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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
The Euthyphro by Plato Part I with Dr. Joey Spencer and Friends
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- [00:00]
A
Today on Ascend the Great Books podcast, we are discussing Plato's Euthyphro A Dialogue on piety alongside Dr. Frank Grabowski, Thomas Lackey and Dr. Joey Spencer, a new guest. He works at the Chancery with me. He's our archivist. He loves the Great Books, he oversees the academics of our diaconate program and he is an expert on the theology of angels and demons. So a good person to have on when you're discussing piety. In this week's episode, we will introduce the dialogue and move through the first definition of piety. We discuss the overall context, the we look at piety as a political problem, the role of imitating the divine in Greek religion, an introduction to Plato's ideas and its reception to Christianity, and even a brief aside on how angels understand Plato's ideas. If you haven't checked it out already, we have a written guide to the Euthyphro question and answer posted. And so check out our website or our Patreon to find that just phenomenal for you or your small group. And finally, go check out our sister publication, the Ascent on Substack. It focuses on Christian spirituality, theosis, sanctification and publishes two articles a week. It also draws a lot from Western culture and the Great Books. So join us today as we discuss the first part of Plato's Euthyphro A Dialogue on Piety. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I am a husband, father and serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We are recording as always, on a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. You can check us out on Twitter or X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters. You can Also check out thegreatbookspodcast.com where we have guides to the Great Books question answer to help you through your journey in this great conversation. Today we are discussing the first part of the Platonic dialogue, the Euthyphro A Dialogue about Piety. Tonight we have a whole host of guests. It's going to be a good conversation. We have Dr. Frank Grabowski, friend of the podcast, joining us again. He is a diaconate candidate, a professor of philosophy at Rogers State, a teacher at our local Classical high school and a third order Franciscan. Dr. Grabrowski, how are you?
- [02:27]
B
I'm doing well, I think you might say. We have a gaggle of guests.
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A
A gaggle of guests? Yeah. Alliterations are always best.
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C
Yes, that's good.
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A
We also have Mr. Thomas Lackey, independent scholar, friend of the podcast Also a member of our Sunday great books like Dr. Kabowski. Thomas, how you doing?
- [02:47]
D
Very well, very well.
- [02:48]
A
Yeah. It's good to have you again. And then we have a first time guest, a wonderful guest who's going to unlock all of the mysteries of the Euthyphro for us. And so we have Dr. Joey Spencer, who is a doctor of ministry from the Lashota House and serves as both the archivist and a tutor of theology for the Diocese of Tulsa. He is my co worker at the Chancery and I'm delighted to have him this evening. Joey, how are you?
- [03:17]
C
I'm doing well. It's good to be with you guys tonight.
- [03:20]
A
Yeah, very good. Joey, just like summary elevator pitch. What was your doctoral thesis on?
- [03:28]
C
So as you know, here in the diocese for a while we had a liturgical institute. And as part of that liturgical institute, one of the things that we did was we helped bring conferences to Tulsa so that the ministry of exorcism could become known among the priests in a way that it hasn't been. And so for many years, about nine years, we hosted the, the Tadam Institute. It's now hosted in Wichita. And we trained exorcists. We, we brought in speakers to talk about a ministry that, that was not well known. I mean, we were trying to, to figure out more about the ministry ourselves. And so through that, through that, working with that, my doctoral work was I interviewed exorcists and so kind of surveyed the state of the ministry of exorcism in the United States. And so we interviewed about 30, 32 exorcists. Very good interviews. And, and they, and then compiled all the information. And that, that's basically what my dissertation.
- [04:38]
A
Yeah. Dr. Spencer is also a scholar on sacred art and also a scholar on angiology, angelology. Right. I say that correct. The study of angels. Yeah. So what you don't know is that Dr. Spencer is actually secretly the coolest person that we have at the Chancery. That's why angels and demons, Angels, demons, art, like he's got it. So he's really good to have on when you're going to discuss piety.
- [05:06]
C
You guys are very kind.
- [05:07]
A
Let's look at like the brass tacks, just a little bit of brass tacks on the Platonic dialogue. So the dramatic date for the dialogue is just a little bit before the death of Socrates in 399 B.C. the composition date, you know, composition date conversations are almost always blood on the floor conversations about when did Plato actually write this? A lot of people put it around 380 or so, but it's dramatic Date. When does this actually happen? You know, in the narrative that is Socrates, it happens right before his death. And a lot of people read this. Like, I don't know if you all, but for me, this was the first dialogue I read, because a lot of times people read the four last dialogues. So they read the euthyphro, the apology, the credo, and the phaedo. And usually those are, like, packaged together like the last days of Socrates. And so for a lot of people, this is their introduction to who he is.
- [05:57]
B
And it's a good introduction, too, Deacon, because I think it's just really accessible. I think it really highlights and puts on good display the Socratic method, the way that Socrates operated.
- [06:09]
A
Yeah, it's got some really charming examples of Socratic irony. Also, the ideas make an appearance. So, no, it's a good. It's a good first dialogue. I think it's simple enough to track. It's not terribly complicated. But at the same time, I think it has real depth. But like most of Plato's narratives, the dialogues, one of the beauties of them is that narratives bring layers, and so people are able to engage the dialogue kind of according to a depth that's proportionate to their own intellect. Which means that you like. When I first read this, probably the first time, mainly I focused on what we'll discuss as a euthyphro dilemma. That's what stood out to me. And I read the whole dialogue just trying to get to that dilemma, to unpack it. That was the main lesson. As I read it this time, there were whole other sections that really stood out to me. And I think it's one of the beauties of reading a dialogue, of reading a narrative, that it does allow those layers and you can kind of grow with the text.
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C
For me, I think, like euthyphro, I found it. I always found it very difficult. But then a couple of months ago, we read Alcibiades. And for me, reading Alcibiades then kind of unlocked Euthro foe a little and made me understand it more than I did before I had read Alcibiades. So that was incredibly helpful, at least for me, for, like, pulling it together and kind of understanding it more.
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A
Dr. Krabowski. So as we, like, before, we kind of enter into the text proper, like, why. Why should we read this text? Why should someone read the Euthyphro?
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B
Well, I think. I mean, you've already noted, Deacon, it's. It's a wonderful introduction to Platonic philosophy, Platonic literature. You know, it features the major dramatic personage in Socrates. So, you know, first of all, we see showcased the Socratic method. It's very, again, very clear how Socrates operated. There are also moments of Socratic irony too, which I think is very important to understand, like what, you know, how Socrates operated and the role that irony plays in his method. You know, again, also it's, as you said, the search for the ideas. And we're going to talk more about what that means, not just in the head, but objectively, but the search for definitions. And it all circles around these big what is X questions. So what is piety in the case of the Euthyphro or what is justice in the case of the Republic? So I think rather than jumping into, say, the Republic or Symposium, Euthyphro is, I think, a really, really good way of exposing oneself to Plato's philosophy and the way that he presents his ideas.
- [09:12]
A
No, Very good. So let's look at the text. Let's kind of like jump into this and give a little bit of the beginning, the preamble, give a little bit of the setting. So we have Socrates and he runs into, or this person runs into him, a man named Euthyphro, and we have to kind of figure out who he is. But what is the. Maybe just talk about, like the setting, like, where have they ran into each other and like, what's going on? So they've run into each other outside of the king archon's court. You know, my understanding is that this is like a, a remnant, a leftover of Athens under a monarchy. And this judge, right, has the capacity to judge things of religious natures. And that's kind of fascinating to begin with. So we've kind of throw out the thesis that Euthyphro is about piety. And so here we find two interlocutors, right? These two people in dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro, in front of a judge of religious matters. And so they start to discuss and they say, oh, you know, why are you here? They bump into each other and Socrates, let's talk about the charges against Socrates. So Socrates tells Euthyphro, my understanding is right. The way I would summarize it is that he's been one charged with corrupting the youth. This character Miletus has come forward, a younger man, a poet, we will find out, has charged Socrates with corrupting the youth. And again, you know, prior to this, we read first Alcibiades. And while he's not mentioned here, Alcibiades is kind of the historic example par excellence of the youth that Socrates corrupted. And so he's corrupted the youth. And he's corrupted the youth by doing basically two things. One is that he denies the gods, he denies the pantheon, he denies the Homeric gods. But two, and somewhat more intriguing, he's also a maker of gods. So he not only denies a pantheon, but he worships and brings in strange gods. And for this he's corrupting youth, he has corrupted their piety.
- [11:21]
B
And it's quite literally a maker. It is, you know, poietes or poieten in the accusative here. So he is quite literally a maker. And just one. One thing to point out here, Deacon, is we get an early instance of this kind of Socratic sarcasm or irony when discussing Meletus. And this is one of the. One of his accusers. We'll meet him later in the apology. But in my translation, Socrates indicates that Meletus went before the city as if before his mother, so as to like, tattle on Socrates. So, you know, we. It's always something to kind of keep. Keep your eyes peeled or, you know, when the reader of the Platonic dialogues is to. Is just to note these little, These little jibs or these little, little humorous remarks that Socrates makes, often at the expense of. Of his interlocutor.
- [12:22]
D
Well, you know, I. Euthyphro. There's going to be much to say about Euthyphro's character very shortly. But I think it's interesting that one of the. That his response to the charge is really quite sympathetic because Socrates ironically suggests that Euthyphro is going to go weeding out all the bad elements in society, starting with Socrates himself, and he'll be a great benefit to the state. And Euthyphro's response is that the opposite will turn out to be true. And he says a line that I think it's worth holding on to for later. She says that in attacking you, he is simply aiming a blow at the foundation of the state. And I think that's definitely going to be worth holding on to when we get to the end and Euthyphro starts talking about piety in relation to the state again, because there's a kind of a bookend to this.
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C
I think it's interesting that when he's talking about Meletus, he mentions the fact that he's from a Pythian deme.
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A
Whatever.
