys general and a strategist says here's what we've got to do with all of this wealth everyone's like well let's divide it up amongst everybody will all be individually rich let's spend it on a big temple for the goddess let's do all this and the mr. Cleese says no we need to build a Navy because we turn the Persians back once but we got lucky and they're gonna be back turns out he's exactly right the Persians do come back it's not Darius this time it's his son Xerxes we have the second Persian war you might be familiar with some elements of the second Persian or if you've watched these ridiculous movies three hundred and I don't know what there was a sequel as well 3 3 hundred and one that Space Odyssey right so the the two big battles have note in the second Persian War the Battle of Thermopylae which is chronicled in 300 and is you know with the exception of the air brushed abs is more or less true there's uh what we have is the king of Sparta Leonidas leads a group of just 300 Spartans and a collection of some other Greeks who have kind of like straddled in to try to hold the Persians at Thermopylae it's a very kind of like the the hot gates literally Thermopylae the hot gates this like very narrow pass that there's only one very small way to get in through actually there was another way this is a big part of why they lose the 300 Spartans plus the few other folks lose they all get killed but it's a it's a it's an incredible stand it's like the Alamo of ancient Greece they lose but they hold they hold their position for long enough that the rest of the Greek troops are able to adjust and depending on who you talk to it either in an act of desperation because Thermopylae Falls or a like really slick piece of military strategy the Athenian Navy suckers the Persian Navy into like a very narrow I can almost like a the naval equivalent of the Battle of Thermopylae to a very narrow strait where the Greek trireme ships are able to you know move quickly and navigate very easily there what much more much more agile than the Persian ships into this narrow narrow street called Salamis and the per 10 a V is just absolutely obliterated and this really puts the persians on their heels around this time 480 BC just before the Battle of Salamis the Persians invade Athens the entire city is evacuated and the Persians take over and everyone's like oh are we ever going to get our city back Battle of Salamis happens the Persians are defeated and the per diems and the Spartans kind of joined together to finally push the Persians and Xerxes his army out of the Greek Peninsula and the Delian League is formed which is a whole big kind of collaborative group of Greek city-states where there they all get together and they're like hey this cooperation thing is really working for us particularly if somebody tries to invade us from here to here from like 479 to 431 we enjoy the Golden Age of Athens under Pericles I mentioned this at our last meeting Athens not only continues to amass power as a kind of like a military force but culturally as well so music art all of the Greek plays that you read all of the Greek dramas and comedies are written at this time other philosophers are brought from all over Greece to come to Athens so that Pericles can learn from them and so that we can have like an intellectual community going on in Athens and during this time Athens is starting to dominate the Delian League in fact they're dominating it in ways that other folks are starting to get a little suspicious of and they're they're getting a little too big for their britches and throwing their weight around quite a bit there's a what's that word hubris going on in Athens eventually Sparta has just had enough and they're like enough of this and we get the Peloponnesian War and this is a long war from 431 to 404 BCE by all accounts both Athens and Sparta have a role to play in starting this war I like Athens and even I gotta say they they picked this fight they there was there were plenty of warnings of plenty of opportunities for them to avoid it but they just didn't pay attention they thought they were invincible they thought the Spartans couldn't possibly stand up to them they do and Athens basically gets their ass kicked in this word it's it's a rout it lasts a very very long time but it is a tragedy towards the end of the words when things get really really awful where all of Athens has retreated back behind its city walls there's a quick little of Athens here if this is the city of Athens and there's like the Acropolis and all of that stuff Athens isn't exactly a port city it's a little farther away from from the ocean and there's a port called the Piraeus and a road that goes from Athens for the pious and all of this is walled there's a wall around Paris there's a wall around Athens and there's a wall protecting the road going from Athens to Piraeus and Athens it's like cool we'll just we'll retreat behind this we'll be fine but it's a it's a seed that goes on for a long long time they run out of food they can kind of get things in and out of the city through their port here but the Spartans have Bloch hated it and in addition to that I don't know if you've ever read much about like the ancient world and what happens when you put a whole bunch of people in a really close confined space with only yeah you get disease there's a plague and people like there's just people dropping dead all of like all over the place Athens is just completely shattered by the end of the Peloponnesian War they do lose and the Spartans put in place of the democracy a government of thirty tyrants one of these thirty is our old friend cry dias who we mentioned at our last meeting but we didn't really talk very much about who is also a relative of Socrates and this didn't this didn't reflect very well on Socrates the thirty tyrants are called tyrants for a reason this was not a very good government thousands of people who were supporters of the Athenian democracy are either exiled or executed during this one year of the thirty tyrants rule and then eventually that's overthrown the democracy is restored and in 399 BCE we get possibly the most notable updates Socrates is executed this is the time what we've got here the the thing that I'm trying to sketch out is a relatively short period of Ascension and decline right we have we have a city a nation a city state right a group of folks who go from dirt farmers to the biggest baddest kids on the block in a relatively short amount of time they overextend themselves militarily they are proud of themselves and to an extent rightfully so but maybe they get a little too big for their britches and that hubris catches up with them and they find themselves between this rule of the thirty tyrants I know and Socrates is executed kind of looking around they're frustrated they're disgruntled they know that they used to be better than they are now and everybody is looking around pointing fingers as to like why it is that like we can't make Athens great again yeah yeah well-built pupas Alois build a while on this part and so pay for it right so hopefully our I I'm not sure if the if the analogies are clear enough here a nation of people who went from 0 to like who's like awesome in what about a hundred years 200 years yeah like what's