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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
The Euthyphro by Plato Part II with Dr. Joey Spencer and Friends
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascend, the Great Books Podcast, we're discussing the second and final part of Plato's Euthyphro, a dialogue on piety, probably one of the most famous dialogues of Plato. We are joined again by Dr. Frank Grabowski, Mr. Thomas Lackey, and Dr. Joey Spencer, a new guest to the podcast, my colleague at the Chancery, Ardassus, and archivist, a teacher of the Great Books, oversees our diaconate formation program, academics, and is an expert in the theology of angels and demonstration. So a pretty good guest to have on when you're discussing piety. Together we will discuss the Euthyphro Dilemma, which is probably the most famous part of this dialogue. It's a part that most people know and focus on when they read it. We'll also look at the relationship between piety and justice and also maybe start to question whether the purpose of this dialogue is actually piety or whether Socrates has another purpose in mind. If you haven't already, go check out our written guide to the Euthyphro, a wonderful resource question answer to help you or your small group through this beautiful text. And if you haven't already, go check out our sister publication, the Ascent on Substack. It publishes two articles a week on Christian spirituality, theosis, sanctification, drawing heavily from the Great Books, Western culture, and particularly Plato. So if you want to see some of Plato in a more Christian context and how he was adopted into Christianity, go check out the Ascent on Substack. So join us today for a wonderful conversation on the second and final part of Plato's Euthyphro.
- [01:23]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Foreign.
- [01:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Welcome to Ascend, the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father and serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. If you're new to Ascend, we are a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the Great Books. So far we have read Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and now we are continuing our studies into Plato. We are recording, as always, on a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. You can check us out on Twitter or X, YouTube, Facebook, Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters and check us out on thegreatbookspodcast.com where we have guides and other resources to help guide you through the Great Books. Today we are discussing the second part of the Platonic dialogue, the Euthyphro a dialogue about piety, the divine morality, and maybe even politics. Tonight we have some wonderful guests returning to guide us through the Euthyphro we have a friend of the podcast, Dr. Frank Grabowski, who is a professor of philosophy at Roger State. He also teaches in our local classical school. He is a diaconate candidate and a third order Franciscan and a member of our Sunday Great Books Group. Dr. Grabrowski, how are you?
- [02:56]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I'm doing very well, Deacon.
- [02:58]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Good. I'm glad that I've, you know, our friendship has grown to a degree that I can remember. All of your titles is good. We also have Mr. Thomas Lackey, also friend of the podcast, member of our Sunday Great Books group, independent scholar, always revealing the mystery of Plato to us. Thomas, how are you this evening?
- [03:20]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, that's a bold introduction. I'm well and thanks for having me.
- [03:25]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, it's always good to have you on. We also have Dr. Joey Spencer, who decided to come back after last week's episode. And so Dr. Spencer serves as the archivist and a tutor of theology for the Diocese of Tulsa. We found out last week he did his doctoral thesis on exorcisms, is an expert in angels and demons. Dr. Spencer, how are you?
- [03:48]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Good.
- [03:49]
Dr. Joey Spencer
It's good to be with you guys again.
- [03:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, we appreciate you coming back on. So I, you know, I was thinking about today as I was just kind of going back over everything that we've done on Ascend. I was having a conversation with someone on X, and it just really dawned on me how more rich my read of Plato is after spending that time reading the Greek Poetics. What I mean by that is like, the work that we did, like our Year of Homer and then working through Hesiod and then kind of the Greek Playwrights, like, it really has enriched my understanding of Plato in a way that I don't know if I could articulate completely well, but I feel like I have a much better understanding of the culture that he's speaking into and the ideas that he himself is somewhat in dialog with. Because I think that one of the things that I get a lot of feedback on is like, well, why start with the Greek Poetics? Like, why do we have to do all that? Like, why. Why don't we just jump straight into Plato, which is what a lot of people do, right? Like, what my Gray Books formation did. We just jumped straight into Plato. But, like, personally, I'm like, very happy that we took the time to understand Homer and the Greek playwrights, because I think it just brings a of lot, lot to the table when you're reading Plato.
- [05:04]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, that certainly meant a lot to me because that's exactly what I did before, which is I started with Plato. In fact, I think I started with the Euthyphro and I'd never even read Homer filling that gap. And now looking backwards, especially at the Republic, I think going through the Republic is going to be much, much deeper with this Homeric background behind it.
- [05:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, Homer is certainly his interlocutor in a lot of places. And I think too reading Homer and then reading Plato allows Homer to receive a more just interpretation, if that makes sense. Because I, my, my raw thesis right now is that Plato really only mentions Homer when he disagrees with him. And because of that you don't see how much Plato is actually borrowing from Homer. Aristotle does the same thing. Aristotle doesn't tell you when he's borrowing from Plato, but he does tell you he does mention Plato when he disagrees with him. And so if you haven't read the masters, right, if you haven't read the masters, then when you read the students, you don't understand how much they are an echo of the ideas that have come before them. And I think too like having read Plato, then it works the other way too. Having read Plato and then reading Homer, you then see more clearly the antecedents that are in Homer. You see that kind of pre philosophical thought, that Homer, the teacher that really is commenting on the soul, that is commenting on what it means to be spirited and the thematic. And you see very clearly then, oh yeah, these are the headwaters from where, you know, Plato will eventually come. The other thing too that occurred to me was moving from Homer to Plato is somewhat jarring insofar as like genre, like how we move from like this, this epic poem to a dialogue. But after reading the plays, it makes perfect sense to me that someone started writing dialogues because you see these plays like Aeschylus and the Oresteia, like wrestling with what is justice. And then you see Sophocles taking up a lot of the same questions. You see even Aristophanes doing this in a comedic way. It really makes sense that someone like Plato, who was a playwright, who then burned all of his plays upon meeting Socrates, would then take up these questions directly, but take them up still in that kind of play esque form, in the form of a drama. It makes it seem much more natural that someone like Plato came about as opposed to. If you jump straight from Homer to Plato, I think it's somewhat of a jarring jump.
- [07:26]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think the humor that Plato brings is also really interesting in the context of the idea of a play because obviously Aristophanes and then we have all these. But I wouldn't say that Homer is particularly funny, for example. So to see the combination in Plato of both the serious and the humorous is. It certainly makes it delightful to read.
- [07:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I agree. Yeah.
- [07:47]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I mean, rib tickler, wasn't it?
- [07:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Say again?
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Dr. Frank Grabowski
I said bacchae was just a rib tickler.
- [07:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, the bacchae wasn't. The Bacchae wasn't as funny. But the bacchae is such an outlier in so many different ways.
- [08:03]
Dr. Joey Spencer
I think there's, I'm not sure if you didn't read all that stuff. I mean, you're certainly not going to get the whole sense of what's going on, especially when it comes to familial relationships like fathers and sons and what those fathers do to the sons and what the sons then do to the fathers. I think that's going to make a lot more sense. If you've got a background into the, the Greek plays and also like tonight, the, the myths as well. We'll, we'll probably touch on Daedalus tonight and Icarus. And when we, we get to. Which plays a major role in the discussion that's going on between Socrates and Euthyphro. And if you, if you don't know who those people are and what they did, then you're gonna kind of be lost.
- [08:48]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I guess it's also worth just noting right there that Socrates is not rejecting in any sense this, this mythological view of the gods out of ignorance. Right. He seems to be well schooled in the stories of the gods.