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C
And whenever I see the Pythias, I mean, in my mind that goes. That's Apollo, right? Apollo Pythias. And so the idea that Apollo is the God who not only is the purificator, the purifier, but he's also the God of pollution as well. And this idea of purification and pollution and piety that goes together later, Euthyphro is going to talk about the pollution when he's talking about his father. And I thought that was interesting. And so, which got me looking at pollution. And the interesting thing. Another interesting thing that kind of dawned on me is that when Euthyphro starts conversation with Socrates, Socrates is the one who's out of place. So he's. He's normally not in that part of town or in that area. And Euthypho said, basically starts a conversation. What brings you here? Right. And one of the definitions of pollution by the anthropologist Mary Douglas is matter out of place. Right? And so here you have someone, Socrates, who's being, you know, charged with impiety and impiety brings pollution. And here he is. This is not his normal place where he would be. He would be off in the lyceum or something like that, and that he's there and youthful runs into him. I can't help but wonder if there's, you know, some kind of connection there.
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A
Yeah, there certainly. It seems like there would certainly be a connection, right, between that idea of pollution and then the corruption. Right. He is the pollution, right? That's what he's being charged with. He is the pollution in the polis.
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B
And I think Joey's point does. Joey. Joey actually raises another really interesting point to consider whenever reading Plato's dialogues, and that is that Plato's choice of characters or interlocutors for Socrates is usually, is not by accident, right. So this is very deliberate. So the question we have to ask is, you know, why. Why Euthyphro? Like, why this person in particular? And so, you know, that's. That's just something that we have to, I think, keep in mind as we move our way through the dialogue.
- [15:46]
D
Well, and I'd like to, you know, to kind of like put a. Put a note on that, that very often Euth fro is taken as representing in some ways the. The average Athenian view of the gods. I've heard people comment as. And I think in that does not stand. Right. Euthyphro's approach to the gods is somewhat idiosyncratic, actually. And he becomes, let's put it this way, even Euthyphro himself identifies more with Socrates than with the people at large. Right. In this response, he begins by saying, we. They're jealous of us, right? So there's A sense in which he sees himself as more like Socrates than like your average Athenian. And I think there's some contest, I think, as to whether or not he's actually more like Socrates. But I do think he's not to be really, to be understood to be the average Athenian view of the gods. He's something else.
- [16:45]
A
I think those are two great things to keep in mind. One, why this interlocutor? That's a fantastic question. It's a fantastic question for any dialogue because, yes, there might be a historical reality to this, but it's being presented by Plato for a reason. This setting, this dialogue, this interlocutor has been selected for a particular pedagogical purpose by Plato. So why this person? And I think that tethers heavily to Thomas's question, which is then, like, what does Euthyphro represent? And I agree 100%. Euthyphro sometimes is mentioned as like the echo of just typical Athenian culture, the common understanding that Socrates is going to butt up against. And I'm not sure that's true. That's something that we have to watch. What does he actually represent? I think too, in this opening line in 3, what is this 3B is that we get another mention of the daemon, this divine sign. And this is too, because this goes into understanding Socrates as a maker of gods. Like, what is this? And so just as, like a little recap, right? This divine sign, this daemon, is a spirit. It's a spirit that has been with Socrates since he was a young boy, ever since he can remember. And it's a spirit that tells him when not to act, when not to speak. So it doesn't proactively tell him things per se. It's not positive, even though the spirit, not checking him, kind of turns into a positive. But it's a divine sign that guides him. And he's very open about this. We saw this in first Alcibiades. The divine sign governed when he was allowed to talk to Alcibiades. And then the apology, Socrates will explain the divine sign. I think very clearly this understanding, right, this, this daemon, you know, we saw this in Homer and Homer, sometimes it was a dark power, right, a divine power that would come upon some of the characters. But even later on in, say, later on in, say, the Neoplatonic, like Renaissance and medieval ages and things like this, the daemon will be seen as an angel, something that God Providence has given Socrates to help guide him to, somewhat unknowingly, till the soil for the coming of Jesus Christ, the Logos. And so It's a divine sign. I mean, is an incredibly unique aspect, particularly like if you compare it to someone like Socrates or, excuse me, someone like Aristotle. Right. Aristotle's understanding of the divine is the unmoved mover. It's a very, I don't want to say cold, but it's a very scientific understanding. But in Plato, with Socrates, the divine is something that speaks to you. It gives you messengers, it has a vocation for you, it calls you to do things. It's much more relational with a monotheistic God than maybe sometimes we're comfortable with in paganism, if that makes sense. But there's something really unique going on here with a daemon, and it very much is. Is kind of folded into him being the maker of gods.
- [19:39]
D
Well, and it's interesting to note that sign is precisely the common point that Euthyphro begins to say we, because he also not with the same kind of sign, but claims to have some sort of special revelation or some sort of special knowledge of the gods. So it's not a perfect analogy, but it's enough that he identifies with this kind of special understanding of the gods and of divine things.
- [20:06]
A
Thomas, I agree. I think that as we kind of look at parallels, so, like, one of the questions that we could pose, or the answers to Dr. Grabowski's question of, like, why this interlocutor. I think one of them, as you've alluded to, is that, is there a commonality between Socrates and Euthyphro, Right. Are they actually similar? And I would say that that's a question that I would not have posed for a long time. The first. We'll see why. The first time I read Euthyphro, I was like, euthyphro is an idiot. That's what he is. He's just an idiot. And we'll see why. Like, he's dumb. But that also leads to the question to Dr. Grassby's question, why this interlocutor? Because if Euthyphro really is an idiot, why is he picked? Why does Plato not dialogue with like, Apollo's high priest or an expert on Zeus, right? Like, why is this a straw man? He's just picking like the village idiot to come in and have a dialogue about piety. So I think this, I mean, this is. We have to ask these questions because there's definitely an artistic, you know, pedagogical veneer that Plato's putting on this. And of course, you know, you could say, well, you know, an idiot in the hands of Plato can teach you a lot does that make sense? But.
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B
Well, you know, Deacon, let me just. I think it's maybe worth noting at this point what Euthyphro's name means, because I think as we read through the dialogue, Euthyphro does seem to be a bit simplistic in his thinking about piety. But, you know, again, it. So Euthyphro, the name Euthyphro or Euthyphron is a combination of two different words, Euthus and phrone. Phrone is the noun to think or thinking or thought. And euthus, typically, whenever a Greek word is preceded by you, it means good. Euthus in this particular case, though, is an adverb that means straightforward or direct. And so I guess one way of understanding Euthyphro's name is that he's a straight shooter, that, you know, he's not going to be ambiguous, like so many of the sophists are, that Socrates was so. That Socrates so commonly encountered in these dialogues. So I think that if the name is any indication, Socrates knows that Euthyphro is not going to be duplicitous with his answers, that we can trust that the answers he's given giving are. They may be simplistic, but they're his.
- [22:29]
A
I like that. Because what's interesting about that, Reid, Dr. Grabowski, is that you're giving like a. That his name isn't actually ironic. His name is actually an accurate descriptive term for him. I think it's really interesting because I think that runs counter to a lot of initial takes on Euthyphro, that his name is actually ironic. It's a joke because he's an idiot, and so he's not a straight thinker. But I do agree with you. So again, that kind of leads into these questions that we're building up is like, why Euthyphro, does he have commonalities with Socrates and is he a straight thinker? Like, is he actually presenting things in a straightforward manner? And I think these are all very good preliminary questions.
- [23:07]
B
And he serves as a great student. I think that he's very impressionable because as we'll see at the very end, he has a bit of a metanoia, both figuratively and literally.
- [23:18]
A
Yeah, no, that's another good question, because we saw in first Alcibiades. You know, Alcibiades has like a complete transformation, right? Socrates, it's, you know, vademaikum. Socrates literally takes him by the hand and leads him into this transformation. And for. And for those of us who are more familiar with Plato, that does not always happen. It's not all the interlocutors are not like, oh, Socrates, you're so wise. I will give my life over to you, X, Y and Z. So I do think, like, it's a real conversation here. To what degree, if any, does Euthyphro have a metanoia or some kind of transformation because of Socrates dialogue?
- [23:50]
D
Well, I think if one wanted to take this would be the generous reading of Euthyphro that he. It's true that he is both rash and smug, but he's also sincere. And I think that that's a. I think that's a fair way to read him. And right before we get into the rest of the text, I would say that the first one of these divine capacities that he complained, that he claims to have is that he's a prophet. So there. I will say that the first introduction of irony is that after Socrates tells him what's going on, and he says, oh, you know, oh, yeah, I understand, because I prophesy and these things come true. And he says, I dare say your case will come to nothing. So our first euthyphroic prophecy is, oh, this whole. This whole trial, Socrates. Don't worry about that, troops.