what's the difference and then suddenly find themselves like when I'm like are we as good as we used to be there's a whole lot of pride and a whole lot of anxiety as to whether or not that pride is really warranted anymore and a whole lot of finger-pointing alright so that's the history of Athens highly abridged I left a lot of stuff out and I even fudged a couple of things it's a it's a character not it's not a history of ancient Greece class it's a ancient philosophy class yeah well it's I mean it's it's kind of even for a while it's not clear like who's gonna be the last ten years is when it's just kind of like ah this is this is not going to go well oh the thirty tyrants um yeah that's a good question I'll look into it yeah or you know you look into it it could have something to do with the fact that that the rule of the thirty tyrants was so awful that it was just not sustainable and the Spartans if I'm this is like total speculation and guessing and the Spartans were just uninterested in trying to manage a colony from from a distance it's not very far they're both part of the Peloponnesian Peninsula that's why it's called the Peloponnesian War it's close enough that supposedly Philippa Dee's could have run from Athens to Sparta in one day but it would have been remarkable it's like a couple hundred miles and this part was they the Spartans weren't colonizers the Athenians on the other hand were they were totally colonizers this is part of the reason why everybody started to get angry with okay I've mentioned oh yes oh well there you go Wikipedia Wikipedia comes to the rescue yeah I should have I should have put you on the spot and said look it up now it's not like we don't all have computers in our pockets so during this time that all of Athens withdraws behind its walls and it's all miserable and people are dying and there's plague and starvation and all of this stuff there's at least one person who like while not totally excited about this is kind of looking on the bright side and digs what's going on and that guy is Socrates the reason why it likes this is like Socrates is maybe the first enthusiastic urbanite he's like all of these people in close proximity in one place and I get to talk to all of them also worth keeping in mind here is that you know we're dealing with this time shortly after the Peloponnesian War when all of Athens withdrew behind its walls and since Socrates is alive and the dialogue that we're going to be reading my notes before 399 BCE this is the period when Athens is starting to go back out and resettle the suburbs and Euthyphro one of the main characters not one of the two characters in our dialogue is he does he live in Athens does he live outside of Athens yeah he lives on a farm kind of far away far enough away that it takes a long time to get to Athens and back as we'll find out so you throw slipping outside of the city Socrates is definitely living inside the city and is super psyched about living inside of the city and what the city represents and that's something to keep in mind so Socrates the man who was he was a real person by the way it's not just a character in Plato's dialogues he was a real person he was in fact executed 399 BCE he was a soldier in the Peloponnesian War distinguished himself many times the people talk of his bravery in several of the Platonic dialogues there are plenty of other sources that talk about how brave Socrates was during the Peloponnesian War even outside of his like direct military service he distinguished himself during this time in the way that he responded to certain I guess judicial issues that popped up during the war so there's a big battle during the Peloponnesian War between the Athenians and the Spartans a naval battle called the battle of the Argan news say that as the battle is going on a big storm comes in and the ships are sinking all over the place their hoplite soldiers in heavy armor on the boats who are getting spilled overboard and like being in heavy armor in the sea is no good you start to drown because the storm is so bad the Athenian generals say like like we got it we got a scram we got a bug out we got to scuttle this and they run away and back home the people in Athens are like you left the soldiers to drown and ran away that's cowardice no good you're all going to be executed this goes to trial there's a there they're looking for a unanimous verdict to determine whether or not these generals are guilty there's one holdout on the jury and that holdout is Socrates he says no I won't do it there's another instance where he's asked by the thirty tyrants to go fetch somebody to bring him back for for execution he says nope not doing that either so he's kind of making enemies on both sides the the folks who are fans of democracy aren't crazy about him because he's a second cousin the craziest one of the thirty tyrants he's also as we won't see because we won't read the entirety of the Republic but if you do read the Republic you'll find that Socrates is not a huge fan of democracy or if he is it's like highly-qualified it's with a big fat asterisk by it he's making enemies on on all sides it's perhaps unsurprising that he eventually gets executed hopefully by the time we're all done with this maybe we won't we won't be surprised that he gets executed but I have many goals in our study of Plato one of them is I want you to be sad when he dies when we get to the point where Socrates dies I want I want you to I want you to be in the library and in and something are you okay and be like I just I got something in my eye gets me every day every time I read fado at the end when he dies I'm just kind of like I just got to go lay down for a little while okay what else about Socrates his father yeah yes spoiler alert well actually this isn't this is important to know Plato is Plato is writing this all of this stuff after Socrates dies so his audience totally knows that Socrates does it's an it's an important piece of information to have floating around while we're reading the rest of this stuff there are plenty of little ironic references that like if you know Socrates dies in the end you're gonna say like ooh that was actually significant what happened just there in fact we get it like here in in Euthyphro like right off the bat we find out what Socrates doing he's at the court to defend himself against charges of impiety he loses that court case and that's when he gets executed look his father was a sculptor his mother was a midwife Socrates makes reference to both of these things frequently in platonic dialogues mm-hmm how they're they're supposedly significant fact he makes reference to being a sculptor here in Euthyphro makes reference to being a midwife in a republic and talks about how like I'm a midwife too but instead of giving birth to babies instead of helping people give birth to babies I'm helping people give birth to ideas um what else is going on the Socrates he was ugly he was incredibly ugly like just just hideous most people would say that he's got he had big big bug eyes and I kind of like a smooshed squash nose I refer to it as a pug nose frequently and we'll see this also in a lot of Plato's dialogues the people that Socrates was talking with will talk about how ugly is in sauk pieces like yeah