- [09:01]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. I think particularly why this occurs to me in reading the Euthyphro is how dominant the understanding or maybe even the wrestling with. Of piety was throughout the Greek plays and even in Homer too, piety was just a constant theme because piety for them. See, I think when you read it as a modern piety is, is some type of superficial thing. It's, it's that, you know, I, I, you know, I say my rosary every night, right. I do, I do these things, these outward signs of my devotion. It's very devotional. But piety, as we see in Homer and then moving through the playwrights, piety is in a lot of ways what gives structure to reality. It gives structure to having a well ordered cosmos. Particularly how does the polis, Right. How does human society find its place, its. Well ordering with. Inside the cosmological whole and it's really piety, right? Well, do we have a proper relationship to the divine? Do I have a proper relationship to the polis? Do I have a proper relationship to my family. Right. Filial piety. And, you know, we see then, you know, whether it's. It's Hector going back to Troy, which I think Homer teaches us these things in a somewhat nascent way, or it's the conflicts that we see with piety and justice inside of, like Aeschylus or even in Sophocles with Antigone, like, it gives a much thicker understanding of what piety is. So when Socrates starts asking these questions, like, a lot of that is not fleshed out in this dialogue, it doesn't actually give you, in a lot of ways, that full cosmological picture that is the inheritance of this dialogue. So that's one of the reasons I was thinking about today, because I just think that if you've read those and, you know, we have all those podcasts you have, you know, you can go to thegreatbooks podcast.com and see our resource library on those. If you spend time with those, then you realize, like, the concept that's being discussed here is it's much thicker than what we give it credit for.
- [11:02]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I think that's a very good point, Deacon. You're right. The modern conception of piety tends to be very much internal or individualistic, whereas the Greeks certainly had a more robust relational conception of piety, where it lay between the worshipper or the person and, as you say, the family or the state or the gods. I think that's been lost over time.
- [11:29]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think generally, if you hear the word pious, it is used in a negative sense. I mean, I think that's worth calling out that for when exactly this turn happened would be probably worth its own study, which I've never done. But at some point, pious became an almost universally negative adjective.
- [11:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It certainly can be. I mean, I think about my own experience, you know, working, you know, for the institutional church, and, yeah, sometimes, oh, he's very pious. He's a pious man. Sometimes means that he's, like, aloof, like, he's not engaged in reality, or you. You can't have that kind of mature conversation with him. Or don't. Don't mention certain subjects because you'll scandalize him because he's very pious. Like, it's just. It's a very different. It's a very different concept than what we see amongst the Greeks or Pharisaical.
- [12:17]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I mean, there's a chance that, to be honest, that euthyphro sort of embodies this more negative connotation, right. That euthyphro is kind of what people Mean. I mean, Euthyphro, the person, not the dialogue, is kind of what people mean when they mean pious in this negative sense. Well, I mean, at least the sort of surface level of. I actually think Euthyphro has some good qualities that I'm trying to. Trying to rehight.
- [12:44]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Quick picking on Euthyphro. Thomas.
- [12:46]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah.
- [12:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, let's get into the dialogue, right? Let's get into the text. So we're discussing the second part of the dialogue. Last week, you know, we had a separate podcast, just kind of introducing the dialogue, giving some of the brass tacks, and looking at kind of the preamble and then his first definition. And so now we're looking at the second definition. So we've kind of broken up the dialogue into three major defining moments of what is piety? There's some sub themes and sub definitions, but there's generally three, I think, in this dialogue. And so we have the second one. The second one starts at 6e. And so if you recall, in the first one, in a lot of ways, Euthyphro had a big swing and a miss, right? What it is? What is piety? Socrates asks. And Euthyphro is like, oh, well, it's doing what I'm doing. And it's like, well, okay, that's a categorically wrong answer. Like I asked you for a definition, right? I want to know the idea, the form of piety, right? We talked about that. You know, Plato has these forms, these ideas, these universals that have true metaphysical reality, right? These are objective things. Piety is not simply a concept that finds some type of, you know, its truth and some type of mutual scent of the minds, but rather the minds are discovering a true metaphysical object, right? The universal of piety. This gives us a realist metaphysic in the west, right? That reality is something structured, it's something ordered, it's something intelligible, it's something that we can come to know. The ideas are real in certain ways. They're more real than the material things. We can come to know them. And this is what Socrates is asking Euthyphro for. I need the idea of piety. And this makes sense, right? Because if he knows the universal of piety, if you know the universal of a horse, then you can judge the particulars. Is this animal a horse? No, it's a raccoon. Is this animal a horse? Yes, it's a horse. Is it a good horse or a bad horse? Well, I know how well it adheres to the universal, to the perfect idea of what it means to be a horse, Right. Its essence. Same thing with justice, it's just a lot more complicated. Or with piety. Right. What is the universal piety, do I understand? It's. It's kind of perfect, ideal. And therefore I can judge all these particulars if I know this. And this is very helpful for Socrates, who's about to go on trial for being impious. So let's look at the definition that our friend Euthyphro gives. So in 6e, Socrates asks for the form or idea of piety, and Euthyphro answers, well, what is dear to the gods is pious, and what is not is impious or impious. And so Euthyphro is congratulated because he has given a categorically correct answer. Right? He's given a definition. We don't know if it's the right definition, but he's given a definition this time. Right. So the dialogue has moved forward. And this is the part, like, this is the part of the dialogue where I feel like we were all waiting for this while reading Homer for a year. Like, this is what I think a lot of people were, like, chomping at the bit to argue because. Right. What does the argument end up being? Well, you know, what is dear to the gods is pious and what is not is impious. Well, anyone who has read Homer knows that the gods don't agree. They're all in discord, Right? And this is what Socrates points out, right? The gods are in discord. That's in 7B. And Euthyphro's already admitted that he believes in the old tales, right? He believes in the Homeric tales. That was back at 6B. So then if that's true, then the gods differ. Hera, Athena, right? Think about. Think about Troy. So the whole thing, if you take. Where was that? That was Plato or Socrates in First Alcibiades. And when he says the Iliad and the Odyssey are about justice, so this is problematic, Right? So the gods are not in agreement. So if you think about the Iliad, right, you have. You have Hera and Athena and Poseidon on the side of the Achaeans, right? And you have Apollo and Artemis and others on the side of the Trojans, Aphrodite on the side of the Trojans as well. And so this is how. How could you determine piety if the gods themselves are in discord?
- [16:56]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I mean, as we go to this concept of being dear to the gods, it's. I mean, Paris was dear to Aphrodite, Menelaus was Dear to Zeus we are. I mean, just to take the Homeric example as. As clearly as you can, it reminds.
- [17:10]
Dr. Joey Spencer
Me of some of the commentary by Strauss where he talks about, like, they may agree on the principle of piety or justice, but the gods, while they agree on the principle, will not agree on the particular situations. So that's why you have the different gods supporting the different, you know, people in the stories. And there's a. There's a bit of argument here as to. They may agree to the principle of piety or justice, but they may not agree that there was impiety or injustice done by the father who allowed the slave to die, or even that it's just or pious for Euthyphro to take his dad to court.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah.
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Mr. Thomas Lackey
I mean, and Socrates confronts Euthyphro with, you know, various examples, most most famously here with. With Kronos and Uranus and that, you know, that are the gods quarreling about the exactly the same sort of things which men quarrel about, in which case there seems to be a universal that stands outside them. I mean, we're presaging this a little bit. I mean, this is the. This is the meat of the very traditional Euthyphro dilemma that we've gotten into. It is justice. Something which the gods themselves are in some doubt about.
