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The Last Days of Socrates
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Euthyphro Summary
Euthyphro and Socrates encounter each other outside the Athenian court while pursuing opposite tasks. Euthyphro is bringing a lawsuit against his father for murder, and Socrates has been indicted by a young man called Meletus for “making new gods,” “not believing in the ancient ones,” and corrupting Athenian youths (40). Using these two cases, the dialogue explores the meaning of piety.
Euthyphro’s charges against his father presents a first definition of piety, by means of example. Socrates assumes the murder victim must have been a family member since Euthyphro otherwise would have no reason to prosecute. Euthyphro counters that it should not matter whether the victim is a family member, only whether the murder was just. If the murder was unjust, then proceedings should be brought against the murderer since all who associate with him would be polluted by the act.
Euthyphro’s father killed a day-laborer in the family’s service who himself had killed one of the family’s slaves in a dispute. Euthyphro’s father had the day-laborer tied up and thrown into a ditch while he sought counsel from the authorities. Before their response could arrive, the day-laborer died of exposure and hunger. Euthyphro acts on the premise that since murder leads to pollution, murder must be impious. However, he is going against the wishes and beliefs of his family.
Euthyphro professes to not be afraid of being wrong, and Socrates asks him to explain the meaning of piety and impiety. Euthyphro asserts that criminal charges must be pursued against the impious regardless of who they are. He cites as precedent Zeus castrating his father for unjustly swallowing his children.
When Socrates asks Euthyphro to identify the “single character” that makes “pious things pious,” Euthyphro offers a second definition: Piety is what the gods love, and impiety is what they do not love (44). Socrates points out that gods may love and hate different things. If piety depends on what gods love, then they could disagree about what is just and unjust, as humans do, which Euthyphro agrees is untenable. Euthyphro then offers a third definition of piety: “whatever all the gods love,” and impiety “whatever all the gods hate” (48).
Socrates then asks whether the gods love piety because it is pious, or if it is pious because they love it. When Euthyphro expresses confusion, Socrates explains that the seer and the seen cannot be the same thing. If something is seen, it must be because its essential quality is that it is seeable. From this, they agree that something must be loved by the gods because it is pious, rather than the other way around. Thus, Socrates concludes, piety and what is loved by the gods are two different things.
Socrates repeats his request that Euthyphro explain what piety and impiety are, asking if piety and what is just are one and the same or whether piety makes up one part of what is just. When they agree that the pious is one part of the just, Socrates asks which part of piety is just and which part of the just is pious.
Offering a fourth definition, Euthyphro says that the pious part of the just is the part concerned with tending to the gods while the rest is concerned with relations among humans (54). Socrates observes that horse trainers tend to horses to make them better and asks Euthyphro if this can possibly be so with the gods. In other words, do humans tend to the gods to make them better? Euthyphro emphatically objects, replying that humans tend to the gods as enslaved people tend to their masters. They agree that piety is an “expertise in serving the gods” (54).
Socrates and Euthyphro then clarify that piety is “expertise in sacrifice” or giving to the gods “and prayer” or asking for things from the gods. This is the final definition in the dialogue (56).
Since piety is “a kind of expertise in trading between gods and men,” Socrates asks how the gods benefit from what humans give them (56). Euthyphro clarifies that piety is gratifying to the gods but does not benefit them. Socrates notices that they have gone in a circle, returning to the point that the pious is “what the gods love” (57).
He says they must start from the beginning since Euthyphro would not be prosecuting his elderly father if he did not absolutely know what piety was, but Euthyphro replies that they will have to take up the matter another day.
Euthyphro Analysis
Around 508-7 BCE, approximately a century before Euthyphro is believed to have been composed, an Athenian statesman called Cleisthenes instituted a series of political reforms designed to neutralize the power of local, family-based clans and to redefine social identity in geographic terms. Within this new system, when a free man turned 18, his father or other adult male relative recommended him for participation in his local community, called his deme. After meeting certain requirements, the young man would be inducted into his deme and become a citizen, at which point both his deme and his father’s name became part of his name.
Athens was a direct democracy, and its citizens were directly responsible for the running of the city. The assembly of men, called the Ecclesia, met several times per month to vote on all civic matters, from taxes to declarations of war. Attendance and participation were open to every citizen without exception. In addition to the council, citizens were chosen by lot, 500 men per year, to serve on the Boule, or council, which met daily to oversee the city’s operations.
Two important consequences of these reforms bear on Euthyphro and the ensuing dialogues. One is that because the citizen was responsible for the city-state, the city-state was a defining feature of citizen identity. Second, effective public speaking was how Athenian citizens gained power and influence.
In Euthyphro, the tension between family and state identities are expressed in Euthyphro’s blithe confidence that he is right to prosecute his father for murder. Euthyphro does so against the wishes of the rest of his family, even though the victim’s death may have been unintentional, and the victim had also murdered an enslaved member of the victim’s household. Euthyphro’s certainty rests on his assumption that because a murderer must be purified (a ritual cleansing for the benefit of maintaining proper relations with the gods), a murderer must also be prosecuted (punished by the state). This legalistic approach conflates the responsibilities members of Athenian society have to gods and those they have to each other. Socrates does not directly contradict Euthyphro’s views but deconstructs it through questioning.
First, he reveals that Euthyphro is only providing an example of what he believes piety is, without being able to define the thing itself. He then shows that Euthyphro has left himself open to contradiction by claiming that piety is what pleases the gods. Euthyphro gets as far as recognizing that piety and the just are two different things but cannot move beyond recognizing that the gods love piety to defining the thing itself. This introduces an idea that Socrates will address more fully in Phaedo: human limits to perceive what “is,” which he will draw on and expand in his discussion of the soul’s immortality in Phaedo.
As the first of four texts grouped in this collection, Euthyphro establishes how easy it is for people to feel confident that they understand complex and uncertain issues. Euthyphro gives up the search for certainty to continue with his day, perhaps even to go through with the prosecution of his father, a potentially unjust act which may harm his family and himself.
Euthyphro establishes how important and necessary Socrates’s philosophical method is to promote piety and justice in the city. That an answer is not found suggests that the quest of philosophy has no end. Like the natural cycles of life on earth, the process of dialogue must continually renew and continue for a city to be wise and just.
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