- [24:43]
A
Thank you, straight thinker. I appreciate that. Thank you for your prophecy. So let's let Euthyphro kind of speak for himself because he's a somewhat complicated character. So we have the charges against Socrates. That's what we'll take up, you know, in the following dialogue, in the apology. So let's take up the What's. Why is Euthyphro there? Someone indicting him? Is he bringing charges? What's going on? So let me give, like, the quick summary. You guys fill the gaps or tell me where I'm wrong. So Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is actually bringing a charge of murder, you know, this impious act against his own father. And this should send off every alarm bell in our heads, particularly for those of you who have been good little soldiers and you've been listening to Ascend, the Great Books podcast, since the beginning, we've been talking a lot about piety. We're talking about a lot about piety in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and surely we've talked about it a lot when we read Aeschylus and we read Sophocles, even in Euripides as well. And so piety, we've been tracking this kind of trifold, threefold structure of piety that you're pious towards your family and then towards the polis and towards the Gods, and they're governed in hierarchy. The higher governs the lower. So the divine governs the polis and the polis governs the family. And so it's great. We see these great sometimes in the history of Greek thought, we've seen these great plays that are about some antagonism has. Has happened between the structures, the layers of piety. So Antigone's about this. Creon doesn't want to bury her brother. They both think the divine are on their side. What's good for the polis does the polis needs over. So there's this conflict in. In the pious thought. And so they have to figure it out, and they claim to know the God's will. And so I actually find Euthyphro's claim here to be very analogous to some of the dilemmas that we saw with Antigone, maybe even with Orestes, in a situation he finds himself into, of needing to avenge his father, Agamemnon, but against his own mother, Clytemnestra. And so what ends up happening? Well, Euthyphro is bringing charges against his father. Well, why? Well, there was a slave who killed another slave or another servant. And so the father came in to enact justice. And so he tied up, you know, the servant, and he threw him in a pit and asked, okay, well then what do we need to do with him? And so they sent a runner to a priest, what do I do with the servant who is killed? You know, another servant? And they don't really tend to him when he's in the pit. The father doesn't really, you know, take good care of him. And so he dies, right? There's a negligence there. And so he dies. And so Euthyphro is bringing a charge of murder against his own father on behalf of a servant. This is very antagonistic to Greek thought. And you even see this, right, in Socrates response like, you know, surely not. You're not doing this. And so notice that Euthyphro's response is like, well, no, I understand the divine right. I understand the divine better than anyone. And so then I can navigate these channels, right? I can be like Antigone, I can be like Oreste, I can navigate these conflicts of piety. And so here he is bringing this charge against his father.
- [27:49]
D
So one of Socrates responses, first his ironic response is just great. A man must be extraordinary. And, you know, he falls into this trap, but he says, I suppose the man whom your father murdered was one of your relatives. Clearly he was. For if he had been a stranger you would have never thought of prosecuting him. And Euthyphro responds that he's amused that Socrates would bring some sort of relation into this. It shouldn't matter who it is, justice must be done. So I think there's two questions that come out of that. One, how much of sort of the modern notion of justice wouldn't immediately side with Euthyphro on this. It's like justice should be blind even within family relations. You know, that's just no matter. I think that's question one, and question two is, has Euthyphro just not made his first mistake? Right. Because, yes, piety is a justice, but just as you, as you were describing it, that it has to do with the relation to your family, to your state, to the gods. It's precisely the kind of justice that deals with relation. So he. Yes, he's correct, and he has a great intuition that piety is a part of or related to justice. But then he immediately sort of undercuts himself by failing to recognize what kind of justice it is and moves from the particular to the abstract right away.
- [29:21]
A
Yeah, I like that. That's an interesting thought. Like, are those in conflict? That he's an expert in piety, he understands the relations, but then states that the justice here should be enacted regardless of the relations. Because I do agree with you, I think the modern mind, I think, in a lot of ways, would say that Euthyphro is correct. I mean, someone was murdered and therefore he's bringing it on behalf of the servant. I think the two things that I'd be interested in is that throughout this whole process, on the kind of more primordial side of justice, I think why Socrates asked that question, well, you must be related to him, is because of what we saw on the dynamic of the Blood Avengers, that it's the family, it's the kin of the one murdered, who then has the onus, the obligation to then seek justice. This is what Orestes has to do. He has to go kill his own mother for murdering his father. You know, Antigone has to go and stand before King Creon and demand, right, that it's correct to bury the brother. Because they're kin, they're related. And so I think, yeah, like your point, one thing that's really unique in Euthyphro's situation is that he's bringing this claim on behalf of someone who's not related to him against someone who is. And there's also his father, which I think is even it at least gives a veneer or a mask of a greater impious act. Right. That you would do this against your own father. Yeah.
- [30:45]
D
Because, I mean, I think implicit in Socrates's response there about it being a relative is that you would have duties of pieties, both direction, and so they'd almost kind of wash out. Right. Like you have a duty of piety towards this relative, you have a duty of piety towards your father. And the effect is that you think, on balance, you're doing the right thing. It's worth noting, I think Cicero has an interesting. Obviously he's much later, but he has an example that's not very far off, and he comes to the opposite conclusion, that a son ought not bring his father to charges, no matter what the charge even. And then he picks as his example treason against the state, which he considers the highest kind of possible crime. And he said that even the state should be able to recognize the importance of this because it is as important to state that fathers be able to trust their sons as it is that people not act treasonously towards the state. So that even the state should protect this. Right. And if you look at this within our own, within the United States, the idea of a spouse not testifying against their, you know, husband against his wife, a wife against his husband or her husband, that. That's another notion of this. I mean, it is. It's an even closer relation. But there's an idea that there are some bonds which are in themselves so important to be protected that they oughtn't to be broken, even in the interest of justice.
- [32:16]
C
And I think this shows the, the. The genius maybe of Plato and of the Greeks in general. I mean, this idea of like the, the crimes within the family or a father against a son is being played out. Not just here, but I mean, of course you have the whole Orestea cycle, right, where that's what the whole cycle is about. The, the violence within the family. And then not only that, but I can't help to think that with Plate, what Plato is doing here with Socrates is also looking back at Euripides as well. Or I'm sorry, not Euripides. Aristophanes. When you have, you know, the son Thadipides goes off to the thinkory, right? And when he comes back to the thinkery, he's, you know, his dad tries to manipulate him, to use what he's learned to, you know, get him out of his debts. But what ends up happening is that the Dipides himself then takes his dad to court and, and says that he's going to sue him so that he can. That the child will be able to beat the parent like the parent did the child at a younger age. And so I can't help but think in the back of Plato's mind, or in the back of the story, this is a justification for Socrates, that Aristophanes was kind of poking at him, and here he gets his kind of comeback at him.
- [33:43]
B
Could I add just one sort of other just peculiar feature of this murder?
- [33:51]
A
Sure. I mean, we're just stacking them up.
- [33:53]
B
So. Yeah. So in, in the edition that I used, or it's was translated by Thomas west, he notes in a footnote that this incident, this murder, took place in a place called Naxos. And Naxos was an Athenian colony up until Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, which took place in 404. So I guess the question to ask is why did it take so long for Euthyphro to bring these charges against his father? Because we've already established that the dramatic date of this dialogue is 399. And so if this happened in 404, or let's just say 404, it would have been four or five years between the incident and the prosecution of this case. And so, I mean, we can explain this away just by saying, well, maybe Plato, this is just a mistake, some anachronism that, you know, he didn't bother to correct. And so I just think when you give the dialogues close readings as we're, as we're giving them, there are a lot of things that can easily be missed, overlooked or dismissed. But this is just something I think, you know, as your listeners go back and reread, it's something to think about because it might actually have a pretty important bearing on Plato's message.
- [35:23]
A
Yeah, I think our, our default is, is going to be that Plato doesn't make mistakes.
- [35:27]
B
No, I think that's a pretty good assumption.
- [35:29]
A
Yeah, he's a genius. No, I think because he plays a similar game in the Symposium, like at the beginning. There's a lot of gymnastics at the beginning of Symposium. And like, one character thinks the, the dialogue, right. The, the dinner had just happened because Alcibiades is in town, but actually it happened 10 years ago, before Alcibiades was, was exiled. And there has to be a reason for that, right? Why, why does Plato do such gymnastics at the beginning? To kind of create this timeline. Yeah. So no, I think that's something really to think about of, like why would these be delayed? That's a good catch. I think that kind of. To push it forward a little bit. Do we think there's any comparison here between, like, is Plato pulling a parallel between Meletus's claim against Socrates and Euthyphro's claim against his father?
- [36:20]
D
How.
- [36:20]
B
What are you getting at, Deacon? How so?
- [36:22]
A
Well, I mean, I don't. I'm not locked and loaded with a, with an essay on this one, but it was, it was something that came up that I thought was really fascinating. I mean, there are some parallels, right? I mean, they're both younger men that are both bringing claims against their elders, you know, one even against his father, that are both bringing claims of impiety against these individuals, right? And so, yeah, I think there's, I think that. I don't think these two. Again, Plato doesn't do things on accident. There's a pedagogical purpose to these things. So it's interesting that here again, in the middle of the King Archon's court, right, we've got these two characters. One's being charged with impiety, one's bringing charges of impiety, right? There's. There's this mirroring that's going on. You know, one is being charged by a younger Athenian citizen. One is, you know, actually the one charging an older Athenian citizen. So there's, there's this like, parallel that's like, going on. And I think very clearly, maybe something that doesn't sit well with us to the modern mind is, you know, just taking, taking a step back and noting that that piety is a political act, that that piety has political ramifications. And even, even, even more intriguing that murder is considered to be within the ambit of the religious jurisdiction. And so I think this is something we have to really think about as we kind of move through the dialogue is like, what is piety to these individuals? And why does. As we saw. I think the Aristophanes reference is quite good, right? We saw there very clearly that impiety brings political instability, just like we saw in Sophocles, just all we saw in Aeschylus, the order, the cosmos kind of finds its infrastructure in piety and giving this sort of gratitude to the things that, that gave us, things before we could ever even give back, right? Our family, the polis and the divine. And so it makes sense then if there's a disorder in the piety, it becomes a political problem and you can actually then reorder it from the law, right? So you go to the court and you reorder it. So I think we just have to keep in mind these types of parallels.
- [38:28]
B
Well, and just briefly, Deacon, I think that's such a really good point to make, because, in other words, that. That there's a political component to piety for the ancients. That's something I think that we tend to overlook nowadays, given our tendency to separate church and state. We typically think of piety as a religious act that's independent of any kind of political obligations. So, no, I think that that is a really, really good point.