- [18:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think. You know, one thing that occurs to me here after our year of Homer is what was Homer trying to present? We kind of had this conversation several times. And so, because sometimes the gods are presented in such. Such conflict and in such almost comedic ways that, you know, we had conversations about, you know, is Homer intentionally criticizing the gods here? Is he presenting them in such a way in which the average reader, the average listener, you know, just sees this as ridiculous because, you know, particularly in the. In the Iliad and in someone in the Odyssey too. I mean, you. The gods, in a lot of ways don't. I mean, they don't even represent the best of mankind. They don't even represent Arete. Right. In a lot of ways, they're. They're the worst parts of mankind. They're in this imploded kind of part of the soul that obsesses and is very petty and very easily stung into cruelty. And men will die terrible deaths that are completely unjust because of some, you know, petty squabble amongst the gods. And we had a lot of conversations during the year of Homer of, well, can Homer really set this forward without seeing some type of problem there? You know, is he just a. Is he just an echo of his culture? And so he's just presenting this, you know, this is what we believe. Thank you very much. You know, or is there a thicker understanding there of Homer as a teacher, trying to show people that this type of piety, this type of understanding of the divine is kind of inherently flawed?
- [20:12]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, thanks to our Sunday Great Books meetings, that's the interpretation that I tend to take now of Homer is that rather than him advocating or merely describing these gods as he believes they are in a subversive way, he is critiquing the Greek pantheon and these traditional notions of virtue and piety to critique them at all.
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Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think we do have to. We have to say that Homer already confronted, in some real sense the euthyphro dilemma and decided that justice was something which could be used to judge the gods. Right. So we have to push, push the euthyphro dilemma back into Homer. I mean, I think this is a reasonable thing to do. You could argue that Hesiod did the same, right? I mean, he presents Zeus as a kind of. As a heroic figure that is acting justly to set right these wrongs. And so I think, I guess the, the last question would be to all that is how much of that is, is in something so innate that, you know, these things are written on the heart that we look at something and we say, well, that's not fair. And then even as the mythologies spring out, you have this, this, this conflict between the right and the wrong, and it's in. You could, you literally couldn't tell a story without it.
- [21:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What do you think, Dr. Spencer?
- [21:38]
Dr. Joey Spencer
Well, I think that it makes me think of what is Socrates getting at? So, I mean, the first argument about Zeus being the most just, right? And then the, the problem of if he's the most just, that means there are gods less just than him, right? And so if he's the most just, that doesn't mean that he's fully just. And so as Socrates may be implying that the gods in fact are injust. And to look at them as a whole, there's, there's a sense of they're. They're not just. They're injust. And it just depends on different situations. They're all going to act just in some cases, but in others, depending on what the case is, could actually be acting in just. And so is he. Is Socrates really trying to pull out the. I mean, I think he is trying to point out here that these aren't gods necessarily to be followed by. And you. We discussed last week about how euthypho is kind of Unorthodox in his wanting to be like the gods or to imitate the gods in a way which the ordinary Greek probably did not.
- [23:02]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
But I think that that opens up Euthyphro to this idea again, that if Socrates. If we take Socrates to be leading him towards some higher idea, which I think is, you know, pretty. Pretty fair to take that. It's not necessarily against imitation, but to be very careful what he should. What he seeks to imitate.
- [23:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I really like. I really like Thomas's point on the fact that, like, is this an inherent problem in a religious pantheon, right? So as soon as you try and break the divine apart and say, well, you know, certain gods adhere to. Or really, if the gods adhere to any type of distinction between each other, right. That there's this God's more powerful than the other. This one's more just. This one's more merciful. This is the God of love, you know, whatever it is. It seems then that the gods immediately, there are then ideas by which we judge them and can categorize them and can also then judge, you know, whether or not they themselves adhere to their particular patronages. So I think it's really. That's really fascinating to think about. You can talk about Homer as somewhat subverting it, but I really like what you said about Hesiod, because Hesiod, you know, his theogony is simply just a triumph of Zeus. I mean, there's no criticisms of Zeus in there. Zeus brings order. He brings civilization. I mean, he. He is the hero, right? He's not a tyrant. You know, he's not this kind of goofy God that gets, you know, wrapped around the axle about women or these types of things. Like, he. He is the bringer of order. But I think it's so funny that what you mentioned is like. But even in that, has Hesiod not fallen into the same problem, Right. That this is. This is the God that is the best. This is the God that is the most just. Okay, well, how do you make that determination? Who makes it and by what standard? Yeah, and I think. I think this is what Socrates is pulling out, which was the criticisms that I think a lot of us saw as at least implicit in Homer, that the pantheon has an inherent philosophical problem. Just simply as these gods are presented, they tend to be immediately judged not only against each other, but against an idea and then also against whether or not they adhere to their particular ideas.
- [25:21]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And we've seen. Deacon and the other gentleman can chime in too. We've seen, even in the tragedies that we've read that the dramatists were well aware of this problem. Which was it? Was it Aeschylus or Sophocles, who. In it, one of the characters refers to Zeus as the. The unnamed or the unnamable. So we begin to see a kind of reformation in that instance. Then, of course, we have Antigone. When she's appealing to the traditional laws, or however she refers to it in the fagal's translation, she doesn't assign those laws to Zeus. In fact, she very much divorces them from the gods, per se. And so, you know, I think, to sort of echo what Thomas has already said, I think that there are, even among these dramatists, there's an awareness of a fundamental problem within the Greek pantheon that needed to be reformed, that you can't. The gods can't be the ones calling the shots. There needs to be something else either a supreme God. Right. We have to rethink who Zeus is, or we have to posit the existence of certain laws that even the gods have to obey. And I mean, even within Homer, you see this with the scales of Zeus, where Zeus seems to hold them apart from himself and he has to conform to whatever the scales indicate. So I think that even before Plato. Yeah. There's this tendency to have to confront the dilemma posed by this pantheon.
- [27:06]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I will say to that extent, there is one thing we're taking for granted there, that we connect some sense of morality to the gods at all. Right. Because you could imagine a pantheon in which the gods were simply constructed as either analogues of natural forces or purely spiritual forces that needed appeased in some sense, but had no moral dimension whatsoever. I'm just saying that's an imaginable thing. Zeus could simply be a storm God that you offer some sacrifices or other in order to appease so that the lightning doesn't strike your house. That that's an imaginable situation, but it's not the ones the Greeks were. Were willing to. To follow. Right. They wanted. They were definitely looking for something higher than that. The tension. Yeah.
- [28:02]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Right. I'm glad you said that because the way that I was going to say, the way that Zeus is typically portrayed conventionally or in sort of popular conversations, is that Zeus just is the God that lobs lightning bolts at you if you haven't offered adequate sacrifice to him. And that's not at all the way that Homer understood the pantheon.
- [28:23]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
No. And I think that's something to be someone more versed in. Other world religions would be better at this. But I think you can. It's not that hard to look for world religions in which the morality of the gods is in fact set apart, or better to say, is simply distinct. Like we, the talking about the morality of the gods would not make sense within that, within that, within that, that situation. But here for the Greeks, perhaps because of their philosophical tradition, perhaps for others, that's a sort of interesting discussion. But they, they, they, they were always entangled. And the fact that they were entangled creates this inner tension in the mythologies they want to tell about the gods, in the morality that they want to live up to, which then now begins to tug on the gods themselves until we reach, you know, this point at this is the crux, this is, this is the dilemma that is that we see in Euthyphro, but this is the dilemma that has now really entered into the heart of Athenian society and is ultimately going to lead to Socrates downfall as well, you know, at least physical downfall. And, and Euthyphro, even though he's a bit atypical for an Athenian, he's nonetheless hit at the very center of a crisis in Greek culture. And it's all come to a head.