it's true I'm ugly and you're very beautiful I suppose yeah all right yeah I see how it goes um also keep in mind this is this is still in contrasty going on and it's totally normal so a lot of these exchanges that you see between the old and ugly Socrates and young and beautiful men there there's a little bit of like sexual tension going on here as well what else can we say about Socrates let's stop there for a second and move on to talking about platonic dialogues in general so one of the things that we notice about this dialogic form we've read one right so it's it's much longer than any of the other stuff that we've seen before right there's a little bit of a narrative art to it yeah entry yeah so I mentioned before that like we had some some of these little fragments from folks like Heraclitus or even Anaximander there are little puzzles that you can find and pick up and start playing with we get something like Parmenides as peri foo syoss where we get led through the argument step by step by the goddess what we have here in Plato's dialogues is a whole conversation and we're being led through that right we see the back-and-forth there's something really cool and dynamic about this and the way that it sucks you in even in places where Socrates is interlocutors that are just yes men right even when they're just like by Zeus of course Socrates how could it be otherwise even in those moments these are little places where Plato is checking in with you the audience and being like do you agree and even if you don't agree there was that little month there was that little opportunity to kind of highlight it and say like ah like mm Euthyphro zigged where maybe he should have zagged there and we can then kind of go back and imagine how would this conversation have been different if you throw it answered that question differently if you disagreed with Socrates um what else is going on yes is funny yeah there's just no way to talk about a platonic dialogue without a mention of Socratic irony so it's not produces he is he's funny he's funny at times and yeah I suppose in this way that like ancient Athenian jokes could possibly translate to 2016 United States what is irony in general Alanis Morisette songs notwithstanding what is what is irony what is the definition of irony oh you guys are nervous nobody wants to take this one on yeah yeah that's certainly one one version of it frequently the way that that irony is defined and this is like the this is the battleground where some folks are like oh that was surprising it was ironic not really irony irony is literally when somebody says the opposite of what they mean dramatic irony is so sometimes we get like various like kind of oblique versions of this we can have things like dramatic irony dramatic irony is when a character is saying something and he doesn't know about some other plot development that the audience does know and so like the audience is in the know whereas the character isn't in the know what we get with Socratic irony that this very specific brand of irony is when Socrates is playing dumb when he's not actually dumb or when Socrates praises somebody for being wise when in fact he means the opposite he means like no you're not you're not impact very wise so some of this might be like you know little little jokes that Plato is writing for the audience but some of it is also like we can expect that there's a good chance that Socrates actually acted this way this is another question Socrates was a real person was he really the way that sucked that he's portrayed in Plato's dialogues it's hard to tell there are some of the dialogues that feature conversations but Socrates and people that he never could have talked with because he wasn't in Athens when those people were in Athens and there's just no way the conversation could have happened there are other ones where it's just it's just unlikely that the conversation would have happened and unlikely that it would have happened exactly the way that Plato is telling it after all he's writing all of this stuff after Socrates has died it's years and years later what are the odds that he's going to report the conversation exactly as it happened although it's probably worth pointing out that we're still not entirely done with an oral tradition here we're kind of like we're straddling the oral and written tradition with Plato this is one of the reasons why we get a version of a written work that looks an awful lot like an oral conversation so we have folks where they're there listening to other people's conversations and they're doing their best to remember them so then they can write you know they don't have like a phone that they're gonna pull out and and like record and then show somebody else obviously so people are practicing this art of remembering what happens and then going someplace else and telling everybody how it happened we're gonna get this in several of the dialogues where there's a little dramatic level of removal from the action what we get in the beginning of the dialogue is somebody meets somebody and says like hey I heard you were there when Socrates was talking to so-and-so and they're like yeah I was there like how did it go and it goes well it went like this and then he starts recounting the conversation so this is the sort of thing that wouldn't have been completely uncommon to like watch a conversation go on and then go off and tell somebody else as faithfully as possible how it unfolded but at the same time we shouldn't trust to the nitty gritty details what maybe we should trust to are the broad characterizations of Socrates and his methods after all Plato is one of Socrates as students Plato loved Socrates is he a little bit biased in his portrayal perhaps he's gonna show Socrates in a particularly good light but he's also very very close to Socrates and is a good source of the folks whose accounts of what Socrates is like go it's hard to come by somebody who's better than Plato whose more trustworthy than Plato Plato perhaps more than more than anybody but a small handful of folks would have had a better sense of what Socrates was like than anybody certainly more than somebody like Aristophanes who writes a play of the clouds portrays Socrates as a ridiculous person all right so a Socratic irony watch out for this Oh another thing to keep in mind with Socratic irony is while Socrates is talking to usually just one or two people in these dialogues sometimes three or four people this is a public conversation think of it like I don't know you ever get in like an argument with somebody on Facebook you're back and forth with just wait it's like you and then somebody else and then you and then somebody else and then you and somebody else but it's not just a Congress I mean maybe it's just a conversation between you and everybody else but other folks are watching and this is going on with Socrates as conversations as well he's talking to Euthyphro in this dialogue but there's good reason to believe that there are other people around listening to what's going on so these little snarks right these little these little moments of Socratic irony they're also for the benefit of the audience as well this may be an important thing to keep in mind too in general when you're engaging people in