- [38:55]
A
Yeah. To quote Leo Strauss, Plato is not a liberal. He is not a liberal. Right. And actually, this is one of the things with liberalism that's. I had a guest on the podcast that decided not to go into these waters, but we had a good conversation afterwards, and the individual was talking about piety and actually how liberalism. One of the things about liberalism is that it tells us that we can run a society without piety to the divine. We don't need piety to the divine to run this. And this is actually a grander experiment than we realize, because actually, piety is still baked into, say, the summa in the medieval ages, where piety still gives that threefold structure, is still there. It gives structure to society. And so the problem is, right, is that even if you cut off piety to the divine in society and say, hey, we'll be okay, going back to Joey's expertise, the problem is that man has a natural desire, a natural capacity to be pious towards the divine. He naturally seeks to give God his due, to show gratitude. And whether or not we. We treat ourselves as that God, or we go find something to be that God, there is, you know, dare I say, a desire, an eros to actually do that. That's natural to us. So, moving on, let's look at. I think. Okay, so we have a thesis that if you don't laugh during the dialogues, you haven't read them correctly. And I love. I. I love this. So PI. So Socrates asks to become Euthyphro's pupil. Like, this is like such a wonderful example of Socratic irony. This is at 5a. And so he's just like, Euthyphro. This is amazing. What a coincidence. Like, you're an expert in piety. You're a prophet, you're a seer. You have this, like, esoteric knowledge, which is really interesting that he gets into. He has like, this kind of esoteric knowledge about the divine. Like, I can use you. Like, if you explain. This is. We're kind of going, if you explain piety, me, then I can take this into the court case from Meletus. And I can say, well, you can't charge me with impiety. I have talked to Euthyphro and Euthyphro has explained to me what piety is, and we can all be free and etc. And so I just. You have to laugh during this. And so maybe we should just take a moment. It's referenced several times, but actually kind of parse it out of what we mean by Socratic irony, because this is a wonderful example. So let me kind of give a working definition. So my understanding of Socratic irony is when Socrates, who very much is the superior, right, he has the better knowledge, he steps forward and presents himself with basically a feigned ignorance and says, you should teach me. I want to learn from you. And this is really, I think, a wonderful rhetorical device because instead of saying to Euthyphro, I think you're wrong about piety, I don't think you know what you're talking about up, which would immediately cause Euthyphro to implode, to clamp down, or to become antagonistic. What he does to get the answers out of Euthyphro is he says, no, no, you're. You are the expert, and I defer to you, so you should teach me. And I actually think that, you know, when we. We read this in the diaconate program, because we're blessed to have a great book sequence in that program, this is one of the things I pointed out that this rhetorical device is something that you can use, because when we hear something that's. That's contrary to our own views, you know, think of, like, online debates, what does everyone do? They immediately cast an assault, right? No, you're wrong. Because, you know, here's my 10 points on why you're an idiot. X, Y and Z. When reality just. If someone presents a thesis to you, just simply asking like, wow, that's really interesting. You know, explain that to me. It's amazing how much that can kind of unlock the conversation and kind of open them and even make them open to correction later on because you've taken the time to listen to them. So I actually think this is a wonderful rhetorical device.
- [42:41]
B
I'm so happy that you. You explained what that is, because as a Gen Xer and any other Gen X listeners, they may be thinking of the Alanis Morissette song, isn't it ironic? And it's what she means by irony and what irony truly is are two totally different things. But to just back up what you're saying about how useful of a rhetorical device this is, it's disarming because it gives Euthyphro a sense of authority, self authority, that, oh, I'm going to become Socrates teacher. And so, yeah, it really is, I think, a really. It's a really good way of inviting people into a conversation where you're not putting that other person on the defense.
- [43:29]
D
And this may be one of the. Maybe the greatest example in one way, because not only does it introduce the, you know, the ironic element of Socrates being taught by Euthyphro, but we've created another piety kind of inversion, right? Because piety has one of the types of pious relationships, since piety has to do with the kind of what you would owe back to someone when you can't get. When what you've been given is not really repayable, like a. A parent to a child, gods to the. To creation. Well, another one of those relationships is a teacher to a student. A student really can't repay back the gifts of knowledge and understanding that the teacher has given. Well, we've now created another. So we've had all these. These pious inversions, if you will, of the. The young prosecuting the old, the. And so forth. Well, now we've got another one of the. Of. It's all flipped on its head and so we've got the joke of it, plus an additional layer of. I don't have a better term than piety inversion. It's not really impiety, it's something else.
- [44:36]
A
It's a. Yeah, no, I like that. Because piety is always connected to hierarchy. So if we see an act or something that's purporting to be pious, it's going to be in hierarchy. And so I think you can then ask these questions like, well, has it inverted the hierarchy?
- [44:51]
D
Right.
- [44:51]
A
Is there a disorder here?
- [44:55]
C
It's interesting. Let me ask you guys, would you say that. I mean, could you, Thomas, would you say that in this inversion is Socrates? Could you say he's being pastoral almost?
- [45:09]
D
Oh, I think so. For sure. I think one, one, One key dimension that I would say to add. And Romano Gordini writes about this in his commentary on Euthyphro, is that Socratic irony is always intended for the good of the. Of the. Of the person and not just to make fun of them. So when he's doing this, he's not just saying, you know, I'm going to show you. To show Euthyphro that he's an idiot. He may do that, but only in the sense of bringing Euthyphro to a deeper understanding of what's really important.
- [45:41]
C
Sure. So, so we giggle when, when we see it. But you don't ever really see Socrates or in my experience, see Socrates being condescending per se.
- [45:51]
A
No, no.
- [45:52]
C
Get frustrated sometimes and, and then take on the leading the conversation himself, like we'll see later in Euthyphro. But you don't really see him being really condescending to the individual that he's trying to bring.
- [46:08]
D
I agree, absolutely. I think Guardini is right here. That, that, this, that this he really is what, wanting the good of his interlocutor. And because he wants the good, this is a technique that he uses to bring about so often when it's, when you go, aha. That it. The point has really hit home. It's not just if Socrates says, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think you're right about that.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, it's not, it's not reducible to a sarcasm. Right. He's not, he's not bored and making fun of Euthyphro. I do think at times youth, Socrates can become impatient. And I do think that, I do think in certain dialogues, when Socrates thinks his interlocutor is not acting in good faith, he can really skewer them if he wants to. But I think here with Euthyphro, he, he is moving towards the good of Euthyphro, I would say. Now, one distinction that I would like to, to make, or at least to propose is to what degree or what do we mean when we say that Socrates is ignorant here, that he has this feigned ignorance? Well, what if it's feigned endurance? Then he must know something. So what is it that Socrates actually knows? And I think that's an important question, and maybe not one we can't answer right now. But what I mean by this is that, you know, oftentimes we have to make a distinction between positive and negative knowledge, particularly when we read Plato. And so there's something here that maybe Socrates, what he knows is that Euthyphro is wrong. He knows that Euthyphro understanding of piety, whether it's the common piety or whether it's a piety that's akin to it. Whatever it is, he knows that Euthyphro is wrong. And so he's going to feign this ignorance to move Euthyphro towards understanding that his definition of piety cannot be correct. That is distinct from whether Socrates actually knows what piety is. That's a Positive definition. Could Socrates propose what piety actually is? Or is he actually just going to move Euthyphro towards somewhat of a beautiful deconstruction of Euthyphro's false idea? And those two are different. And I think that, you know, as we've kind of read this dialogue, we realize this dialogue doesn't. Doesn't actually terminate in a positive definition of piety, at least not, you know, on its surface. And so I think this is something, when we talk about Socratic irony, we have to kind of say, like, wait, wait, what is he actually feigning ignorance about? I think that's an important question because there we see. Is Socrates himself trying to use someone like Euthyphro as iron, iron sharpening iron to actually come to a good positive definition? Is he trying to use euthyphro not only to deconstruct his false idea for the good of Euthyphro, but then is he using euthyphro as interlocutor to find out what piety truly is, which would be a benefit in a discovery for both of them?
- [48:53]
C
Yeah, he may not know exactly what piety is, but he knows what it isn't. And that's what he's.
- [48:59]
D
Well, there's an example of this in the meno, right, where he brings the child to an understanding. The child has a mistaken understanding of the area of a square, which he then sort of brings him to realize is at least wrong. There's a moment of the conversation where he says, well, isn't he at least better off that he realizes that he thought he knew how to do calculate the area of a square? And now he realizes he didn't and sort of isn't he. Isn't that at least a step in the right direction? Because now we have something to work on that we could build on to act to, you know, to come to the right answer. And so we might have gotten like, half. We might be. The question is, does. Does. I think that Deacon's asking is, does Socrates already have the right answer? Or are we just at the. Well, I don't know what the area of this square is, but I know that's not it.
- [49:52]
A
We saw something too, with first Alcibiades, right, where Socrates would ask Alcibiades, oh, like, you know what justice is, right? Or you know what this is, or that is. And he would lead Alcibiades to understanding, oh, wait, I don't know what that is. And then he doesn't give an answer. Socrates moves on to the next subject because the point of the conversation was to show Alcibiades that he did not know. It wasn't actually for Socrates to spoon feedback the definition to him. And I think that's something that we struggle with a lot and people that I think struggle with Plato struggle with this mightily is that Plato does not spoon feed things to you. You have to wrestle with the text. He presents a narrative that I would say probably gives you all the tools to figure out the truths, right, to discover them. But he is not Aristotle. He's not going to write you a treatise and tell you like, here's the five distinctions and this is what you need to memorize in X, Y and Z. And you know, and there's a lot of people that like that, they like the versatile model because it's, it's very clear and it's like I can just memorize these five distinctions. I don't actually have to really wrestle with it. But Plato, you know, he causes you to have to wrestle with it. He does not spoon feed you here. But you know, go ahead.
- [50:58]
D
I was going to throw out one. One possible answer is that let's say for a moment maybe if Socrates doesn't have an understanding of piety, I think you could actually connect that to Aquinas in a way that he ultimately argues that there's, although there's a natural component to piety, that piety in its most proper sense, the virtue, requires the elevation of grace because we can't actually offer the proper relationship back to God without being infused in grace. So there would be perhaps a struggle if Socrates were trying to figure out in some sense how to offer the right sort of piety back. If the answer is you actually can't, God has to help you do that, that would be that he would run into a sort of blank wall, if you will.
