Euthyphro's Claims to Knowledge
An Introduction to Plato's Dialogue and Its Main Characters
Mar 20, 2007
Socrates encounters Euthyphro on the steps to the courthouse in Athens, where both arrive to attend different trials. Socrates has been indicted by his prosecutor Meletus for ‘corrupting the youth’ and ‘creating new gods’ -- a charge that will eventually lead to his conviction by a jury of the citizens of Athens and to his death. Thus, the Euthyphro dialogue is the prequel to the Apology, Plato’s account of Socrates’s trial and defense.
Euthyphro's Character and Self-Assessment
Euthyphro is a young aspiring priest and self-proclaimed moral expert who is about to publicly prosecute his own father for murder – a fact that is shocking to Socrates and makes him challenge Euthyphro’s wisdom concerning the moral nature of his proceedings. Euthyphro justifies his action by claiming that he knows he is doing the right thing, that he has accurate knowledge of the nature of moral and divine justice, and that with respect to this knowledge he is superior to most people (especially those who oppose his course of action). It is this overly self-confident attitude that triggers Socrates's subsequent inquisitive questioning, which in turn will disclose the fact that Euthyphro is by far not as knowledgeable as he thinks.
Of course, far more than just an erroneous self-assessment is at stake in this story: After all, Euthyphro is about to do something (prosecuting his own father) that is generally regarded as impious by his peers. Euthyphro argues that it does not matter whether a killer is a stranger or shares your hearth and table – what matters is whether he acted justly or not, and if not then piety requires his prosecution. But if Euthyphro cannot prove to know better than his critics what piety really consists in then proceeding with his prosecution will make even his motives -- let alone the action itself -- morally reproachable. In order to maintain his image of righteousness, Euthyphro could in this case be expected to hold back until he has gained more insight into the moral nature of the case.
Euthyphro and Socrates in Complementary Roles
From a legal standpoint Socrates and Euthyphro occupy opposite roles in their respective trials, Socrates being indicted for alleged impiety and Euthyphro having indicted and prosecuting his own father for the same reason. Moreover, given the difference in age between the two men as well as Socrates’s honest astonishment at hearing about Euthyphro’s old father being prosecuted by his own son, his encounter with Euthyphro in some sense anticipates his own imminent prosecution by the poet Meletus, who is also described as a young, ambitious man.
In a sense Socrates symbolizes Euthyphro’s indicted father, and Euthyphro symbolizes Socrates’s young prosecutor and all those Athenians who disregard the wisdom and authority that naturally – if not always -- accompany old age. In the course of the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates challenges Euthyphro four times to present a definition of piety, and each of Euthyphro’s attempts to give such a definition is then shown by Socrates to be insufficient or incorrect. In the end, Euthyphro hurries into the courthouse to begin his trial without having succeeded in demonstrating that he indeed possesses the knowledge that he claimed to possess. Thus, the reader cannot help but suspect that perhaps Euthyphro’s motivations for prosecuting his old father may be different from what he made them out to be – that perhaps more personal, and personally hostile motives are the cause of Euthyphro’s actions.
Socrates and Euthyphro nevertheless have something in common: Both can be regarded as rebels against the received moral standards and traditions of their time; but this is a topic for another article.