- [29:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I really like this concept of seeing these kind of like foreshadowings of the problem of piety in the pre Platonic texts. I like this idea a lot. I think it, I think it deserves probably more attention than we can give it at present. But like, just as a phenomenal example that I just simply just want to echo because I thought it was wonderful that Dr. Grabowski brought it up, is that Antigone does make this argument, right? When she wants to bury her brother. She says there are laws that even the gods adhere to. I mean, so she. That is a, that is a, a theological claim, right? That the gods are actually adhering to something higher than them, that they don't trespass. Right. There are certain things and the gods adhere to those laws, and if they adhere to them, so do we, out of our piety, right? We can't trespass upon them either. So I really like this idea, Thomas. I think your pushback is well received. About, you know, to what degree is this inherent in the pantheon per se? Or does it have to, you know, do you have to adopt some type of morality before it becomes a problem? I was kind of thinking about it just even in like Norse mythology or Egyptian mythology, just all the pantheons, it seems like, you know, one of the problems is that they always want to put the gods in hierarchy, right? So there always has to be A way to make distinctions amongst the gods that aren't just simply their patronages, but, you know, one rules the other. It's funny because you could probably see certain layers, like in certain ways, Zeus rules the other gods because he's the most powerful, right? He's more powerful than all the other gods put together. But then it maybe matures and adapts over time that. Well, he's also the most just, right? He's also the wisest, right? You see this like with Odin, right? Odin becomes like the most wise and is willing to make sacrifices for it, right? He has the knowledge. So it's interesting because reality is naturally in hierarchy, right? Everything exists in hierarchy. And so those gods seem to want to always order themselves in the pantheon, in a hierarchy according to certain principles that then judge the gods as a whole.
- [31:49]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
We also can't forget about the Bacchae. I think the Bacchae is a play that takes up this. This very question of piety. How ought one to show reverence to this God or demon or whatever you want to call him, Dionysus. And you have these different characters, whether it's Pentheus or Tiresias or the Bacchae themselves, they all show reverence in different ways and some end up getting off, let off the hook and others end up getting punished. Cadmus, for instance. So it's. I think it's really interesting for your listeners, the deacon, to, after having finished the Euthyphro, return back to Bacchae and sort of read these questions that Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing over piety, read them back into the Bacchae. And I think it can really enrich one's reading of the Bacchae. Sorry.
- [32:46]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I mean, to take the Buckeye on point. No, I think it's a great. I mean that on Pentheus argument boils down to something like, well, he can't be a God, he's bad. I mean that in a. I mean, obviously that's very condensed, but that's the nutshell version of why he. And I mean, you can make arguments as to whether Pentheus has fully fleshed that out, but it seems to be a sort of moral intuition, if you will. Well, obviously the gods must be good. This entity is not good, therefore this entity is not a God. It holds in its own way. Except, and I think this is a tension that Euripides is kind of pushing on. Is it true that the gods are good as described? And I mean, that's, I think what it's. The Euthyphro Dilemma yet again, I can't.
- [33:37]
Dr. Joey Spencer
Help but think, I mean, and what Dr. Grabowski said about the piety of the Christian, right, being kind of a personal, individual piety, that there's some communal aspect at play here, right? So the gods, there's a communal aspect to the gods, of course, the city itself, the communal aspect of the city, but also the family and the people as well. So what's the problem with Socrates is he's. He's moving away from the communal idea of what piety is, right. And even to an extent, looking at Dionysius. Dionysius. Dionysius is not a real God because Dionysius is doing things that the other gods don't necessarily do. Right. At the level that he's doing them. So he's even in the Pantheon. Pantheist sees Dionysius as an outlier, right. Which who could then bring down the Pantheon, right. Just as Socrates being an outlier in the way that he understands he doesn't believe in the gods and he's corrupting the youth, making them think about new gods. Right. Or like, you know, the clouds, Aristophanes and the thinkory. But what happens is that even if you look at the Greeks, the Greek city states, each city state had their own different government, right? And they were constantly fighting with each other. This is one of the problems that they couldn't come together and unify unless they were unified against one big enemy, right? And you take that big enemy away, take Persia away, and then they start fighting immediately amongst themselves. So that I want to say that there's some kind of communal aspect at play here between the gods, the Pantheon, and when you have outliers, that kind of, then, you know, throws a wrench in the whole deal and then. And can be the one thing that makes the rest fall apart. What do you guys think?
- [35:40]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I think that's. No, I think that's good. I think. I think there's a lot of layers here to kind of pull back. And again, we're. We're kind of proving that thesis that we threw out earlier, which is, you know, if you will read, if you'll take the time to read the Poetics before coming to Plato, you'll see the undercurrents that are really here that these topics that he's taking up are not really ones that he's like, inventing. Right. These aren't sterile topics that he's kind of just like picked up. I mean, I think these are very vibrant, right. Very fecund things that are happening inside society. That have really been debated since Homer and Hesiod, right? These are topics that the playwrights have taken up. So let's kind of anchor ourselves back in the text and see how Euthyphro tries to squirm and get out of this. And so, you know, what was our launching point? Well, our launching point was, well, if piety is, you know, you know, the God, something the gods actually agree to. Well, the problem is, is that the pantheon's in constant discord and you've already admitted that you, you obey and listen to the Homeric tales. So Euthyphro tries to squirm a bit and he says, well, well, wait, you know, they're all united on the subject of murder. So yes, they disagree with lots of other things. But on murder, on this particular account, right, particularly the account that Euthyphro is bringing up regarding his father, all the gods are united. And this, this falls apart quite quickly, obviously, for very obvious reasons, which is the standard by which we would judge murder would be justice, which is the whole problem that we just discussed, that they don't agree on justice. And again, the Iliad and the Odyssey are perfect examples of this. Even, even Aeschylus, Orestaya is an example of this, right, where the Furies and, and Apollo, or basically having a court with Athena as a judge, right? You can't do that if they're all united. And so Euthyphro, I kind of feel bad for him sometimes, right? But Euthyphro, he tries to pivot towards murder, it falls apart. Socrates again asks for a clear definition, right? A proof that all gods would find Euthyphro's prosecution of his father to be correct. Now this is a really kind of fascinating rhetorical part. I'd love if one of you could just kind of unlock the mysteries of this, which is Socrates sets him up again to try and answer, and then soccer, he does. Socrates doesn't even give him the chance to answer. This is 9, about 9A, 9B is when he posits the question to him. And then 9C, Socrates says, you know what, Never mind, never mind. Like, nevermind, don't even answer that question. Like, don't, don't even go down that road. I have something else for you, right? And so then Socrates returns to the second definition of justice, or, excuse me, second definition of piety. But before we kind of get into that, and then what is most famously the Euthyphro dilemma, which is what most people know out of this dialogue. Any, anyone have any insights into what has just happened? Here rhetorically. Because obviously if you're leading someone in a conversation, sure, you could, you can make mistakes, you can say, you know what, nevermind, I don't want to go down that road. Yeah, we all do that. But the problem is like, this is not a recording. This is Plato's artistic representation of this conversation. And so for him to have Socrates positive idea and then claw it back and say, wait, never mind, let's go this way. It seems like something like that can't happen without having some kind of pedagogical purpose, or there's something going on here. But nothing immediately occurs to me.