philosophical discourse some folks might say like if you disagree with somebody what's the point of engaging with them and arguing with them they're not going to change their mind and we might say something like well they might not change their mind but other people are watching right other people are listening as well and we want to set a good example for everybody this makes Socrates incredibly popular by the way not just his snark with the way that he engages people especially pompous people very rich and powerful people who consider themselves to be more knowledgeable than they actually are this makes him very popular with the young people of Athens they love to see the wind taken out of the sails of older richer pompous people this is also one of the reasons why he's accused of corrupting the youth of Athens he encourages them to be impertinent and to question their elders and superiors all right is that enough and if preamble a nothing for introduction on what's going on let's get right into the dialogue itself we can divide this dialogue up into some major sections first of all we are going to have an introduction and this is probably true of almost all of the early dialogues are going to have a structure that's really similar to this there's some kind of introduction in which we kind of figure out like how does this conversation start who are the people that are involved how do we how do we come to discuss this thing that we're discussing then in Euthyphro at least we get Euthyphro is first definition that gets shot down Euthyphro offers the second definition there's an ad hominem breakdown and then we get a final definition from Euthyphro final is not the right word well let's go ahead and call it a third just a third a Euthyphro along with many of the other early Socratic dialogues as what's known as an operatic dialogue which is to say it ends in an impasse it ends with bewilderment or puzzlement right Aparri a pariah literally means like no way through we start out this dialogue trying to answer a question by the end of it we still haven't answered it some people read this to say oh then therefore there is no answer just like this office suggests no not necessarily it's just we just we haven't finished the task yet this is one of the interesting things about Plato's dialogues in that what it's kind of offering us is not so much answers it's offering us questions and offering us a demonstration of a method for how to address those questions and the sorts of questions that are being asked are very different than a lot of the questions that we've seen hitherto in Greek philosophy in the pre-socratic philosophers so a lot of cosmology some metaphysics going on questions are like what is the universe made of what's the primary r-k of the cosmos like all of these all of these sorts of questions that are kind of defining what pre-socratic philosophy looks like socrates is concerned with questions that concern like everyday life the sorts of questions that you yourself might be wondering about the question at hand in Euthyphro is what is it what are they trying to figure out yep yeah what is piety Euthyphro is a dialogue about piety the Greek term that's being thrown around here is not just PI D but the highest Tahoe's on da who is on means roughly the same sort of thing that piety does today although this is kind of I guess worth mentioning piety is not a word that you hear very often in everyday conversation then anybody have to like run to a dictionary to find out like what wait what the hell is piety anyway i I don't find myself using the word piety very often I don't hear it very often broadly what does it mean yes yeah it's like it's religious religious uprightness right yeah well yeah we'll get into this as well like whether it's justice and we might we might wonder like well why wouldn't that be enough like religious uprightness why wouldn't why wouldn't that be enough in order to to settle the dispute well Socrates is not necessarily interested in what the Oxford English Dictionary is gonna have to say about what piety is he's interested in what an interesting definition would be like what is like what would what would this word mean such that understanding it would shed some light on what it means to live a good life just life right something like that all right so how did I get how did I get to talking about what piety is tell me about this introduction how does the dialogue start yes yeah where wait where is here we're like so like Socrates son used to throw meet each other and the first question is like what are you doing here in fact like the very first line is like what's new Socrates you don't usually are like what's different you don't usually hang out here you're usually hanging out someplace else why are you here and where's here yeah the King archons court King archons Court is very specific court by the way has to do with it handles issues of piety right so when somebody is accused of ungodliness they get sent to the King arkhan support murder is also handled at the King Argent's court for reasons that will kind of see once Euthyphro gets gets starts to talk this idea of like that there's a there's a kind of a impurity that's introduced into come into a community when somebody is murdered and so in order to please the gods you need to do something about you need to bring the murderer to justice so all right there at the King are transport and why are they there yeah so socrates is being accused of something of impiety somehow yep Euthyphro yeah Euthyphro yeah he's prosecuting right yeah tell me somebody tell me more so Socrates is defending himself against charges you throw is prosecuting somebody who's he prosecuting he's prosecuting his father oh my goodness gracious you're prosecuting your father had like not many people could comfortably project could you prosecute your own parents for murder yeah some people yes some people know some like and some people might think to themselves like that's not right to do and we'd be like we even if they really murder them and be like yeah that's kind of that's not how a child acts towards their parents maybe maybe not that's kind of one of the things that's on the line it seems like it's not it's not highlighted in the conversation but it is one of the things that's that's like on the line running underneath the surface all throughout this dialogue is this question of like should Euthyphro actually be prosecuting his own father on it and what are the details of this case yes yeah yeah and in fact when when he when he sends somebody to go ask the priests like what should we do with this person who murdered somebody else he got drunk and murdered somebody else right he gets drunk he murders a slave and so you throws father binds him up send somebody to go ask a priest like what do we do with this guy and remember they're living way outside of Athens the people that they're asking are back in the city so it's a long trip right takes long enough that the person who's bound up the initial murderer dies of exposure and starvation you can't be tied up out in the elements by yourself for too long before like things are gonna go south and he was drunk to begin with so he wasn't in really good shape plot thickens a little bit could you prosecute your