Euthyphro

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

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Euthyphro

Euthyphro may or may not have been a real person. In his dialogues Plato generally employed characters who really existed, but of Euthyphro we have no certain record. His name resembles the Greek for “straight or orthodox mind” (207), which fits his personality well. A conscientiously religious man, Euthyphro is self-confident in his opinions and actions. He is somewhat conceited, claiming to be different from the “common herd of men” (13) and professing extensive knowledge about religion and the gods. Euthyphro acts in public as a sort of prophet, foretelling the future in the Assembly, which causes his fellow members to regard him as crazy. Euthyphro believes that the opposition he faces is due to the fact that people hold a grudge against those who prophecy.

As the dialogue progresses, Socrates knocks many of Euthyphro’s certainties down, and it becomes clear that Euthyphro does not know as much as he thinks he does. At the end, Euthyphro abruptly exits the conversation, perhaps unable or unwilling to withstand Socrates’s questioning. In effect, Euthyphro functions in the dialogue as a comic foil for Socrates’s brilliance.

Yet Euthyphro exhibits some agreeable qualities in his own right. He is friends with and respects Socrates’s philosophical abilities; the two men enjoy a playfully bantering relationship throughout the dialogue. Euthyphro wants Socrates to succeed in his suit and clear himself of his charges, and he is eager to share his own religious knowledge with Socrates. In contrast with the skeptical, philosophical Socrates, Euthyphro is religiously orthodox and accepts all the stories traditionally told about the gods. Yet Euthyphro sees a kinship between him and Socrates, since both of them speak prophesies in public and are ridiculed for it.

Although a friendly and good-natured person, Euthyphro lacks self-awareness. He has taken it upon himself to prosecute his father without considering all sides of the issue, relying on an overly strict definition of piety. Euthyphro has an over-confident view of his abilities as a philosopher and arguer: “If he should try a prosecution on me, I’d discover where his weak spot is, and he’d be on the defensive in court long before I was!” (13). Socrates slyly humors this side of Euthyphro and pretends to desire to learn from him, but his real intent is to make Euthyphro question his own convictions more deeply. Although he claims to be “far advanced along the path to wisdom” (11), in the end Euthyphro is no match for the more probing intellect of Socrates.

Socrates

The little we know about the life of Socrates (469?-399 BCE) is learned from writings produced after his lifetime, including Plato’s dialogues. He was apparently the son of a stonemason and served as a soldier in the Greek army during the Peloponnesian War. As a philosopher, Socrates became a critic of the social and political order in Athens, urging leaders to abandon the principle of “might makes right” and pursue goodness and justice. He walked the streets and marketplaces of Athens, teaching people, and particularly young men, about the soul and the moral life. His philosophical style has become known as the Socratic method—a kind of cross-examination in which he led the other person to find out the truth for himself (see Literary Devices). Socrates produced no philosophical writings of his own but instead imparted his teachings orally.

Socrates was Plato’s teacher of philosophy, and he appears as the main character in most of Plato’s dialogues. Scholars have argued over whether the dialogues represent Socrates’s positions faithfully, or whether Plato sometimes uses Socrates as a spokesman for his own views. Whatever the case may be, Socrates’s consistent aim in the dialogues is to make people think for themselves and question their beliefs more than to accept his own positions. His friendliness, intellectual curiosity, and use of irony and humor to discover the truth go to make an attractive personality in “Euthyphro”—even if the reader may suspect that he is leading Euthyphro on with his flattery and compliments. We are meant to see the dialogue from Socrates’s perspective and react knowingly as he progressively pokes holes in Euthyphro’s argument. The real intellectual difference between Euthyphro and Socrates is that, while Euthyphro pretends to be an expert, Socrates admits his ignorance, and for this very reason comes off as the wiser person.

Reading “Euthyphro” takes on a particular poignance in the context of Socrates’s life, as we know that he will shortly go on trial for his views and be forced to commit suicide. These events are the subject of Plato’s dialogues Apology, “Crito,” and “Phaedo.” According to the latter work, Socrates stated in the face of his forced suicide that “All of philosophy is training for death.”

Plato

Plato (427-347 BCE) was one of the most influential philosophers of all time, and along with Aristotle one of the two most important philosophers of ancient Greece. Plato’s writings, which are cast in the form of dialogues or little plays, purport to represent the ideas of his teacher, Socrates.

Plato’s philosophical system is idealistic: He believed that the material world grasped through the senses is less real than the world of ideas grasped by the mind. The human soul is immortal, and knowledge consists not so much of learning but of remembering the eternal Ideas that the soul grasped before it was born in the body. Plato’s most celebrated work is the Republic, in which he outlined his plans for an ideal state based on the cultivation of the virtues. After the death of Socrates, Plato founded near Athens a school, called the Academy, to disseminate his philosophy. The Academy became the center of learning in Greece and is often considered the first university. Plato’s writings exerted a profound influence on the history of Western thought, from Aristotle to the Stoics, the Christian church fathers, and finally to modern thinkers.