- [39:12]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, this raises. Well, one thing that you might consider is that it raises the question of Socratic ignorance and whether Socrates is being sincere when he says that he truly doesn't know what piety is. Now, I'm not claiming that Socrates is being insincere, but if one's approaching this dialogue from the know for the first time, I think an immediate takeaway is that Socrates knows exactly, or at least not that he knows where the, where the conversation is headed, but he's definitely steering the conversation in a certain direction. So. So this is not like just some sort of blind series of questions and answers, but that Socrates has something very definite in mind. So he may not know what piety is, but at least he understands what it needs to be insofar as it has to be a former. It has to be some sort of idea. So I'm not sure if that helps, Deacon.
- [40:14]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It does. I have a crazy. I have a crazy idea that just occurred to me. What if, what if the daemon kicked in? Right?
- [40:21]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Let's not go down that road.
- [40:22]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, what if the daemon kicked in? Because the whole point of the divine sign, the daemon, is that it checks Socrates. Sometimes when he wants to go a different direction, it tells him no, and he immediately obeys it. We don't really ever get, I don't think, an example of him like wrestling or disobeying the daemon. He listens immediately. And so I, I don't have anything to prove that, but I think this would be an example of what would happen, right, is that he says something, let's, hey, let's do this. And all of a sudden he says, nope, never mind, we're not doing that. One way to account for that is that the demon told him no. And so then he, you know, picks up a different thread and decides to go a different way.
- [40:58]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I do like that. I like that a lot. Now I will say he asked an interesting question in this Context, how would you show that all the gods absolutely agree in approving of his act? So now we've actually switched to like an epistemological question. And what you pro would have to do, of course, is either take some sort of survey of all the gods. Well, I taught, you know, I called up Zeus and Zeus and then, you know, it, I checked everybody, everybody's well on board. We had a big zoom call, all on the same page or point to some principle by which all the gods will all the gods adhere to this principle. Well, this, now we're back to the sort of thing that Socrates was, was asking in the first place. But hopefully, at least as Socrates is trying to lead Euthyphro, you know, sort of through these, these, this, these twisting and winding turns Euthyphro would come to see. How am I supposed to have this kind of access to the divine minds, not even just one, but all of them, so that I can read their minds and know what they approve of and what they don't approve of unless I am in fact actually not pointing to them at all. I'm pointing to something that they believe that I also believe that we believe to together. And so my knowledge of that thing gives me insight into their minds. But of course, this is, this is an idea. This is, you know, idea capital I idea. And so I think there's, there's maybe that kind of move going on as well. Although I like I very much from a, from a dramatic perspective, I very much more like the idea that Damon was just like, nope, we got a different fork to go down.
- [42:48]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Let's look at the, let's look at the fork. Then if we take that thesis, let's take it the fork, then the Damon takes us down. Because that would be interesting because what then happens here is probably the most famous part of this entire passage, right? So if you read the Euthyphro, most people immediately shown like, oh yes, I know the euthyphro, the euthyphro dilemma. And what they're referring to is this particular passage, right? So this is typically the most famous. So let's look at it. So Socrates decides to return to the second definition, right? This is 9D, that what all the gods hate is impious and what they all love is pious. And so Euthyphro then restates it. He says, well, the pious is what all the gods love. And the opposite, what all the gods hate is the impious. And so here Socrates responds in what is known as the famous Euthyphro dilemma. And so he asks Euthyphro. Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods? Now, I'll repeat it just because if this is your first time wrestling with it, it can be a little complicated when you listen, listen to the cause and effect, right? What, what is it that's actually making the pious pious, right? What is actually the causality of piety? Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods? So this, this, this Euthyphro dilemma, maybe just to kind of help crack this open, oftentimes, you know, a dilemma, there's two things, right? So oftentimes we talk about the first and second horn, because there's these two theses in this. Now, Euthyphro, this is the part of dialogue where Euthyphro's brain just melts. Euthyphro doesn't know what's going on anymore. Like, he's trying to catch up. And it's funny because Socrates tries to give him some examples. And I think Socrates examples are actually more complicated than the Euthro dilemma itself. I'm not sure they're, like, terribly helpful, at least not for me as I read them, but let's kind of look at the Euthyphro dilemma and see if we can parse this out. So the first one says, is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious? And what this means is that the pious is something objective, like the gods love what is pious because it's pious because it's something good and just, and therefore the gods love it. And so, of course, this, this one is the objective reality. This is the one that is the Platonic reality. This is the ideas. This is a realist metaphysic, right? So the gods are actually adhering to something higher than them. Now, maybe a clarification by contrast, then, like, what is the second one? Well, it says. Or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods? So this one is subjective. This would mean that what is piety is simply the will of the gods. So if the gods will this thing, that means that it's good, right? This is very voluntaristic. This is very much rooted in the will. And so piety is not an objective thing that the gods adhere to, but rather a subjective thing created by the will of the gods. And so these are the two realities that Plato puts forward in the mouth of Socrates. I think in a lot of ways you could say that the first one is very Platonic, right? There's there it at least allows for the idea of piety to exist. The second one, I guess in the classical sense or the common reading would be the Homeric one, right? This is what we see in the traditional Greek religion is that, well, what is good for me? Well, what are the gods will, right? What does Athena say we have to do? What does Poseidon say we have to do? What's Zeus say we have to do? We'll just do that, right? That's what piety is. It's just adhere to the will of the gods. And this is the more. These are the older tales, this is the more Homeric side of the Euthyphro dilemma.
- [46:50]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, it's worth noting as well that from a using different terminologies that the latter also becomes simply an accidental quality, right? That the gods love it is not something inherent to the thing itself at all. I mean this is another way of stating that it's subjective, but it also means that you're never going to grasp the essence of piety because there isn't any essence of piety. There's nothing there to see. There's nothing behind and not even in this case the will, will of God, but the God. So it's like it's even more fractured because it's. It's been narrowed to only the things that they happen to all agree on and that they happen to agree on. It is precisely the thing that makes it pious. So I mean morality then is reduced to. To a sort of very really depressing state. If you.
- [47:44]
Dr. Joey Spencer
You think about ends up being relativism.
- [47:48]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
But it's not even your own relativism, right? It's strangely objective to you in an accidentally relative way to them that in minds that you can't read, right? It's an accidental quality of minds that you have no access to. So I guess that makes it postmodernism.
- [48:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think to your point. To your point, right? We see this in the Homeric side at least the common non esoteric reading of Homer is simply that they want to know what to do. It's not really a philosophical question of what is good or just in this situation. The gods will support us if we do that. No, it's make prayers and sacrifice to the gods and ask them what we're supposed to do. And whatever they say we're supposed to do is what is good. And just. So I think this is why that second side, that second horn gets attached to the common understanding, right? The common understanding of the Homeric side of the tales, that this is really what the pantheon gives us. And just to point this for further, it might not even be unified, because if it's simply voluntaristic according to the gods, then the gods might not be unified. And so if piety is really simply a creation of the divine will, when the divine will fractures like it did in the Iliad, then I would assume maybe it's remedied by power, and then it coalesces back again, right, into some type of unity under Zeus. But it can fracture, but it really isn't. You can see that this type of understanding, this type of understanding of the divine, this theological understanding, does not allow man to have a realistic metaphysic like the cosmos is not intelligible. It's not something that I can sit and I can discern and I can unfold. Right? There's. There's no logos, there's no logic in creation that corresponds with the logic of my mind. And I. I'm just lost. And so you can see, then, I think, a distinct characteristic of the west and something that I think we would say providence was using Plato to kind of till in the Greek Hellenized world for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that. No, no, no, no, no, the gods, right, are adhering to something. They're adhering to the ideas. And that means that the world is intelligible. It's an ordered cosmos, that the. The reality of this ordered whole corresponds to reality of my mind. It's intelligible. I can come to understand it. And I mean, that opens up. It seems somewhat hackneyed for us, but in the ancients, I mean, that is. That's opening up an entire possibility of how you move. You know, Plato can move us from someone like Homer to someone like Aristotle. And it really comes down a lot to this question is, is the cosmos an intelligible whole that we can discern?