parents for this could you charge your own father or murder or mother with murder if it was that kind of scenario somebody else person a murders person be your mother or father apprehends and subdues person a send somebody off to find out what wish what should we do about this and in the intervening time the person dies murderer and I should project that's a tough one is it any more tough because it's your parents not necessarily so yeah so this this rupee decided totally on the merits of the case or Euthyphro should be thinking about this solely on the merits of the case and not about whether or not the murders and he says this right at one point he says it's like it doesn't matter who that in fact what Socrates says you're prosecuting your own father that is surprising and you throw says you know I get that many people are surprised of this but I don't I don't get why it doesn't matter that he's my father it shouldn't matter that he's my father should only matter whether whether he's guilty that's the only thing that should matter and maybe he's right about that this quick show of hands he's right it doesn't matter that it's his father it only matters whether he's guilty raise your hand if you think that it does matter that he's his father why why does it matter if it's his father yes so it doesn't matter that it's his father because somehow like you throw something out Oh is something to his father he was a horrible father right yeah in which case we might say like yeah a horrible father is like getting really really close to not a father right like there's only like if if this marker just doesn't write at all it seems like we're splitting hairs are like wait is it a knot is it just not a marker anymore if it doesn't make marks it's like not a marker right you're like no it's just a bad marker and I'm like like we could be the marker could be so bad that it's just a non marker right a car with no engine is it a broken car is it's just not a car anymore yeah so we could say this sort of thing we're wondering whether or not like how good of a father was youthful for his father yeah so this is interesting Euthyphro immediately says it shouldn't matter it only matters whether he's guilty or not and the gods are on my side here if we look at if we look at the Theogony we'll find out that Zeus killed his father and Zeus is father killed his father there's a whole long line of gods going against their fathers I'm in good company here and they were all justified Patra sides as well right like Ernest was horrible and so Kronos killed him and everyone's like justice and then Kronos was was horrible and Zeus kills him and everyone's like justice great that's fantastic the gods are on my side and Socrates says something along the lines of like wow you seem to know an awful lot about the gods and Euthyphro says oh I know so much more if you just be like if you'd like to hear I'll tell you all about the stuff that I know about the gods and I like I know what the gods want me to do what I'm doing is the pious thing the thing that the gods want me to do and that's why what I'm doing is right and Socrates is like not a whole lot of people would be so confident that they know the will of the gods you must really be wise Euthyphro I don't know is it irony yeah I'd say it could be irony or we'll see maybe it starts out earnest but eventually it's it's full-blown irony and in addition to saying like this is this is surprising that you know so much about the gods let's take a moment to recognize that I am on trial for being impious you know so much about what the gods want that you are willing to prosecute somebody for impiety your own father in fact I on the other hand have no idea what the pious and the impious aren't that's why I'm here on trial and if I knew what the pious and the impious was I'd be able to mount a better defense for myself so Euthyphro please teach me teach me what the pious is so when I go into my trial again where I'm being charged by this guy named Meletis and another guy an itis we're gonna meet an itis in the next the next dialogue that we read he actually comes in and has a conversation with Socrates so Socrates is being accused by these other guys who's Socrates says these guys are totally wise they know what the pious is - they accuse me of corrupting the youth and they're like this is another sign of their wisdom they know that it's important to like make sure that the kids are well taken care of the whole kind of like I believe the children are our future teach them well and let them lead the way sort of thing know Whitney Houston fans in the house just won all right so they know that whether or not the children are corrupted is a really really important thing this is why they're so wise I don't know what corrupts the children I don't know what the impious is and this is why I've gotten into trouble Euthyphro please please tell me what the pious is I've got to know like it's a it's a matter of life or death for me immediately we see that there's a dynamic here between Socrates and youth bro maybe it's ironic maybe it's not but youth throws a prosecutor and Socrates is a defendant right Euthyphro claims to know what the pious is Socrates says I have no idea what the pious 'as this creates a little bit of a dynamic between Socrates and Euthyphro right we're Euthyphro is ostensibly the teacher Socrates is going to be the student this is important to keep in mind and I'll also kind of like give you a big wink this question of like whether or not there's a dynamic between two folks this actually has an awful lot to do with piety as well yes so yeah so Euthyphro lives way out in the boonies where they're like aren't too many other folks and everybody is pretty religious at this time so we can ask this question is you through for a well-respected as a religious scholar not particularly and in fact he says as much he says when I come to Athens and I speak publicly when Iced when I when I get up and I talk in front of everybody else as happens and the Athenian democracy right is there's this opportunity any anybody well not anybody just land owning men are able to but all the land owning men so like awesome are able to get up and make their arguments and whatever Euthyphro talks and he primarily will talk about like the gods and what the gods want people laugh at him he's not particularly well-respected in Athens for this but he lives far away from the city and you could imagine if you don't have a whole lot of association with too many other people you could come up with all kinds of ideas about the gods and what the gods are like and what the gods do like and what they want from us and if you're never challenged by anybody else you might start to think of yourself as a serious authority so a serious of an authority in fact that maybe you're willing to prosecute your own father and say like no dad you're wrong I'm right it's a bold thing to do right stand up to your parents and be like no dad you're wrong I'm right ever have you ever had to do that it's a delicate thing to try to navigate to tell your parents or your teacher no rosenfeld you're wrong I'm right and then I go like who the hell is this little telling me that I am wrong I'm the teacher there the student right these are the dynamics to keep