- [51:50]
A
Yeah, I think it's a very good observation. Okay, so let's look at the first definition of piety. So if we're going to look at like, what is the structure of this text? I think what we've just discussed is say like the preamble, this is the beginning of it and it's setting up the question which is then what is piety? Socrates wants to know this. He's about to be on trial for being impious. So Euthyphro, please teach me. And so he is going to then ask Euthyphro, what is piety? And so there's different ways to structure this, but we're going to look at three definitions, right? So PI, Euthyphro gives basically three distinct definitions. There's some dialogue between those two and some modifications, but there's basically three, three distinct ones. And so the first one that he gives is here on 5C. So Socrates asks Euthyphro what piety is and what impiety is. And Euthyphro answers, the pious is to do what I am doing now. The pious is to do what I am doing now. That's in 5D. Now, I think this is where a lot of readers, and when I was a first time reader, I think this is the immediate trap I fell into, is that you immediately go, euthyphro, you're an idiot. And actually Socrates will call him out in the dialogue for being an idiot, because what has he done? He's been asked for a definition, what is piety? And he gives an answer that is categorically wrong. It's not even the right type of answer. He says, oh, well, piety is what I am doing. He's asked for a definition and he gives an example, and he's wrong. He's just wrong on his face. And I think this is immediately where a lot of people just say, why this interlocutor, why are we discussing this with him? He can't even answer the basic questions. But we might want to muster, I don't know if we want to muster a defense of Euthyphro. I'm interested in your ideas about whether or not we defend Euthyphro the character, or whether or not, like I said earlier, an idiot in the hands of Plato can teach you a lot. And so I want to kind of maybe do a little bit of a reading here, because I want to read Euthyphro's kind of full answer because I think this is important. So again, this starts at, this is like the end of 5D. It starts right at the beginning of 5E. I say that the pious is to do what I am doing now to prosecute the wrongdoer, be it about murder or temple robbery or anything else, whether the wrongdoer is your father or your mother or anyone else. Not to prosecute is impious or impious. And observe, Socrates, that I can cite powerful evidence that the law is so I have already said to others that such items are right not to favor the ungodly, whoever they are. These people themselves believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods. Yet they agree that he bound his father because he unjustly swallowed his sons, and that he in turn castrated his father for similar reasons. But they are angry with me, because I am prosecuting my father for his wrongdoing. They contradict themselves in what they say about the gods and about me. So maybe to kind of open this up, because I think there's a lot of layers here. One is that I actually really kind of appreciate the argument that he makes here. Right. You guys are charging me and getting mad at me for being impious because I'm acting against my father, even though I'm doing on behalf of the gods. Well, look at Zeus. What did Zeus do? Well, he attacked his own father, Kronos, for his injustices, right? Kronos had swallowed the other Olympian gods, his other children. He fought against him. He fought a whole war. Then he castrated him and sent him down into Tartarus. And so is it not just that I am acting like Zeus, the most just God, I'm simply imitating him. I am being like him. I. I think there's, you know, I think there's some merit to this answer or things to unpack.
- [56:10]
C
Yeah. I think this is Euthyphro at its best in. In. I mean, I think it goes downhill from here for him, but I. I think this is actually seems to be a rational argument that he's making here.
- [56:22]
A
Well, can we point out, I think maybe to Thomas's earlier point is we have to ask a question, you know, why this interlocutor? And, okay, well, he's an expert in piety, so where it's a dialogue about piety, so why not Euthyphro? Well, then one of the questions is like, well, to what degree is he an expert? Or what does that mean? What does he represent? Does he represent the common understanding of Athenian religious piety is that who, like, Socrates is interacting with here? And I think here kind of channeling Leo Strauss. I think there's something really fascinating going on here, because in this journey that we've done on Ascend, the Great Books podcast, we had our Year of Homer that then we read, you know, Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what Euthyphro is presenting here is an argument that he's imitating the gods. Right? I am imitating Zeus. I am being like Zeus. And there's something here that we miss, mainly because we're Catholic. And of course, for us, like, imitating the gods, right? Imitating the divine finds its perfection in Jesus Christ. I want to imitate Jesus. I want to live like him. A lot of our religious language, you know, gravitates around this Concept that Christ came and became incarnate to teach me how to live. And so I look to his life and I mimic him, I imitate him. But this is not language that we see in Homer. We don't see, like, Agamemnon being like, I need to be more like Zeus or even Odysseus, who has a very deep relationship with Athena, to my knowledge, you know, during our whole, like, you know, year with Homer, like, Odysseus is never, like, try in a difficult spot. And was like, okay, I just need to take a deep breath. And, you know, what would Athena do? What would Athena do in this situation? Right. Where's my, like, what would Athena do Bracelet? I can do this. We don't see this. And so I think this is something that we miss is that. I think that, again, following Strauss's commentary on this, is that Euthra was actually a deeply unorthodox Athenian religious thinker. He's the straight thinker, is somewhat unorthodox, dare we even say heretical, but unorthodox in his beliefs. And he's pitching something here, a theological principle, imitation of the gods, that is somewhat unique. And I'm not really sure it's mainline Athenian religion.
- [58:46]
D
No, I think he's doing something here that, you know, I like to argue in some sense that Euthyphro's intuitions are good, but sort of his reasons sometimes ends up being bad. I think he's intuited here the notion that to be like God. Okay, let me back up slightly. Later on, we'll make arguments relating to God's nature and so that the moral goodness is itself a kind of analog to God, so that it's more like God. Right. So that, you know, God is loving and, And. And giving and these things. He doesn't. He's not murder. And these other crimes are very much unlike who he is. And so there's this. This stepping away from the. From in what he's kind of intuited something like that. Well, we. I need to do. Exactly. I need to be more like God. Where he falls apart is that even his own examples, he's now made a judgment as to. Well, let me just pick one then, and be more like that one. Well, that. That doesn't work very well. And it works okay in monotheism, not so much in a pantheon, because I think Strauss will point this out later. Well, then, now you. What criteria did you use to pick your God to imitate? Since you can't imitate all of them, you decided, I guess, I won't imitate Kronos. I'll imitate Zeus. But why did you pick why? And it seems like the question never actually presented itself to Euthyphro. He leapt right to the. Oh, well, Because Zeus is the most just. But, yeah, I say. But that. That seems to be. I mean, he's. He takes that for granted. That being the most justice. Exactly. Is the good thing to be.
- [60:37]
A
Well, I think, to your point, which I should say that Leo Strauss, there's a wonderful kind of new book, it's probably not new per se, that came out, Leo Strauss on Plato's Euthyphro. Yeah, there you go. Thank you, Vanna White. I like that. For Those joining by YouTube, Dr. Spencer's done a good display there. It's a really wonderful text and kudos to those who put it together. And so one of the things that I found really fascinating as I worked through that text is that, to borrow the phrase, Strauss finds the first definition to be the quote, like, hidden center of gravity in the entire dialogue. Like, this is actually like the thickest part of it, in the part that most people just skip over immediately. I'm not sure I agree with that, because I think the Euthyphro dilemma towards the end, that's usually classically taken as a center of gravity, still actually bears a lot of weight. But I think that Strauss brings a certain depth to this first definition that I've never seen anywhere else, I think. And so my preamble there is because one of the things that he points out, Thomas, which is what you're channeling, is that Euthyphro makes a judgment about the gods and he doesn't quite understand what he's done. So he says, just Pantheon, they're Homeric, they're all fighting against each other all the time. And so I am mimicking the most just. And the implicit thing there is that this is the most good that I have. Then, you know, I'm mimicking this God, Zeus. But what he doesn't seem to understand or realize is that he has made a judgment about the gods. He, Euthyphro, the mortal judges the immortal by a standard. And we say, no, no, no, it's good for the gods to adhere to justice, and therefore I pick the most just God. This is lost on Euthyphro. He does not understand what he's done. And to just kind of play the cards here, this is where we see Plato's ideas, right? The idea of justice coming in. Because I guess to ask it this way, if you can mimic Zeus, because he's the most just and he's the best because he adheres to justice. Why do you need the gods at all? Why not simply mimic justice? Why not simply be just? And so is justice, right, the idea of justice greater than the gods themselves, because it's the standard by which the gods are judged. And Euthyphro seems completely oblivious to what he's done here. But I think that maybe this really starts to crack open the question that Dr. Grabowski gave us, which is, why is this guy the interlocutor? And I think that one of the preliminary understandings here is that whether he realizes it or not, he is open to understanding the ideas. He's open to understanding Plato's ideas because he's implicitly already using them and judging the pantheon by them.
- [63:37]
D
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that really cleans up what I was trying to say, because I think what's happening is that he's identifying God with the good and then says, well, I have to imitate the good now. I can't be the good the way perhaps exactly the gods are, but I can get pretty close in the imitation, this mimicry. The problem is that, I mean, his own example, as Socrates is about to explode, can't bear the weight of the intuition that he has.