- [50:44]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I think this is why Euthyphro, you know, takes the. Does not take the nominalist fork here. Right, right. So that mean that would be the. That would be the. The. It would be easier for him to maintain his position if he did. But I think to Euthyphro's credit, he thinks murder is wrong. Right. That it's actually wrong. And also in his claim to be a prophet, which we have some doubt as to whether. How. How good a prophet he is. But I think he believes he has knowledge of real things. And at some level, I think there's an idea that Euthyphro is, again, maybe intuitively but he's picking up that going down the wrong fork is going to cut him off from the reality that murder is wrong, is evil, and that his revelation is revelation of anything real at all. And I think that. So Socrates asked him so, because it is pious or holy or some other reason. And he's like, no, that is the reason, right? So he. Now, again, this is going to introduce him to lots of problems later, but I think he's making the. He's making the right call if he. Even if he doesn't precisely understand why he's doing it.
- [52:08]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
But you know what I would say, Thomas, I'm glad you brought this up, because he. Euthyphro's response to Socrates question is unhesitating. He doesn't waver, right? I mean, he answers clearly, it's because it's pious. But, I mean, this is very consistent from what Euthyphro has said before. I mean, we've already discussed how his very first definition, even though it's categorically not what Socrates is looking for, has at its heart this. This intuition or this insight that there must be some standard of justice, though he doesn't articulate it this way, some standard of justice by which Zeus is to be singled out as the most just or as the best. And I think that this. I think that Socrates notices this, and this is why he is so interested in continuing this conversation with Euthyphro. I mean, Socrates is always interested in having conversations, but because Euthyphro is such a straight thinker, we talked about what his name means in the previous podcast because, you know, he is linear in his thought, but he's also very transparent and straight and direct. I think that Socrates finds this really intriguing and interesting, and this is why he has taken Euthyphro down this particular path.
- [53:31]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I'm going to make a perhaps controversial claim, but I think this might be true, that Euthyphro's various propositions are not all wrong. They're more like this symposium where you have the various speeches on love, that none of them really capture the essence of the thing, but they're all illuminating love in some aspect. So I think what. What Euthyphro is grasping at is he's getting a facet of piety. And Socrates rightly says, no, that's. That's not the thing itself. That's something about it. That's. That's a quality. But no, I wanted to know what the thing was. And so he tries again and he grabs some other facet or quality. And Socrates, again, he keeps Poking, poking holes in the, in the, in the balloon, but that in fact, in none of Euthyphro's 4ish attempts, is he entirely wrong. He's just never entirely right.
- [54:31]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
See, you're warming up to Euthyphro, Thomas. I knew you had it in you, but this is, this is again, is something that we see time and again in the dialogues where Socrates believes that his interlocutor has the answer buried deep down. Right? During our Great Books discussion, we talked about the Meno or the Menno and the slave who had the answer to the geometry, or at least this is the way it's presented in the dialogue. And so yet again here I think that Socrates is convinced that Euthyphro has the answer, that he has said enough that would justify continuing this conversation where if Socrates asks just the right questions, Euthyphro is going to be able to provide the answer.
- [55:19]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I agree. Yeah. I think overall, to build upon what you guys said, or simply to echo it, is that I think again, here we see the merits of Euthyphro to whatever degree they are, but basically, why is he the interlocutor? Right? That's a question that we've been asking. Why is he the interlocutor? And I do think it's somewhat surprising that he doesn't choose the Homeric side, he doesn't choose the more traditional side. And this again shows that he has this unorthodox, maybe, dare, I think Strauss at times might even dare to say heretical under religious understanding, but that makes him a little bit more open to the ideas, to the Platonic understanding. And so I agree, I agree with everything that's been said because I, I think we have to understand again that Plato can use an idiot to teach a great lesson. And so to what degree Euthyphro actually even understands the choice that he's made, I think is debatable. But I do think that he's made the choice that is correct, and he's made the choice that, to be quite frank, I, I, we would not have expected him to make. I don't think, and I think that he, he gets some, you know, he gets some attaboys for that.
- [56:28]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And I think that by the end of the dialogue he comes to that very realization. So when we get to the very end of the dialogue, we can discuss that. But I do think that he has his eureka moment where, I mean, it hasn't quite yet totally sunk in, but I do think that he realizes that whatever he believed at the beginning of the dialogue, he's come to reassess by the end.
- [56:51]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, if this is in many ways we've done this, brought this up several times. If this is in some ways parallel to the maino, and we've got Euthyphro standing in for this child, which is. It amuses me to make to. To think. Socrates brings at first the, the. He gets some of the geometry questions right and then he gets one wrong. And Socrates sort of brings him to an understanding that he got it wrong. And then we leave that. We leave the child there with the implication that with just a little more work, you can work out what he would come to the right answer. If Euthyphro is run off rashly now, which is something that Socrates brings up the conscious, the menu. Like what if he'd gone off and tried to attempt to do something misunderstanding the geometry of this square, he would have made a mistake. Well, now he knows. He doesn't know and he'd look. Dig more into it before he went off and tried to. Well, this is exactly what Euthyphro has done. He got. So far he understands a few things about piety and morality, but not very well. And he's run off to do something rashly claiming to understand these things completely. And I mean, I think, I think just Socrates pushing back and if he can just pop through this, you know, this, this arrogance that Euthyphro has here to get to that point of saying, well, maybe the. Maybe you think you understand the geometry of this square, or in his case, you know the morality of this action and you don't. It's. I think it was a very good parallel, very Socratic thing to do as well.
- [58:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I agree. All right, so let's, let's kind of track the dialogue then and kind of return to how this plays out. So Socrates again asks Euthyphro what piety is. This is at 11B. And this is, I think, a big, A big step forward in the dialogue is that Socrates submits to Euthyphro that all that is pious is of necessity just this is 11e and asks whether all that is just is also pious. Now, one of the things we have to understand about Socrates is that if you get them all revved up and we start talking about the ideas and he gets excited and then his interlocutor can't keep up. Socrates basically has a dialogue with himself and you'll notice that he first starts to push forward and you're like, whoa, we just jumped a lot. Yeah, we jumped a lot because Euthyphro can't keep up. And then sometimes he'll even say things like, now imagine you were to ask me this. And then he literally is just having a dialogue with himself, you know, while the other person stands there, you know, somewhat dumbfounded. But I think this is a pretty interesting point that Socrates really, I think, catapults the conversation forward by asking this question, right? So just to kind of return to it all, is all that is pious of necessity, just? And whether all that is just is also pious. Now, this is a. This is a different question than the Euthyphro dilemma and has a different structure. I think the easiest way to understand this, at least for those of us who are visual, is to just simply think of a Venn diagram. So if you're familiar to Venn diagram, it has multiple circles. So what he's asking here is, is everything that is pious just. And if that's so, then you imagine, like, justice is the large circle, and then piety would be a smaller circle that is completely inside justice. So everything that has to deal with piety has to deal with justice, but not everything that has to do with justice has to deal with piety. But this is so, I think this helps, right, to think of the Venn diagram. But this is a great question. So, you know, is everything just pious or is everything pious just? Well, you know, which. How does this work with the circles? And so I think that he, you know, he poses this, but the very fact he's posing this to Euthyphro, I think somewhat catapults this conversation because that's a huge step forward for understanding, like, a real definition of piety. Like, where, where is piety actually rooted in the ideas, in the concepts that we can actually discover?
