Euthyphro's Definition Of Piety

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Euthyphro is a dialogue about definitions, whose events take place few weeks before the trial of Socrates around 399 BCE. During this Socrates and Euthyphro tries to find a definitive meaning for the word holiness (or Piety). The argument of the Euthyphro is to offer a proper definition of piety. This is a result of the fact that Euthyphro wants to answer Socrates’ question of “what is piety?” Socrates is simply looking for a universal describer: what do pious things have in common that can be used to identify them. In this paper, I will describe Euthyphro’s idea of how ‘pious’ is defined in terms of the approval of an authority and defend Socrates’ argument that are pious things loved by all the gods, or are they pious because they are being …show more content…
What is the pious? Euthyphro provides the first definition of Piety by saying that “the pious is to do what I am doing now--to prosecute the wrong-doer (IU, 3). However, Socrates response is that he is looking for a definition of Piety and not just pious actions. As a result, Euthyphro gives the second definition of piety by saying “what is dear to the gods is pious, and what is not is impious” (IU, 6). According to this definition however, piety is defined by the gods, which cannot be true because all gods do not agree on what is pious and what isn’t. Gods simply have differences too! Therefore, piety cannot be just what is dear to the gods and what isn’t; piety has to be something else. Then, Euthyphro proves the third definition of piety: piety is what ALL the gods love and impiety is what they ALL hate. Due to this definition Socrates asks “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”(Payne PPT). So Euthyphro goes further to give the fourth definition: “piety is that part of justice which attends to the gods” (IU, 17) However, Socrates is not clear about what is meant by “attend” in this because anyone can “attend” anything. For example, humans can attend children, or parents. Due to this Euthyphro is forced to come up with the fifth definition of piety: piety is justice to the …show more content…
The philosopher would probably have either answered the questions with a question, given an answer that raised another question, or a simple given a straight-forward answer. For example, when I say that in the first definition Euthyphro’s argument is narrow. He would have said something along the lines of ‘narrow’ being a subject of opinion or would have possibly collaborated with a mathematician to exactly define what is narrow. Furthermore, when I say that in my opinion gods do not disagree, Socrates would have simple questioned “how do we know that?” and possibly requested proof of that