- [64:09]
A
And maybe to push this a little bit forward is, you know, I think there's a lot of questions that come up that I think are not entirely clear. But again, kind of channeling that Strauss text, you know, one of the theses set forward there is like, is this also an insight into Socrates, the maker of gods, that it's not just simply the divine sign that he has, or the fact that Socrates upholds to be a monotheist, right, that there's this unknown God, this unnamed God, which very much is. Is why he's a maker of gods as well. But as part of the accusation against him is that he. The ideas replace the gods, that the ideas replace the pantheon, they're greater than the pantheon. And can these be contextualized as the new gods, something that's greater than the current Homeric pantheon? So we kind of, you know, sometimes you just get into. Not a rut, but you kind of just get into the vein and you just kind of have to push things forward, like to show the whole picture. But we probably need to take a step back and do a little bit of grammatical work to understand this. And so, like, what do we mean by Plato's ideas when we say the idea of justice? What does that. What does that actually mean. So maybe kind of, let me give a working definition, and we can kind of poke holes in it. So when Plato talks about his ideas, obviously there's the universal and there's the particular. So we can talk about horse, the horse, what it means to be a horse, the essential qualities of a horse that all horses would have. We have this universal. If you're a horse, you have to have these qualities, these essential qualities. And that makes you different than, say, a raccoon or a badger or an oak tree. There's this, the universal, what is a horse? It answers that question, what is this? Okay, it's a horse. But then you have all these particulars. You have all these individual occurrences of hoarseness in an actual horse, right? So here's a large horse, a small horse, a brown one, you know, et cetera. My daughter right now would be very disappointed to me that I have no specialized jargon when it talks about horses or different types of horses. But there's all these different types. And all these particulars have to have the essential qualities of what a horse is. And we recognize them as horses because they have these qualities. And because of that, my mind can take in a concept of the horse and understand the universal of a horse. And it can then see that, yes, this particular, right, when I answer, what is it? I can say, oh, no, that's a horse, because it has these essential qualities. So the unique thing for Plato here is that these universals have a metaphysical reality. They are real. And in a certain way, they are more real than the particulars. What I mean by that is that the idea of the horse is actually the ideal horse, is the essential qualities of what a horse is. And insofar it is perfect, it is the perfect horse. In all the particular horses are imperfect images of the universal. So if you had the idea of the horse, if that somehow became incarnate, it would be the perfect horse. And so he holds that these actually have metaphysical realities. They are a real thing. They're an objective thing. And why this is important is because this idea is somewhat easy. If it's a horse, what is a horse? How do we find the universal? And then is this thing in front of me a horse? Is this a horse? Is this a particular individualization of a horse? Okay, great. The questions become much more complicated when it's, okay, well, what is justice? What's the universal of justice? And is this a particular act of justice? And you see that then, I think, in this dialogue, right? The question is, Socrates is asking for a universal of Piety. What is piety? Tell me its essential qualities. What is it? Because if I know the universal, then I can judge the particular. If I understand the essential qualities of what is piety, then when I'm faced with this particular circumstance, I can say, oh, is this piety? Well, yes, because it has these essential characteristics. Or no, maybe it's impious because it's perverted some. And so, you know, I think that when we see Plato's ideas, he's really giving us this kind of tutelage in the universal and the particular. But these are metaphysical realities. Like, these are objective things. And why that's important is because Plato gives us in the west an infrastructure of metaphysical realism, meaning that the truth is objective. Truth is conformity of your mind to reality. And this is really important because for those who might say, like, man, this is really abstract, and why does this matter? And et cetera, we talked about this in the Deakin form program. I was like, okay, well, guys, most of you already implicitly believe this, whether or not you can articulate it or not, because let's just take justice. Justice has to be one of two things. Justice is either a subjective concept that either I create or we build by consensus and we decide this is what justice is. It's either a subjective concept and justice is simply what we agree to it to be. We have some kind of an intellectual assent to that. Or justice is an objective reality that we can work together to discover. And of course, then everyone's like, oh, it's an objective reality. Justice isn't something that we invent. So then the question is, well, what is justice?
- [69:50]
D
Then?
- [69:52]
A
Like, when we say this objective reality, we say the universal of justice is a real thing. It's something that's discovered, not made by man. Then the question is, well, then what is it? And Plato answers that question of like, well, it's the idea of justice. It's a metaphysical reality of what justice actually is. The perfect essential qualities of justice by which we judge all the particulars.
- [70:15]
B
Yeah, I just want to make a couple of comments. I mean, I think you. That was a beautiful summary of what the forms are, at least what we take them to be, based on what Plato says about them in the dialogues. The first thing I'd note is that, you know, Euthyphro is. Is such a wonderful dialogue because Socrates doesn't get bogged down in all of these metaphysical speculations. He talks about the ideas, he talks about the forms, but he doesn't exactly tell us what they are. Because I think if he did that would completely sidetrack the conversation. The other thing I would mention is that, you know, Plato is not always consistent in how he depicts what these forms are. I think that it's fair to say that certainly he had some idea of these ideas and that they need to exist and that they had to have an objective reality. But what precisely they are, where precisely they exist. They exist apart from particulars in some sort of Platonic heavenly realm of some sort or other. But, but I mean he, he really does, I think, struggle with trying to. And maybe this is deliberately so that maybe he's not having difficulties, but, but maybe he's leaving it deliberately vague as to what precisely these things are. But I do think that it's, it is really a landmark discovery or development in, in Western philosophy to propose that there are these universals or these perfect particulars that exist apart from the physical particulars that we encounter on a day to day basis. And that's because of these universals that particulars come to have the properties and appearances that they do. And moreover, it's based on these universals that we can come to know things.
- [72:12]
A
And we come to know things truly correct. Like it's that I come to understand the idea. And this is an objective discovery of what is real. The mind conforms to reality. And this is not what we like as moderns, right. We want reality to conform to our minds. And actually the world that we're living in right now is deeply anti Platonic. This is what we're downstream from, from nominalism and relativism, et cetera, is that it's deeply anti Platonic.
- [72:39]
B
And one more point too, just, you know, you mentioned how these forms are more real than particulars. And that's the language that Plato uses, for instance, in the Republic, where it isn't just that things either exist or do not exist. It isn't just a binary like a light switch where, you know, it's either in or it's out. It either exists or it doesn't, but rather things. You know, this is where we get this idea of a great chain of being or gradations of being from. So this, this, this goes back, this goes back to Plato and of course it becomes infused in Aristotle's thinking and the thinking of Thomas, Aquinas, Augustine. So I mean this is, this is really a profound insight by Plato to propose these forms that exist in addition to particulars, but their existence is of a higher order.
- [73:36]
A
Yeah, I want to, I want to pick up on what you said about there, There are Things, though, about the forms, the ideas that Plato seems to leave open, or maybe he might even be vague about. He doesn't seem to answer them. I want to take that up a little bit, maybe under the question of where are the forms, where are the ideas? So if they have metaphysical reality, where do they reside? This is a question that Plato does not answer, and maybe even intentionally, because as a broader question, Plato does not answer the question of what is the relationship between the monotheistic God and the ideas.
- [74:09]
B
It's pretty clear where they're not, you know, they're not here, they're not in things, you know. And Socrates, throughout the dialogues, makes it very clear that what Plato has in mind isn't a kind of Aristotelian understanding of universals or forms being intrinsic to particulars. They exist in some sort of reified state apart from the world of appearances or the world of sensations.
- [74:40]
A
Yeah, because I think maybe just to give a quick sketch, right, Like Aristotle denies the forms having a separate metaphysical reality. Because I do think it's more correct to read Aristotle as a Platonist and see him downstream of Plato of the concept of forms and teleology and all these things that Plato gave us that Aristotle certainly, I think, adds a lot to. But one of the places that I would actually state that Aristotle is wrong is that Aristotle denies the separate reality of these metaphysical ideas and he roots them in the particulars themselves, Right. That they do have an idea or a form. The mind abstracts them. But then when you get to Augustine, right, Augustine being Neoplatonic, he's really interesting because what he does is he tries to answer the question, where do the ideas reside? And he says they reside in the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. They reside in the Logos, the divine mind. And this is why I tend to be inclined to call them the ideas and not simply the forms, because I think their true reality is that they are finding found inside the divine mind. And so Augustine kind of presents two major steps forward. One is that the ideas rest inside the second Person. And so at creation, what is God doing? He's giving existence to certain ideas that he has. He actually, you know, the idea of the horse, as we said earlier, is actually from the divine mind. And God decides to give the horse, you know, existence inside the new creation. He also. The other thing that Augustine gives us is he clarifies that God also has an idea of the particulars, that he has an idea of everything. So, for instance, like, there's not just simply the idea of man and that I'm a particular that participates in that idea. That is true. But God also knows an idea of Deacon Harrison. He actually knows the Platonic ideal of who I am as he knows me. And so a lot of ways we really are thoughts of God made flesh. Right. He knows me as he has eternally as this ideal, but he also then knows me as I am in a lot of ways. You could say that the closing of that gap, hopefully I'm trying of moving towards who God knows me to be is sanctification. It's theosis. That's what I'm actually doing. And so, of course, then Aquinas comes in, I think, does, you know, a marvelous job of trying to harmonize the Augustinian Neoplatonic tradition and then the Aristotelian tradition of trying to bring these two together. People often forget that Aquinas held to the ideas and followed Augustine, that the ideas exist and they exist within. Inside the divine mind. So I think that, you know, sometimes we set Plato aside and was like, oh yeah, I don't know what this idea is, but really I think, particularly from a Christian tradition, is that the metaphysical realism that, that Plato gives us, I think is one that we're very much in debt to and one that was very much picked up by Christianity.
- [77:35]
D
Yeah, I think, I mean we brought this up in the great books, but in the scriptural sense, the notion in. Or not notion, but the, The. The prophecy in Revelation by John of the stone on which the person's name is written that no one else knows, that's. That corresponds to what you're saying about the, the idea of Harrison. And on that, you know, that the name, this sort of. This as yet sort of unspoken name is that perfect idea of that particular person and that, you know, to which this corresponds and is a kind of recognition of the correspondence that's she. And make some. A couple of other quick notes tour. Strange philosophy all over the place. You know, Sartre picks up on this in a negative sort of sense. What you're talking about are the ideas that he denies that there's any eternal and unchanging truths because there's no eternal mind to think them. But if you simply turn this around, the idea would. That you would. Would have in fact eternal and unchanging truths if you had an eternal and unchanging mind to hold them. So there's a. I, you know, in a sense like I'm going to. To. To agree but in a. In a inverted correspondence. And your idea on the thought of God, Gabrielle Marcel, I think has a Beautiful line on that, that each person is an irrepeatable thought of God.