- [61:10]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
I think this is a tricky one, too, because I, I think that we never really get to see exactly what Euthyphro means by this. But I think this division can be overdone. Right? So let me explain what I mean. If we, if we look at this on a later view of something like love of God and love of neighbor, right? This kind of division is something like what he's saying here. If you separated those two with, like a cleaver, so you could put them aside parts of justice, but you put up a wall between them, and saying, the things I do to the gods are one completely independent thing, thing that has nothing to do with men, and that's a whole other separate thing of thing. And we call them justice because they're analogous, but there's no really interrelationship between the two, then I think Euthyphro has made a mistake. I don't know if that's what Euthyphro means, but if that's what he means. And I think youth, ultimately Socrates would catch them in this because, you know, for example, within the Christian tradition we'd ultimately say that the love of neighbor is actually flows from the love of God. They are not. They're not separate equal parts, but the one is hierarchically contains the other, right? So. And that you can't in fact adequately love your neighbor without love of God. And I like to think that that's where Socrates is going. But in that view, ultimately they also realigned, right? In that view, they're not completely separate. In fact, you can't tug them apart. And that is what Euthyphro ought to realize. He's prosecuting a murder after all. Right. If this is a religious crime. But who's he defending? He's defending a fellow man, right? And he shouldn't really be able to so easily separate these two as he's just done, given the crime that he's prosecuting. And this is, I think this is an interesting. Because Socrates doesn't really explore the tension here very much. He goes into a different problem of attending to the gods as an.
- [63:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
As an aside there showing how these things are linked, right? Even showing how love of God and love neighbor are linked. It's interesting that our Lord then tells us to love our neighbor as ourself. And so then he also links into there our self, love, right? Our eros, that these things all have to coordinate. They're all actually tethered together. The thing that, I mean, not to beat this horse to death, but again, reading the Poetics like this is really fascinating because I think like when we read the Oresteia or we read Antigone, you know, there's a big, you know, even I think in a Sunday Great Books group and even when I'm teaching in the diaconate Great Books group, I think this question comes up of like, wait, wait, wait, what is the actual distinction between piety and justice? Like, at some point it just seems that like all justice is piety or why are we talking about piety and not justice? And because, you know, earlier as we mentioned, piety gives structure. Piety is giving structure to, you know, human civilization and it's setting it with inside a cosmological whole. And the gods are up here and they're adhering to it as well. And so I really like this. I think this is a huge Step forward. Forward. And I think the antecedents of what Plato's talking about here are in the playwrights, that piety is a species of justice. So at times it does seem like there's really no daylight, Right, between piety and justice, because it's a species of it. Right. You can think about this Venn diagram. You could also think it about it as genus and species. And so, yeah, sometimes we talk about piety. It's going to also always incorporate the concept of justice, but not all justice has to deal with, with piety. And just that type of conversation, I think pushes what the poetics did forward.
- [65:05]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Yeah, I think it also helps with the idea that we're going to get to all of philosophy a lot later, of making purely logical distinctions and in something that is in fact the same. Right. So that, Because I think what we have here then is that for Socrates, in fact, I think, I would argue that within this Socratic notion, and we'll see this through apology, his relations to men are tied up with his relations to God. The apology, I think, is a lot about this. So that you then would have the idea that irreligion would be a kind of immorality. And also immorality is a kind of religiosity, religion anyway, it's an impiety. Right. So I think there is a, there's like a connection here that doesn't get teased apart. But on the other hand, there is a distinction that you can, that, that I think Socrates is right and saying, well, we do have to. I heard piety does exist in a kind of relation. Right. So it's in relation to a family, it's relation to a city, it's in relation to a God. And so there's a, I just, this is one part where, you know, I just wish the dialogue were longer because I'd love to see Socrates start to, to tease these things apart and then also reunify them. This, I just, in my, in my head, I imagine Socrates making a whole bunch of distinctions followed by saying, well, aren't they. Haven't we actually arrived back where we began? But in a. More. Anyway, that's, it's. Maybe there's a lost text somewhere.
- [66:39]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I, I, No, I share that sentiment. We'll see. Why? Because I think, I think there's a lot more that Plato could have brought in here. I think too, I think people forget that, you know, Aristotle wrote dialogues and we don't have any of them. We only have Aristotle's teaching manuals, his basically class lecture notes. Which are very straightforward. So it'd be interesting. Like, sometimes the characterization between Plato and Aristotle is simply predicated upon the writings that we have. Because it'd be really interesting. Like, okay, well, Plato taught. So what were his lecture notes? Like, how did he systematically break this down? Did he teach his students by narrative? Or did he actually lecture directly? Right, like Aristotle did. Like, these are kind of fascinating questions, but let's take up your question about could this be longer? Because I think there are a lot of distinctions here that Plato doesn't give us, that we know he could give us. And then the question is, like, why not? So to push this forward, let's look at the third definition of piety. So this is at 12e. Socrates asked Euthyphro what part of justice piety is. So again, we have this part to the whole. We see that piety on that Venn diagram is within justice. And so this leads to the question, then, what part of justice piety is? And so Euthyphro gives his third definition in response and says, the pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods. The pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods. So we have, I think, moved forward a little bit by understanding a part to the whole relationship between piety and justice. And now we're trying to say, okay, but if not all justice is piety, then where do we make the determination? Right? How do we actually draw these lines? Where is that circle, that smaller circle inside of justice, that piety circle? How do we market? Right? Where do we actually. How do we define it? What is its essence? Again, ultimately, Socrates here is looking for the idea of piety, its essence, its essential character. So Socrates then follows up with, what does care mean? What does it mean that we care for the gods? Like, what does that mean? Right. Socrates is always gonna have a lot of grammatical questions. Does it mean care? As one who, like, raises cattle, cares for cattle? This is where. I don't know. I. I think Euthyphro's brain might be melted at this point. Or, like, he's been trying to hold on, but now, like. Because the problem is at this point is that I'm not sure he. I am not. I mean, God bless him. We can give him credit. I'm not sure he understood when he picked the correct horn that he understood why he was choosing it. Maybe he intuited it, but he intuited it the right way. So God bless him. Great. That's great. But then the problem Is is that then Socrates catapults this whole conversation forward by explicitly linking piety and justice together. And then. But Euthyphro noticed that that came out of Socrates. Euthyphro didn't actually walk with him, right? There's no vade mecum here. There's no walking by the hand. And so I think the problem here, and I don't know if this is a critique of Socrates as the teacher who's getting overly excited, but I don't think Euthyphro, I don't think he fully understands the horn. I really don't think he follows well when the distinction between justice and piety follows. And so now Socrates is just, like, peppering him with questions of like, yeah, let's push this forward. Let's keep making distinctions, right? This is what Thomas wants. Thomas would again, would have been a great interlocutor, right? Because Thomas is like, yeah, let's make all distinctions. Like, there's different types of parts to a whole. How do we define this? X, Y and Z? Poor Euthyphro. I just don't know if he's got it because, like, this answer to me was comical. Like, I laughed out loud. He's like, well, you don't mean like, how we care for cattle, do you? And he's like, yeah, yeah, I do. Euthyphro, what are you doing, brother?