in mind here and it's right off the bat we get you through the prosecutor soccer piece of the defendant you throw knows what the Pius Azure claims to at least Socrates says I have no idea what the pius --is this is going to structure a lot of their interaction yes stoicism did you say yep well much much later much later maybe there are hints of stoicism that's an interesting question that it doesn't matter yeah that we should that maybe we would hesitate to prosecutor on parents because we love them maybe this is what we're thinking and we shouldn't let that get in the way this is this is an emotion that we should not let intrude on what should be in a dispassionate decision perhaps this is why it might look like stoicism this is not the reason why Socrates finds it surprising well maybe it's one of the reasons it's like how could you prosecute your parents don't you love your parents there's also this other issue of this question of whether or not it's impertinent whether or not it's actually against the natural order for a child to try to discipline their parents this is slightly different than like what a stoic might might the way that a stoic might frame this problem so yeah so man again perhaps hints of stoicism coming from Euthyphro but I'll just kind of suggest that like maybe we shouldn't we shouldn't lend a whole lot of credence to what Euthyphro is trying to say here he's he's a he's a foil he's a fall guy he's a he's somebody for Socrates to argue against here all right are we cool with the introduction we know like what's on the line here we're trying to figure out what is piety Socrates like you got to tell me man and we get this whole kind of dramatic introduction that there's way more packed in there than we might we might have like gotten on our first pass as I'm talking about this difference between like the prosecutor and the prosecuted this difference between a parent and well this difference between the teacher and the student this difference between the person who knows or claims to know and the person who does not know or claims not to know these might have been things that you didn't catch first pass and it's all packed into just the introduction keep an eye out for these as we continue to read Platonic dialogues they are so dense so dense and so many layers this is the thing that's the most impressive I think about Plato's dialogues is that they just keep it the more you read and reread and ruminate and reread and ruminate and reread and talk with other folks and reread the more these dialogues keep giving you they're like they're like an onion there's layers right there's just it just you peel one off and you're like ah he didn't really mean that he was being ironic all right so what did he mean and some of its spoken and some of its unspoken some of it is stuff that's performed rather than said explicitly keep coming back to these and anytime you encounter a passage it you're like what's that doing there that doesn't that's that's not important it's probably important I think I might stop short of saying that there isn't a wasted line in any of Plato's dialogues but that's kind of a good rule of thumb to follow if you see something that's like what is that doing there it's probably very important and you just haven't realized why yet so this introduction action-packed we get a whole lot of sage setting Socrates says you got to tell me what's the pious and you throw gives them an answer gives the first definition what is that first definition yes is the opposite right yeah - I apparently to not prosecute the wrongdoer and in fact Euthyphro gives it a he says it he has one thing before he says that he says piety is doing what I'm doing right now if he had stopped right there would that be a ridiculous answer what is piety and youth Pro says it's doing what I'm doing right now which would mean in order for any of us to be pious we have to do whatever you throw is doing right now and to not do whatever you throws doing right now is Impa that seems a little absurd but he goes a little further right and he says it's to prosecute the wrongdoer no matter what if they're a parent or a loved one or a friend or a stranger it's to prosecute those who do wrong and to do otherwise it's impasse if what we thought about piety is that it's religious uprightness this is a kind of a peculiar answer it's also a peculiar answer for some other reasons and Socrates critiques this answer you throw says it's to do what I'm doing now it's to prosecute the wrongdoer no matter who they are and the em pious is to do the opposite to fail to prosecute the wrongdoer how is Socrates going to critique this answer when Socrates himself does not know what the pious is this seems to be a little bit of a bind right if Socrates is gonna be like that's not the pious you through me like you just said you didn't know what it is how do you know that that's not the pious so how does he critique the answer yep why not yeah yeah it's not a it's not a it's not a judicial system built on laws right we don't ask the jury like what you need to determine here is whether or not they broke the law this way same way that juries get instructions in our society right yeah yeah okay so yeah so this is this Socrates is first response to this is like uh nobody disagrees with the idea that it's wrong that it's right to prosecute the wrongdoer even the people who are accused of wrongdoing you'd be hard-pressed to find them saying like yeah I did wrong but you shouldn't prosecute me what usually is on the line in one of these if there's a dispute in a court case is it about whether or not the wrongdoer should be punished no what is it about so whether or not they've done wrong right so this doesn't really help and then furthermore Socrates points out like let's look at my case in particular it doesn't help me to tell me that it is pious to prosecute the wrongdoer I'm the one who's being accused how do I show that I wasn't in pious as the defendant this doesn't really make any sense what he points out here is that Euthyphro perhaps you're right than it is pious to prosecute the wrongdoer in all cases but one of all first of all this doesn't answer the really difficult question of how do we tell whether somebody's done wrong or not and second of all it doesn't help me at all it doesn't help me in my situation as a teacher you have not done a very good job because I am no better off now than I was before like when I first asked you to tell me what the pious was and when I explained to you why I need to know what the pious was you have not really helped me out at all you've defended yourself and said like I'm doing the right thing because I'm prosecuting the wrongdoer but you haven't really helped anybody else at best you've given us an example of piety and that example works for your case but it doesn't work for my case probably doesn't work for very many other cases that's an interesting sort of a critique and notice it's a critique that he can make without having any idea what the pious is it's not so much that you're wrong about piety it's that you haven't really answered the question yet so we move on to another definition you throw says like alright fine you didn't like that one I'll give you another definition what's his second answer