Euthyphro Flashcards
What is the main question of Plato’s Euthyphro?
What is piety or a pious person?
Where do Socrates and Euthyphro meet?
They met outside of court.
What are Euthyphro and Socrates doing outside of the courthouse?
Socrates is being indicted and Euthyphro is prosecuting someone.
What is Euthyphro’s profession?
Euthyphro is a priest.
What is the charge brought against Socrates?
Meletus believes Socrates is corrupting the youth, that he is impious.
How are Socrates charges and Euthyphro’s occupation related?
Because Euthyphro is a priest, he can tell Socrates what impiety is.
What is Euthyphro’s first answer to the question: “What is piety?”
What he is doing now (prosecuting his father.)
How does Socrates criticize Euthyphro’s first answer to what is piety?
That it is an example, not a definition.
What is Euthyphro’s second answer to the question about piety?
Piety is what all the gods love, and the opposite, what all the gods hate is impious.
Explain Socrates’s first criticism the Euthyphro’s second answer to what is piety.
That the gods are in a state of enmity and that they are at odds with each other. Different gods consider different things to be just. Eluding that something’s to certain gods would be pious or impious.
Explain Socrates’s more important criticism Euthyphro’s second answer to the definition of piety.
Because the definition is opposing.
Socrates suggests a new tack (at 12d), suggesting they identify the pious by its relation to justice. (a) What do they decide this relation is.
Where there is piety there is also justice, but where there is justice there is not always piety, for the pious is part of justice.
What definition of piety does Euthyphro offer based on the relation of piety and justice?
Godly and pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods, while that concerned with the care of men is the remaining part of justice.
What fault does Socrates find with the definition in relation to piety and justice?
He wants to understand what Euthyphro means by “care”. For example everyone does not know how to care for horses the same way a horse breeder does.
How does Plato’s Euthyphro end?
We do not know what piety is, for we only received examples and not definitions. Alongside contradictions.
