Euthyphro, Day 1

Hello! For previous blog posts about Euthyphro, please follow this link or this other link.

Plato's Euthyphro is all about piety.  Socrates asks Euthyphro (the title character) what it means to be pious.  In general, to be pious means to be respectful and reverent towards divinity.  Socrates rejects the first three definitions provided for various reasons (see blog posts above).  


During discussion we considered whether we might avoid these kinds of criticisms by defining what is pious in terms of either 1) the intention of the person performing a pious act or 2) conditions for piety relative to a specific god.  In the case of 2, then we reject Socrates' desire for a single form or single conceptual definition for piety.  In the case of 1, then it seems like we avoid contradictions unless the person performing the action has contradictory intentions (e.g., slaughtering an animal is meant to appease one god while simultaneously defying another.  However, if we join both of these conditions together, we can avoid contradiction.  However, Socrates is likely to reject this notion because it does not provide a single unified definition of piety.

At this point, we might consider whether all definitions need to be unified in such a manner...