with that yeah all right so first definition is it's what I'm doing now prosecuting the wrongdoer no matter what and then Socrates is response to this is to say first of all the real problem here is how do we know who the wrongdoers are and second of all you've only given an example of piety you haven't defined it for me and you haven't really helped me out it's not a definition and in our second response from you throw we get the pious is what is pleasing to the gods it's what the gods love right and the impious it's what the gods hate that's a much better answer than the first one I guess it's not just an example at least perhaps this is an abstract definition that would cover all of the pious things and all of the Empire's things we do have some difficulties here namely what yeah we've got we've got a plurality of God's problem also we have this issue of like how that help yeah so if there's plurality of gods they're going to discrete this ends up being the route that Socrates does take notice what you're out he doesn't pink but which seems screamingly obvious the pious is what the gods love the impious is what the gods hate how the hell do you know what the gods love and what the gods hate Socrates doesn't go that route however why because Euthyphro says I do know what the gods love and what the gods hate you throw claims to have accent privileged access to the desires of the gods Socrates himself does not know about these things you throw scenes eager to tell Socrates all the stuff that he does know about the gods and Socrates is like and perhaps for another time that sounds very interesting but let's leave that alone I'm not interested in getting into a discussion with you about what the gods love and what the gods hate because let's be honest that conversation is really not going to go anywhere interesting very fast ever been in a situation like this where somebody's somebody claims to speak for God and you're like you don't get to speak forgotten they're like yes I do and how do we move forward from that they say I know and you say mmm no you don't and then you try to prove to them that like their idea of God is wrong and they're like no it's not your idea of God is wrong I don't I don't know how we move forward from that here's one way that we do move forward is we say but wait a minute there are many gods and in fact you yourself youth proof just a little while ago said that they quarrel with one another what do they quarrel about they quarrel about do they quarrel about things like what's taller and what's shorter do they quarrel about things like what's heavier and what's lighter these are silly things to argue about because we can settle them just by measuring what do the gods seem to disagree about they seem to disagree about what they love and what they hate so what now I asked you to tell me what the pious was you told me it's what the gods love that's what's pious and what the gods hate is impious but the same things could be both loved and hated by the gods you yourself have said so that this happens frequently that some gods love one thing and other gods hate that same thing so that same thing would be both pious and impious I'm confused Euthyphro you said you were going to teach me you don't really seem to be teaching me anything is it because you don't want to teach me is because you don't want me to know you want to keep all the knowledge for yourself come on be it be a good guy share the knowledge help me out this is a little quirk this this response that Socrates gives to Euthyphro is perhaps it's just a quirk of polytheism right it's because we have multiple gods and because they're at war with one another sometimes that we have things that could be both pious and impious according to this definition if like Zenith eni's suggests or like many of us are today if we're good monotheists we don't actually have this problem we can just say that whatever God the one true God loves that's the pious whatever that one true God hates that's the impious and this criticism doesn't really land anymore and in fact Euthyphro takes a similar sort of approach he says yeah yeah but there are some things that all of the gods will agree on about things that they love and things that they hate all of the gods for example hate murderers and murder and all of the gods love the prosecution of a murderer and the bringing of a murderer to justice so there we go and Socrates is like all right I see what you're saying so there's disagreement there's quarreling amongst the gods but they do all agree on some things and the things that they all love those are the pious the things that they all hate those are the impious and the things that like some of them love and some of them hate those are neither pious nor in pious as this is what you're telling me and you throws like yeah and Socrates says cooled so we have a polytheism objection which gets rescued like get the from rescues it but then Socrates comes back at him with another question which is a real doozy as a matter of fact I'm gonna go ahead and bring us all the way over here for a newt we need more space for this Socrates hits them with a question that's seemingly innocuous but it it is huge just a huge question it's such a huge question that this is frequently referred to as the Euthyphro dilemma it's the most kind of interesting piece of philosophical thinking that's going on in this entire dialogue what is the question that Socrates asks yeah go ahead Yeah right right yeah so yeah whether we're getting at James V Jay Z's version or plato's version it is the pious pious because the gods love it or do the gods love it because it's pious I said it just then and perhaps when you read it you were like wait what what maybe this kind of has a nice euphony if it's you know if it's part of my flow it sounds nice but when you stop and think like what is that what does that mean and Socrates offers a couple of examples here I'll do something similar right now here's a little red marker I am carrying it and it's it's carried right it's a carried thing and I'm carrying it is it carried because I'm carrying it or am i carrying it because it's carried the first one right definitely the first one anybody think like no it's a carry thing and that's that's why you got to get in there and carry it no it's I decide to carry it and that's what makes it a carried thing right so this this directionality in this question of like what makes it a carried thing seems to be important in the sort of thing that you can parse we've got the same thing going on here is the pious pious because the gods love it or do they love it because it's pious this is a very interesting question even if it doesn't make sense all that much right on its surface and you throw himself is like it initially he's just like wait what what I'm not sure what you're asking Socrates explains a little he does let you see the marker is a carrot because I'm carrying your blah blah blah blah and you guys get the idea let's think of it - just like instead of just the gods loving something consider it from the perspective of anybody loving something do you love somebody because they're lovable or are they lovable because you love them like they weren't lovable and then somebody loved them and they're like oh I