- [79:01]
C
I don't know if it helps, but there an analogy using angelology which is, which is really interesting, and it's from Augustine, is the idea that when the angels were created, they were illuminated by the light of God and they received things, what we were, what we would say, the universals, the forms, they received that with infused knowledge in their minds. And so they knew things as they were through the Word, through the Logos, right? And that was referred to as daytime knowledge. And then, then they knew things as they were created, as creation goes on, so they created man. And it's. He describes it as knowing the thing as it's created in and of its own nature was less than the knowledge that they had of the ideas itself. So the ideas were more real, right? The what they received from the Logos and the infused knowledge was more real than the nature of the. The created, say a person themselves, right? And then in choosing God, when they received the beatific vision, they received what was called the morning knowledge. Then they saw they had, they knew the universal, they knew the thing in nature as it is, but then they saw it as God understood it through the beatific vision. And that's where you're getting into that particular. Like this is. This is not just a person, this is a particular person. This is Harrison Garlick, right? And there's the angels see us as we are, but then they also see us as God understands what we can be, right? And so this is the idea of the guardian angels that help us to get there, but kind of seeing it through the angels and through Augustine's description there clarified for me as far as where Plato is going to with the ideas, this idea of the ideas. And so of course, Socrates may not know God and understand God as we understand God now, but he's certainly going that direction. And I think what, when we see something like piety or justice, well, these exist in the universals, in the mind of God, in the Logos itself. And so he's. Once he gets to understand that, then he seeks out what that logos is.
- [81:30]
A
Joey, if I, if I understand correctly, because I think it's a fascinating concept, so the angels, because we'll talk about like we're discursive, like we, we come to know things like through syllogism, right? We use our reason, we're kind of comparing, you know, A and B to kind of understand how things work. But they, the angels simply know.
- [81:48]
C
They know.
- [81:48]
A
And so they simply know things. And so I Haven't really spent a lot of time thinking. And I think this is fascinating that then what it is, how is it that they know? And it's because they, you know, God has given them access directly to the ideas, right. They know things to a certain degree, at least preliminary, as he knows them insofar as they're his own thoughts. But if I understand correctly, when angels are first created, that's how they know. They know through the ideas themselves. And then there's. I don't know what you want to call it, right. The testing or the judgment of the angels of whether or not to follow God. And the ones that follow him then come to know God through the beatific vision, which means then that they're coming to know the ideas as God knows them because they're receiving God himself. And so those ideas then are illuminated through the divine knowledge.
- [82:37]
C
Correct. And then the angels then act as mirrors, right? So they receive the illumination from God and then they then act as the mirror which reflects the illumination down through the, we would say as Catholics, through the choirs and then down to us ourselves, where we don't take in information that way. Right, because we, we have a body, so we're taking everything in through the senses and we have to reason up to God, which is, is really what we're seeing Socrates do, right? Here is he, he's using his. He's looking at things and he's saying that, well, there's these gods, but these gods are. Then we judge them by who's the most just.
- [83:20]
A
Right.
- [83:20]
C
So he's in reasoning up, well then what's beyond just right or what is just right? Where does it exist? And that's where ultimately we would say, well, it exists in the mind of God himself and the Logos.
- [83:37]
A
That is beautiful. That is really beautiful. See, this is why you have to have an expert on angels to lead you through the Euthyphro, right? This is why you have to do this. This is why you bring one on to discuss what piety is so you can have these great grand insights into metaphysics and the role of the angels in the ordered cosmos. Okay, so let's look at, let's kind of go back and somewhat tether ourselves to the text. So Socrates, you know, he's asking for a definition. Euthyphro has not given him one. He's given him an example. But we might make a thesis here that through Euthyphro, Plato has actually given us a lot to think about and a lot more layers. You know, don't simply discard this first definition, don't say he's an idiot and pass him along. I think that there's, there's some real depth here, as you can tell by this conversation. But Socrates, it's interesting, this is at 6B. One of his first questions to Euthyphro is he asks him whether Euthyphro believes the old tales are true, these Homeric tales mainly also in Hesiod. And Euthyphro says not only does he believe in these tales, but he also has unique esoteric knowledge about the divine. What do we make of this?
- [85:02]
C
Well, you were talking about parallels earlier like between the situation, but Meletus and Socrates and Euthro and his dad. And I think at the beginning I think Euthyphro sees himself and Socrates as the same. Right? And I think he would he. And I think here's where you start to see that there's a difference between the two where Euthrofo is not the same. He's not like the normal orthodox Greek because he's actually, I think you could almost say he's a radical. He's taken it further, right. He's trying to be like the God, right? So, and then you, you hear Socrates ask the question, do you believe this? Right? And I think here's where we see that Euthyphro actually is a true believer in the gods. And maybe, I don't think it, maybe the first time that you throw may be actually questioning in this, his mind is he's the same as Socrates if he doesn't believe in these gods, right.
- [86:16]
D
Well, you know, I think it's an interesting sort of thought experience. Wonder if Socrates is pointing out that the greatest threat to the belief in the gods is it's in some sense the true believer. All these sort of half hearted Athenians can keep, can keep going on without the contradictions. But since precisely because Euthyphro is sort of this, this perfectly fanatical true believer, he can't, he can't actually stay on that road.
- [86:47]
A
I think it's great because there's an inherent inconsistency in the pantheon, right? The pantheon does not hold up to logic when you think about the divine. So being a true believer, again, I think this goes back to Dr. Gralski's question why this interlocutor. And I think that his true belief might actually make him more open to maybe accepting the ideas of moving past the Homeric tales. And I think Dr. Grouski, in our Sunday great books you posed a question I thought was really fascinating. And so I'm going to try and echo you as best I can. But you pointed out, which was very correct, you pointed out that in Euthyphro's answer. So going back up a little bit around 6a, that Euthyphro actually couched this in the third person. He said, these people themselves believe that Zeus is best and most just of the gods. And they accuse me. And you pointed out, which I thought was really interesting, which was, well, wait, like a close read of that doesn't mean that Euthyphro actually believes that Zeus is the most. Just he's making argument of what the common man believes, but we're not sure Euthyphro actually, you know, echoes the common belief. And so I thought that was a really brilliant insight because I think it actually then answers why? Socrates then asks him immediately, why do you actually believe in these tales? So Socrates actually picks up on this. I think what, I think what you pointed out was very, very good because it actually shows the inherent kind of substructure that's going on right there, that Socrates notices that distinction. He doesn't call it out explicitly, but then he asks a question that Euthyphro can't escape. Like, whoa, okay, these people believe that, but what do you believe? And then Euthyphro does, does commit himself. But I think just watching that grammar was just a really excellent notice of details.
- [88:39]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, just to maybe flesh it out a little bit more, based on Euthro's initial response, where he talks about they, or in my translation, human beings believe that it would be really easy to construe what he's doing as merely a rhetorical maneuver to try to defend himself in court. So I don't, you know, he could say, well, look, I don't, I don't necessarily believe these things, but you the jury, or you the judge, believe these things. And I'm going to ensure that you're consistent insofar as you believe that it was just for Zeus to do this. And so if I did the same thing or something similar, then you would have to conclude that I too, must be just in having done it. And that's why I think it's so brilliant that Socrates says, now, as you said, Deacon, well, wait a second, Euthyphro, do you really believe these things? And he says, oh, yeah, absolutely. And so that's an important piece of datum for Socrates as he moves the dialogue forward, that he's, you know, every answer, every response that Euthyphro gives, Socrates files that away. And that directs this is like a, you know, choose your own adventure where Socrates is picking or, you know, is paying careful attention to every single thing that Euthyphro says and follows it up with an appropriate question to see what his next step ought to be.
- [90:17]
D
Well, and there's another. So he. Here, Euthyphro is accusing people of being inconsistent and how they're judging him for doing the same as the gods. But very earlier, just a little earlier, he had said that what separated himself from the common man was his exact knowledge of divine things and then appeals to common knowledge about the gods as to which one is most just. So it's. He, at one moment, he's claiming to have the special knowledge of these divine things that other people don't have and then saying, oh, by the way, I'm just doing what everybody believes already. Obviously, he's the most just. It's. There's a. There, there are. Euthyphro just seems particularly poor or bad at detecting his own inconsistencies. I mean, even for a soccer, even for a Platonic dialogue interlocutor, Euthyphro, he's. He's at the. He's at the low end on inconsistency.
- [91:20]
A
I want to maybe bring up what Dr. Spencer mentioned earlier, too, is having recourse back to Aristophanes, because I think that what's loaded here, which was already alluded to, but just to make it more explicit, what was alluded to here is that Socrates is asking, wait, you don't believe in these tales, do you? Well, it's basically everyone's common knowledge at the moment that Socrates does not believe in these tales. And, you know, everyone's been watching, or at least now reading Aristophanes the Clouds in which, you know, Socrates is shown. I mean, he says several times in the play, like, I don't believe in Zeus, right? It's not even. Like, it's not even hidden. It's, you know, we can go into, you know, next week or the week after, we'll look at the apology and Aristophanes the Clouds somewhat haunts that dialogue. And so I think that's one of the things going on here. And I think, as was already mentioned, this is where Euthyphro, I think, kind of has to understand that there is daylight between him and Socrates, right? They're not as together as he might think. But at the same time, I still think maybe his true belief in the pantheon actually makes him more predisposed to accepting the ideas because he's going to take things seriously or at least he should be inclined that way. We have to see the dialogue. You know, sometimes, like we talked about in First Alcibiades, philosophy takes moral courage. It takes courage, right? It takes courage to. To wrestle with the ideas and to change. And I'm not sure where Euthyphro falls on that.
- [92:50]
C
Well, I think Alcibiades is important because. And what really kind of clarif helped clarify this, like I said earlier, was when in Alcibiades he actually points out and says that he. His recourse is to God.
- [93:08]
D
Yeah. I almost think Euthyphro has a different problem. Right. Because I think he believes, it seems to believe that justice is important, that it should be pursued, and it should be pursued even at a high price. So I think in some ways it's good. The only thing is that he's also very rash, and I think there's a different kind of sort of moral hazard there. If he's. He's dedicated to doing the right thing without taking very much thought as to the white, what the right thing is before he does it.
- [93:38]
A
Can I, can I ask a question here? Is Socrates pious?
