Euthyphro's Dilemma Research Paper

1064 Words5 Pages
In this paper, I will describe Euthyphro’s dilemma, and defend one horn of his dilemma on moral realism, which is “piety exists before gods’ love, and it is independent of gods’ love”. As described in the Greek philosopher Plato’s text “Five Dialogues”, Euthyphro met Socrates in front of the king-archon’s court when Euthyphro had to prosecute his father for murdering a murder, which his family thought his action was impious. Socrates stood accused by Meletus of the corruption towards the youth and not acknowledging the Greek gods. These two men started a conversation on what piety was. Euthyphro and Socrates debated on the relationship between piety and gods’ love, known as the Euthyphro’s dilemma, which was essentially the problem about…show more content…
However, Socrates questioned him on whether things were pious because of gods’ love, or gods love these things because they were pious (Plato & Trans. G.M.A Grube 10d). The divine command theory suggests that piety is caused by gods’ love, which creates moral arbitrariness. On the other hand, the moral realism says piety is independent of gods’ love, which also limits gods’ power. In this paper, my primary goal is to defend the moral realism and oppose divine command theory from both Atheists’ and Theists’ points of view. An Atheist is an individual who lacks belief in the existence of God or gods. Majority of Atheists are objective and believe the power of science. If we bring in the idea of divine command theory, in which “things are pious because of gods’ love”, we can easily find…show more content…
However, we are living in a world of different religions, and often times, people believe in different gods even within one religion. What if one god loves a particular thing, but some other gods don’t approve it? As Socrates also points out, many Greek gods are each other’s enemy, and they certainly have different opinions about one thing (Plato & Trans. G.M.A Grube 7e). Thus, pious things have to be something that is loved by all gods. I have to argue that this idea creates confusion on the relationship between the pious and the impious. For example, if all gods dislike murder, it must be impious. The murderer who was murdered by Euthyphro’s father did something impious because gods dislike murder. But Euthyphro’s father punished the impious by murdering the murderer, which was supposed to be a pious action approved by the gods. However, his deed is also an impious action in theory because it is also a murder. So is this deed pious or impious according to divine command theory? It cannot be simply concluded, and it also creates confusion on both sides. I think the reason could be the absoluteness of the theory. There is either right or wrong, but it does not explain anything in between. In reality, things are more complicated than it appears to be, and we cannot only apply one rule to solve problems. Therefore, whether an action is pious or impious is determined by the points of view
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    Euthyphro’s Dilemma In this paper, I will describe Euthyphro’s dilemma, and defend one horn of his dilemma Moral Realism, which is “piety exists before gods’ love, and it is independent of gods’ love”. As described in the Greek philosopher Plato’s text “Five Dialogues”, Euthyphro met Socrates in front of the king-archon’s court when Euthyphro had to prosecute his father for murdering a murder. At the meantime, Socrates was accused by Meletus of corrupting the youth and not believing the gods.

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