guess they're lovable now or does there have to be something worth loving in order for you to love them huh know that like love is just love is completely arbitrary like there's no rhyme or reason for why somebody loves somebody else and when we do then I guess they're lovable they certainly do and sometimes the gods disagree about what and what is not lovable right yeah people do to say they do seem to disagree about this but what about the things that all people agree about right like murderers we can all agree that murderers are not insofar as they're murderers there's nothing lovable about murder self-defense ain't murder though what's that yeah perhaps they would yeah well let's think about it in terms of God we can talk about the gods and the things that they all agree with or we can do it like Zenith eni's wants us to and just talk about like one God does God love the thing love the things that God loves because they're lovable or are they lovable just because God loves them is that pious because in fact just substitute God for the gods is the pious pints because the gods love it or is something good or right just because God loves it or does God love it because it's good or right this is an interesting fork and it's hard to tell which way it goes which way does Euthyphro go Euthyphro says they love it because it's pious or does he say it's pious because they love it check your text and in fact somebody find me this the the line and the Stephanus number for you guys and your are you familiar with this there there's those little letters and numbers in the margins those are called the Stephanus numbers no matter what translation you have those numbers are going to be there so it helps you kind of pinpoint exactly what happens yeah where is it 77 when you say 77 you mean page 77 of beared yeah so the Stephanus number would actually be 10 e yeah so Stephanus pin e Socrates says then piety is not what is pleasing to the God's Word is pleasing the gods is not pious since you say there are different things why baba baba because you agreed that the gods love Heidi because it is pious and that it is not pious because they love it a little earlier than that used to throw himself himself says it right so Euthyphro goes this way he says they love it because it's pious and because he answers this way this definition is no longer good enough why would it no longer be good enough well because it doesn't tell me what makes the pious pious it just tells me a certain quality of the pious right that's like if I was to ask you what's a fire engine and you said fire engines are red let's assume that all fire engines are red if I said what's fire engine you said fire engines are red maybe that's true but it doesn't really tell me what a fire engine is right and I was like are things red because the fire engines or every the fire engines because there is we could go that way right or we could just recognize that all you really did was give me a property of fire engines you didn't tell me what their essence was you didn't tell me what it is that makes a fire engine a fire engine and the same sort of thing is going on here Socrates points out that if this is your answer to this dilemma that I have pretty like presented you with when I ask you is it pious because the gods love it or do they love it because it's pious and you say they love it because it's pious then you haven't told me what makes the pious pious you've only told me some particular quality of it and that's not a definition that doesn't that doesn't get me where I need to go but we might wonder what if you thief Road gone the other way what if you throw it said yeah like we might say like ah you throw you poor dumb bastard you've got yourself in the trouble because you answered the wrong answer you gave you two options you took the one that button hooked yourself maybe you should have gone this way instead yes seems like most people's ideas of gods are that like God makes everything right was made by the gods right yeah so we can think about like well what what if we had gone the other route maybe Euthyphro should have gone the other route yes that is divine for ya if you've taken an intro to ethics course or I don't know maybe you just done some reading you'll know divine command theory is this idea that like something is right or wrong solely because God says so we that's just a slight twist from because God loves it right and we might ask ourselves like wait a minute is it right because God says so or because or does God say so because it's right the thing about like Commandments right the Ten Commandments thou shalt not kill thou shalt not murder right is it wrong to murder just because God says so or does God tell us not to murder because it's wrong to murder seems again we're like wait hold on that's a difficult but there's a lot on the line one of the things that's on the line is are these Commandments completely arbitrary or not if something is wrong just because God says so and not God says so because it's wrong then whatever God says that's the difference between right or wrong so we happen to have gotten the Ten Commandments that we got but there is absolutely nothing stopping God from having given ten completely different anti Commandments thou shalt murder as often as possible thou shalt dishonor thy mother and thy father every chance get and if we had those Commandments we wouldn't say to ourselves like those seem like bad commandments we've been like that's what God said so that's the difference between right and wrong right so this is actually a very very difficult a lot of folks have trouble defending that position because it makes God's will arbitrary a lot of folks prefer the idea of a rational God that has reasons for giving the commandments that God gives or creating the world the way that God created the world and those reasons are perhaps in principle accessible to us and we could understand them perhaps as st. Thomas of Aquinas is going to say much much later that this is when we talk about like humans being created in God's image it's this the ability to understand the reasons for why things are right and why things are wrong that's us created in God's image and not the other way around we're almost out of time I want to put a put just like a bow on this real quick we didn't finish Euthyphro but we will in our next class yeah so this isn't this is a difficult position to defend youth Pro doesn't take it we might wonder what if he did he would have been in a different kind of trouble then he goes this route and that means your initial definition was still no good what is it Euthyphro you don't want it you don't want to teach Socrates at no point to Socrates say you don't know you keep saying you know what the pious is but you don't know but it's roundabout this point in the dialogue are you guys starting to get this impression like you're the first said he knew but he even know he just thought he knew all right we'll pick it up from here and talk about like how you throw response to being contradicted a second time

Channel: Adam Rosenfeld

Views: 10,535

Rating: 4.8554215 out of 5

Keywords: Ancient Philosophy, Plato, Euthyphro, Piety

Id: 5Eh2b12fPcU

Length: 74min 59sec (4499 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2016