Week 2 Notes:

2d-3a: Is it necessary to "take care of the young plants first and of the others later"? or, Is Euthyphro correct when he charges Meletus (Socrates' accuser) with "harming the very heart of the city" by accusing Socrates of corrupting the young?

3c-e: Socrates tells Euthyphro that he would not be concerned with Meletus' charges if his life was not at stake: "for the Athenians do not mind anyone they think clever, as long as he does not teach his own wisdoms." What is at stake for Socrates, for Athens?

 Public opinion can be a dangerous thing. If the citizens of Athens can be persuaded that Socrates is "dangerous" and a corrupter of the young, then both Athens and Socrates are in danger.

4e: Euthyphro states that "their ideas of the divine attitude toward piety and impiety are wrong." Who are "they"? Where do ideas of piety and impiety come from?

5c-d: Socrates asks "what is piety?" for the first time. This is the beginning of the dialectic.

5e: Euthyphro's first answer: to prosecute the wrongdoer, no matter who it may be is pious and not to prosecute is impious.

6e: Socrates rephrases the initial question: "what is pious action?"

7a: Euthyphro's second answer: "what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious."

7c-8a: Socrates points out that since the gods often disagree as to what they love and don't love, there is no universal action/thing that is loved/dear to all gods. Thus the same action could be both pious (loved by some gods) and impious (hated by other gods), and therefore, god-love can be no standard for piety.

10a: Is a thing pious because it is loved by the gods or do the gods love a thing because it is pious? Socrates makes this move so that he can further show Euthyphro that piousness is not a quality that be defined by referring to god-love/mystical standards.

11a-b: Socrates again tells Euthyphro that god-love is just an attribute of the pious, an effect of being pious and not piousness itself.

11b-e: Euthyphro accuses Socrates of making arguments move in circles, but in the next few paragraphs Socrates will show Euthyphro that it is his own imprecise definitions of piety that are problematic, making the argument move in circles.

12d-14b: Socrates helps Euthyphro think through a definition of piety, but still the interlocutor insists that piety is a service of/for the gods. Men are pious in their transactions with gods, yet this provides no benefit to the gods, so Euthyphro is again forced to return to his original god-love definition of piety.

15b: Once again, Socrates and Euthyphro are no nearer to learning about piety than at the beginning of the dialogue. What does their predicament say about defining piety/impiety?

Closing questions:

1. Are there actions/beliefs that are clearly either pious or impious? Is there universal human agreement on these matters?

2. Since life demands that we make moral choices, regardless of whether or not we absolutely define piety, how can we examine our actions to decide their moral content?