Plato's Euthyphro

This semester, I’m taking a class dealing with the philosophy of ethics. This is an interesting choice for me, as I am a moral nihilist (someone who believes that ethics and morality are purely a manmade creation, and have no existence outside of our heads). Which means I spend most of my time in the class disagreeing with the entire premise of the class, and building arguments to prove why everyone else around me is wrong. Fun times.

This is an essay I wrote for the class, dealing with Plato’s Euthyphro (which will make this the second time I’ve posted something about Plato’s writings on this blog). Euthyphro is a dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro discussing the relationship between what is holy (or what is good/moral, in modern terms) and the gods.

In the essay, I make reference a Shafer-Landau. This Shafer-Landau is the author of the class’s book, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil, where he attempts to prove Ethical Objectivism (the belief that morality and ethics have a real existence, objective from human perceptions of them). To express my opinion of the book in the most positive tone possible, I think that the arguments in it could use a little work. It contains various logical fallacies, and while Shafer-Landau does very well disproving Ethical Relativism (the belief that morality/ethics exist, but they are relative to what a society believes them to be) and Ethical Subjectivism (the belief that morality/ethics exist, but are relative to what the individual believes them to be), he absolutely fails at disproving moral nihilism.
But that’s not what this is about. Well, it partially is, but not entirely. No, this is about me making the claim that, based on Plato’s Euthyphro, we should all become either nihilists or Gnostics.



Plato’s Euthyphro details a conversation between the philosopher Socrates and Euthyphro, as they discuss what is “holy”. The situation which frames this discussion is a trial Euthyphro will be attending, to testify against his father for homicide. These actions had brought about the ire of Euthyphro’s contemporaries, who claim that it is not holy for a son to testify against his parent. However, Euthyphro holds his belief that his actions are holy.

To explore this issue, Socrates poses the question of what is and is not holy. According to Euthyphro, what the gods support is holy. However, Socrates quickly points out that the gods of their pantheon bicker more than schoolgirls. This forces Euthyphro to modify his definition of holy to what all the gods support.

At this time in the discussion, it is possible for modern readers to follow from a monotheistic perspective. Socrates and Euthyphro are now speaking of a unified committee of gods, which holds only one opinion. The implication of a unified voice of multiple gods would be identical the voice of a single god, as both produce only one opinion on matters.

With that little digression out of the way, allow us to move on with this delightful discussion. At this point, Socrates poses a question to Euthyphro, which becomes the central idea of the argument: Is something holy because the gods approve of it, or do the gods approve of it because it is holy? To put it in modern, monotheistic, terms, is something good because god made it good, or does god approve of good things?

The first idea, that something is good because god made it good, is called the Divine Command Theory. It is a stance which most theists take, as it supports the concept of god’s omnipotence. While it seems that the Divine Command Theory is the most sensible choice, after all, if God created everything, this would include morality, there are many criticism against it which support the second idea.

One of the implications of the DCT which critics attack is the arbitrary nature of morality under it. If there is no objective basis for morality, god’s choices on what is good and what isn’t were made entirely at whim. At any time, he could decide to make genocide morally acceptable, or have even made it acceptable from the start. This clashes with the idea of a benevolent god, as his morality is arbitrary instead of kind.

For a benevolent god to work, morality would need be independent of him. In this way, his support of morality is genuine kindness, and not arbitrary decision making.

However, such a view makes a major assumption: the benevolence of god. While from the perspective of Western Christianity, we may claim that god is benevolent as a sound basis for a claim, this does not uphold itself universally. To return to the Greek pantheon; most of the gods of the ancient Greeks were not by any stretch of the imagination “good”. Instead, they tended to act more akin to drunken frat boys after a football game, except with the ability to throw lightning at random pedestrians. For more modern religions, the Jewish take on Yahweh makes himself out to be a far more violent figure than the compassionate one of the New Testament. Then we have Deism, where god is merely apathetic, not necessarily good. For the most extreme example, we can look at Gnosticism, which has god as a malevolent, cruel tyrant who arbitrarily creates our current morality for the purpose of subjugation. None of these religions have any difficulty with the idea of the DCT, and by assuming it is false based on god’s benevolence assumes the truth of Western Christianity. And settling the truth on that definitely isn’t the point of this class.

But, for the sake of me getting a good grade on this essay, let us assume that DCT was rejected. Would it be possible for morals to exist independent of some divine figure.

No.

Longer answer: According to Shafer-Landau, it is. However, SL’s evidence for this claim is faulty, and in the end, fails to prove his point.

The basis of SL’s claims to morality independent of god is on his argument over whether morality is eternal or not. SL tries to prove that both ideas could be true, because apparently no one ever told him the saying about chasing two rabbits. For non-eternal morality, SL claims that not all laws which govern the universe are eternal. Photosynthesis is an example of such a law; before plants existed, there was no such thing as a law of photosynthesis. Therefore, laws need not be eternal.

First off, if you told a biology major that there was a “Law of Photosynthesis”, they would likely laugh at you. Secondly, the process which drives photosynthesis existed long before plants. All the examples given by SL are just different ways which atoms and energy interact. The laws which govern this have been in place for the entire existence of spacetime, and thus could be called eternal. There has never been a case of a new law appearing at any point in time.

Then we see SL attempt to prove that moral laws could be eternal, independent of god. This is based partly on the fact that there are principles governing the universe which are eternal, and partly because of the arbitrary claim that it would be wrong to torture future alien space babies. I’m not going to bother with the second part, and instead focus on SL’s faulty concept of principles. To start with, there is a world of difference between a scientific principle and a moral principle. Scientific principles say how the universe works; I cannot just decide to ignore gravity. Moral principles say how we should act, and can easily be broken. The universe cannot stop me from burning down an orphanage while kicking a puppy. The only connection between these ideas is the fact that they both have “principle: in their name; as far as definition is concerned, they are completely separate.

In the end, the concept we are left with are: SL’s claims that morality can be independent of god is faulty. Thus, If we assume morality exists, it must come from a deity figure. Thus, morality is arbitrary. Thus, god is a jerk. We’re left to choose between either a Gnostic concept of a tyrannical god, or just throw the whole thing aside and go with nihilism.