The Teaching assistant, Mr. Paul Julian of FAS Harvard, has been kind enough to resent the summary. Mine was pretty far off, touch\u00e9 for people who has more opinions on Euthypro case.<\/p>\n
Sample Summary of Plato\u2019s\u00a0Euthyphro<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This passage opens with Euthyphro claiming that pious things are those that are loved by all the gods (with \u201cthings\u201d presumably including acts, attitudes, characters, and so on).\u00a0 Socrates responds that Euthyphro\u2019s claim admits of two interpretations of the relevant causal relationship.\u00a0 Either (1) pious things are loved by the gods\u00a0because<\/em>\u00a0those things are pious, or (2) it is the gods\u2019 love of those things that\u00a0makes<\/em>\u00a0those things pious.\u00a0 Socrates argues by way of several examples that a thing can be in the state of being loved by the gods only through the gods\u2019 act(s) of loving it, and Euthyphro agrees.\u00a0 Euthyphro also agrees with Socrates\u2019 next claim: the gods love pious things\u00a0because<\/em>\u00a0those things are pious, i.e., in response to their recognition that those things are pious.<\/p>\n But if a thing\u2019s being pious were really identical with its being in the state of being loved by all the gods, as Euthyphro claimed at the outset, then we have a contradiction.\u00a0 For this claim commits Euthyphro to the view that the gods\u2019 act(s) of loving a thing are what make that thing pious (Socrates calls this\u00a0theophiles)<\/em>, but he has also assented to the claim that the gods\u2019 recognition of a thing\u2019s piousness is what makes them love it (Socrates calls thisosion)<\/em>. \u00a0And these are clearly two very different claims. \u00a0Socrates argues that the way out of this mess is to abandon Euthyphro\u2019s initial identity claim.\u00a0 The most that such a claim could show is that pious things all share the particular feature of being loved by all the gods.\u00a0 But this is just to point out a mere\u00a0attribute<\/em>\u00a0of pious things and not to tell us anything informative about the\u00a0essence<\/em>\u00a0or nature of piety itself, i.e., about what makes\u00a0<\/em>a thing pious.\u00a0 If Socrates\u2019 argument is correct, then our inquiry into the nature of piety (or, in more contemporary terms, into the nature of goodness or rightness) can, and indeed must, proceed independently of any claims about what the gods love (or, again in more contemporary terms, what God has ordained, commanded, etc.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Teaching assistant, Mr. Paul Julian of FAS Harvard, has been kind enough to resent the summary. Mine was pretty far off, touch\u00e9 for people who has more opinions on Euthypro case. Sample Summary of Plato\u2019s\u00a0Euthyphro This passage opens … Continue reading