from The School of Athens, circa 1510 by Raphael.
Socrates, in dialogue with Euthyphro, expresses that the latter’s metric for qualifying “holy” and “unholy” acts is faulty. He shows that Euthyphro's positioning ever-warring gods as supreme arbiters of ethical propriety implies that, given the quibbling among said deities, contradiction must arise. “Then by your account,” says Socrates, “different gods also regard different things as just…because unless they differed on those matters, they wouldn’t quarrel, would they?”
After considering the need to address the particularity of the act in question, Socrates returns to the universal principle that is meant to undergird the judgment of “holy” or “unholy.” Here, it is asked of Euthyphro whether one ought to “agree with a position merely on the strength of someone’s say-so…” Socrates follows his interlocutor’s answer with the (in)famous question: “Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy? Or is it holy because it is loved?”
One brilliant exchange later, Euthyphro concedes that “being loved” is a state contingent upon some other agency which finds something of the thing to love – it is not loved for being loved. Socrates implores his friend to provide more than an extrinsic account of the holy, saying that the “property of being loved by the gods” does not explain its essence. “Please don’t hide it from me,” he says, “but start again and tell me what the holy might be…” Following a brief bout of fatalism on Euthyphro's part – “whatever we suggest…refuses to stay put,” he says – Socrates entreats him to continue.
As they move forward with the query, the matter of justness is displayed as that quality of virtuous or holy deeds which “the gods love” and its wanting in one’s action is therefore hated. Piety or holiness is then said to be but a piece of the justice puzzle; the nature of pious conduct expounded by Euthyphro, as being what is “gratifying to the gods,” ultimately returns the two to the beginning of their quest: “So either our recent agreement wasn’t sound; or else, if it was, our present suggestion is wrong…we must start over again.”
For Socrates, the good is so for its goodness, justness, righteousness, holiness, etc. – all good reasons for being loved.
Bibliography
Plato. Euthyphro. In Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues. edited by Steven M. Cahn and Peter J. Markie. OUP, 2020.