- [93:44]
C
It depends. Well, not according to. I mean, he's being brought up for charges of impiety. So if you look at the definite. What's the definition of piety according to the ancient Greeks, right? And it was basically doing the rituals which were the tradition of the. The city and the people. And so obviously he's. He doesn't believe in the gods. He's come out and said that, right. And, and he. This idea especially influenced by Aristophanes, that there, he's creating new gods, right? The clouds. And then Alcibiades, he's come out and he said that there is the one God. So I think if he were to define piety, it would not be the piety as understood by the definition of what the Greeks understood piety to be.
- [94:39]
D
I'll say that also if we look at examples of his character, the way he suffered for his city in the war, the way he. Ultimately we see he dies for the city. I think the credo is actually the best exposition of this, where, you know, he's offered the chance to flee and says that, you know, how could he do that to the city that raised him? I think it's trickier when we get to his piety towards God because again, his understanding of God has now differed so far, diverged so far from the Athenian understanding. I think it's fair to say that he is attempting to follow God the best way he knows how. And so I think you have to then say that he is pious. But again, as, as Dr. Spencer said, certainly not in a sense that the Athenians understand.
- [95:31]
A
What do you think, Dr. Browski?
- [95:33]
B
Well, I don't know if I have much to add. I was just thinking Thomas mentioned his faithfulness to the polis. I mean, he surely had filial Polish piety. He stayed married to Xanthippe up to the end.
- [95:48]
A
He did say Mary to her. That's one thing he did, doctor. That's what I was thinking. I was kind of going through Socrates and the threefold piety was like, okay, I think he's pious towards the divine. And I can explain why. I think he's very pious towards the polis, towards Athens. We see this in the apology, right? I mean, I think he. And in the credo, but in the apology he thinks he has a vocation to Athens. He's here to help her. I think he loves her.
- [96:13]
B
Her.
- [96:13]
A
Yeah. The piety towards the family for Socrates is maybe slightly more complicated question, but I think. So my. The question here, which I think is one to wrestle with because in certain ways, like Socrates is the philosopher par excellence, right. Maybe to push back on Aquinas a little bit, right? I think that, that Socrates is the philosopher, even though, even though Aquinas will basically say that Socrates is the most like Christian because of how he taught. And so this is a question then, if Socrates is an analog to the philosopher, can the philosopher be pious? It's interesting that I think a lot of inclinations, particularly modern ones, would say no, right? No, we don't have piety. And I think that's wrong. And I think that, if anything, I think that Socrates, as we'll particularly see in the apology, actually has a deep piety towards the God, the monotheistic God, and has a deep piety and respect towards the divine sign, the daemon that's been assigned to him. But the problem here, I think is not can the philosopher be pious, but is, can the polis recognize the piety of the philosopher.
- [97:21]
B
Well, sorry, at least Socrates has a certain fidelity or faithfulness to the truth. I mean, that for him is the highest value. And it reminds me of the comment that Aristotle makes in Nicomachean Ethics when criticizing the Platonists in book one. He says he refers to Platonists as friends, but he says that one should always value truth higher than friendship. So, yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, it depends how broadly you want to construe piety. I mean, does he have piety towards, towards the traditional Greek pantheon, perhaps not. But he definitely has piety towards these higher ideals. He has true faith, true faithfulness towards that for, towards them.
- [98:13]
A
But don't you think he also has piety towards the God?
- [98:16]
B
Towards the God? Well, I mean, sure, I think so. And I think that comes out most clearly in the apology where, how it ends, you know, the last line being something along the lines of, you know, I go to my destination, you go to yours. The only one who knows which is better is the God, you know.
- [98:38]
A
Haas so yeah, it just seems that the philosopher has a piety towards a greater understanding of the divine. But then once again we see this conflict between the philosopher and, and the commonality of the polis, that the, that the polis can't see the true piety. And so Socrates, because it's interesting, right, Socrates gets accused of being a maker of gods, which would be a deeply impious act because it would, it would pervert piety, right? I am not a maker of the gods, but in reality, I think Socrates actually has a deep piety, but the polis can't receive that, right? They don't have the capacity to actually understand that. So I think it's a question, I think it's a question as we go through this is, you know, is Socrates pious and can the philosopher, you know, be pious as well?
- [99:27]
D
Augustine is usually fairly favorable towards Cicero, but there's a point in the City of God where he criticizes Cicero and also Varro for creating a kind of distinction between civic religion and the religion of the philosophers. And apparently there's some writings here that are lost, but apparently both. Cicero was pretty insistent that was monotheistic and there's one real God. And philosophers like Cicero and, and, and Varro and these others recognized that and worshiped that one God as best they knew how. But that wasn't good enough for regular people. You had to have all these civic festivals and things like that and have all these gods of Rome that everyone that. Let me change that, not everyone, those in the know realized this was all fake, but you had to keep it up for the people because that's all the people could understand. And I think that's sort of the, the highly cynical version of where you might end up with something like if you took the wrong fork of this tree with Athens, right, that we truly there is one God. Socrates can recognize him, but everyone else is not. It's just too much for them. We can't expect them to realize the truth. And it leads me to A kind of quandary, because there's no doubt that Socrates is basically as much a disruption to Athenian society as Aristophanes makes him out to be. It's not clear that Athenian society can survive Socrates, but they're wrong and he's right. So where does that leave you? How is the conversion to be accomplished? It can be. The can could. In some alternate history that we're trying to imagine, can Athens be converted without it destroying itself?
- [101:19]
A
I think it's brilliant. I mean, I think that gets to the crux of the problem between the philosopher and the polis, that he brings truth. But can the polis survive being reordered towards it? And typically, I think the answer is no. It was no for Socrates and it was no for Jesus Christ. Right. Jerusalem did not convert. Right. They killed him for it. Right. And then the temple is destroyed because of their unbelief. And so later, when we're outside the context, we can look at someone like Socrates and Christ and see those lessons, but for those that were in it and in the political, no, they kill him. I mean, this is for both Christ and Socrates. You know, I often think of Plato's cave in the Republic, that the guy who goes back to the cave, who has seen the sun to help his fellow prisoners, is killed by the prisoners because they are habituated to the shadows. They understand the shadows. The shadows bring comfort. They're giving each other rewards over the shadows. So no. Thomas, I think it's a brilliant question and kind of goes to the heart of the matter of how much can the polis actually follow the philosopher? It also gives a lot of credence to, I think, a concept that we often take almost as a joke, but actually I think is quite serious, which is the need for the philosopher king. Right. Could you ever actually align these two, that you have a ruler who is truly wise, who's actually in love with wisdom, that could help order the polis according to a good, even in proportionate ways, with the different strata of the human intellect and their proportionality to receive the truth. Could we ever actually align these two, where the political and the philosophical work together?
- [103:01]
D
Well, I think it also puts the conversion, the ultimate conversion of Roman society in its. In an even more miraculous light. And that the empire did survive conversion. I mean, and don't get me wrong, there's all sorts of flaws in the empire and persecutions of Christians and all the rest, but the very fact that it didn't simply disintegrate instantly is, I think, a miraculous sign.
- [103:31]
C
Well, in The Greeks not changing. I can't help but think of St. Paul, right, when he's preaching about the unknown God. And they didn't convert there either.
- [103:44]
A
Yeah, I think. I think it's difficult. I think receiving the truth within the established political order and trying to convert that order, I think is incredibly difficult.
- [103:55]
D
Right.
- [103:55]
A
And even in historical examples in which the church has brought the gospel to certain cultures, it typically also results in a complete civilizational change. Obviously, there's still levels of enculturation of the gospel, but it's incredibly transformative to them. And simply trying to survive that transformation, I think is difficult in a positive way. It also shows you, too, again, the context. We're in the setting. We're in front of King Archon's court. Piety is a political problem, and being impious brings political instability. And Socrates is impious towards the Pantheon. He doesn't believe in the Homeric tales, maybe outside of. He has an interesting deference to the oracle at Delphi under Apollo. So it's always a question of, like, how did he view that? What did he think that actually was? There's. There's some theories there that some of the divine that actually had substance to them, he might have thought were daemons. Right. Were some kind of creature between God and man that actually had some kind of reality to them. But for the most part, he doesn't believe in the pantheon. He holds to a monotheistic God. But the philosopher's piety is a danger to the common piety, the false piety of the polis. So we kind of come to the end of this questioning on the first definition. This is a really. I mean, we've unpacked a lot, which I think this has been a beautiful conversation. I've deeply appreciated it. But it's a pretty quick turnaround in the dialogue. Right. Because Socrates, I think, notes these things, but doesn't tease them out. But it's interesting that he does actually state in 6D that Euthro's answer is categorically incorrect, that Eupharo gave an example in the not a definition, and that Socrates is explicitly looking for the form or the idea of piety. So any kind of last final thoughts? All right. Well, Dr. Spencer, deeply appreciate you being here this evening and guiding us through the Euthyphro and helping us out with angels. We really appreciate it.
- [106:03]
C
Thank you guys for letting me join you.
- [106:06]
A
Very good. Dr. Grabowski and Thomas, thank you so much as always, friends of the podcast and everything that you've done to kind of help us through the youth fro and all the texts prior to this as well.
- [106:16]
B
Thank you for being such a wonderful host.
- [106:18]
D
Yes, thanks for having us.
- [106:20]
A
And Thomas who's joining us from the woods for those joining on YouTube. So thank you for your dedication to help us in our platonic studies. Thomas?
- [106:28]
D
Yes, we just arrived. It looks like a, looks like a nice spot.
- [106:33]
A
It looks very charming. Okay, so then next week we'll continue in our platonic studies. We'll take up the second part and final part of the euthyphro. We'll look into the second and third definition that he gives and take up also what is probably the most famous section of the euthyphro, the euthyphro dilemma. So next week we'll be continuing in the euthyphro. Check us out on thegreatbookspodcast.com on Twitter, X, YouTube, Facebook and we thank all of our supporters on Patreon and we will see you next week. Thank you.