- [70:35]
Dr. Joey Spencer
But I think. I think this is an important aspect of going back just a little bit and looking at the Daedalus situation, because Daedalus, Socrates gets compared to Daedalus and says he's actually part of his family. And I think where Euthyphro really loses it is right before they get to that Daedalus conversation, when he says that, basically, Socrates, I have no way of telling you what I have in mind for whatever proposition we put forward, goes it around and refuses to stay put where we establish it. And I think that that's where he really shows his confusion and where he doesn't understand because he's. He then gets into this Daedalus discussion. Well, who was Daedalus? Daedalus created these things out of wood that would move around, right? And so Socrates is in his questions and him keep moving the ball forward a little bit, trying to get Euthyphro to the goalpost is in Euthyphro's mind. He's having a hard time connecting everything. And so Socrates is now the Daedalus creating these things, which then becomes very interesting because what were the charges against Socrates, right? He was corrupting and confusing the youth as to the truth of the gods. And so by Euthypho making this statement, it's implying that Socrates is actually guilty. He is confusing Euthyphro and kind of shifting him around. And now Euthypho, who has done pretty good, even though he may not understand why he's good, he's. His intuition is good and he's making what seems to be right answers or going the right direction. Now he just kind of admits that Socrates has got him all going in circles here and he's not sure and he becomes lost. And then we're going to see here in a little bit where he then shifts his position and actually goes back and goes the wrong direction.
- [72:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I agree. And maybe just to maybe just kind of play out this collapse, because it happens pretty quickly, right? So just to kind of play out this collapse, he gives kind of his comical answer about the cattle. And Socrates is like, well, but to care is to aim for the good or benefit that is cared for. So when we are pious, you know, do we make the gods better? Well, no. Right. Unlike someone who's, who's caring for the cattle. They're making the cattle better. We're not going to make the gods any better. Well, then what kind of care is it? Well, it's like slaves to a master. Okay, well then what's the purpose of this service? Like, what's the purpose of being slaves to the master? Oh, well, it's, It's. He states, well, it's what's pleasing to the gods. And you almost can hear Socrates scream internally in this passage, because Socrates knows that. I mean, because it's interesting. It's an interesting coupling because Socrates actually chastises Euthyphro. He doesn't actually engage on the content. He immediately turns around and chastises Euthyphro from turning away from the path towards a true answer. And I think, because Socrates knows that Euthyphro has already returned to his previous definition, even before I think Euthyphro realizes it, because at this point, I just read this as Euthyphro is just scrambling, like he's just trying to give answers as they're thrown at him. And I don't think Euthyphro even understands that he's now led this thing in a circle because now it's just going to come back to what's pleasing to the gods. I mean, Socrates makes this explicit, right, because they talk about, well, do you mean knowledge? How to pray and to give sacrifice? Well, why do we do that? Like, what's the benefit and, you know, Euthyphro says, well, it's pleasing to the gods. That's 15B. And so then Socrates makes explicit what he already realized was going to happen, which is, you know, we've come back to piety being what's pleasing to the gods. You know, 15B and C, we've made this circle, right? You've brought us hole in a circle.
- [74:32]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
There's a little more in Euthyphro's. I want to give Euthyphro. Dr. Grabowski will be very excited about this. I'm going to give Euthyphro a little bit more credit. When Socrates comes around and tells him about. Tell me, my good friend, about the art which ministers to the gods and so forth. And he says, what is the fair work which the gods do by the help of our ministrations? Now, he's just gone through this thing about shipbuilding and the rest of that. But what Socrates may be hinting at, and Euthyphro almost sort of says, and this is sort of, you know, very effusive praise of all the great effects of piety, is that there might be a sense in which someone can be a cooperative instrument of the gods. And that's not something that gets fleshed out here again, but that. That might actually be an answer to part of what's going on, which is meaning that it's not to the benefit of the gods. And to Euthyphro's credit, he says, no, no, that's not what I meant. And he means, as Dr. Rascou said earlier, he says this instantly, there's no hesitation. No, I did not mean we're helping the gods. Socrates, kind of, Then, then what's it for? He doesn't open up this idea that perhaps there is in fact an ongoing work in which the God, gods, or as we might say, God, intends to involve us and so that the benefit is real, but not to the divine, it's to us and to others. There's a. There's an ongoing work. And I mean, I think that when he says, what is the fair work which the gods do by the help of our administration? There's an opening there for this answer, but it's a fork that no one takes. Socrates doesn't take it, Euthyphro doesn't take it. It's just sort of like. But it's set out there to be plucked kind of, if you want to.
- [76:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Do you find that then to be. Because one question to ask here is what was the correct answer? Like what. What was it that Euthyphro didn't say, like, what was the, what was the path that he turned away from that he should have done? So do you, do you find that that's. That's what he should have done, that he was actually on the right path with the service? He went back to the pleasing and led them back in a circle. But if he would have, if he would have understood that the service to the gods can actually be to our benefit, we can serve them, but it's not to their benefit, it's to ours. Was that the correct.
- [77:08]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
What is it? What is Socrates doing? Right, he is in service to Euthyphro, really, at this moment. He says that he is the gadfly in service to his city. This is another notion of piety that we have a service to our community, and he's doing this all in the service of. He very clearly says the God who sent him here to do this. Socrates obviously has some notion of a mission, which is not true of many of the other philosophers, and that he is on this mission. And in that sense, his understanding of piety has to be connected in some way in doing what the gods are asking of him. And yet he clearly says it's not to the benefit of the gods. Well, so to whose benefit is it? I think this idea of a cooperative instrument is implicit in the very life of Socrates. So I do think Euthro is onto something. I actually think he's onto something when he talks about the science of giving and asking. But it's the same sort of thing, which is that he's right to reject the idea that it's transactional. Like, I give the gods this and then they give me that. You know, it, that that is not how this works. And I think he rightly rejects it, but I think he, in a sense, too quickly gives up that there is a proper knowledge of offering to the gods what they are owed, which. And asking of them the things we ought to ask. And that's not that. That's not a bogus answer. It's an incomplete answer, but it's not bogus.
- [78:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, I think if we jump off the four corners of this text, I think then what we need to look at and what people, as we kind of like follow along in our Platonic studies, is keep in mind how critical Plato is, or Socrates is in the Euthyphro of what is piety. And then to your point, Thomas, when we read the Apology, which is what we're reading next, Socrates makes all kinds of claims about the divine and his service to them. And so, no, I think you're correct. And maybe this is where Euthyphro almost got, but then stepped away from or took the wrong path is very clearly, even explicitly, it's not even a secret. I mean, in the apology it's, it is painfully clear. He makes it clear that God is the one who spoke to him, you know, via the Oracle at Delphi. Right. That, that the. About who he was and he was.
- [79:32]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
The wise God about gods. Right, it's just the God. Right, yeah.
- [79:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And then that the God has sent him to Athens, that he's in service to the God like he. No, he's. And this is something that's really unique, as you mentioned amongst the pagan philosophers, is that, you know, when you read Aristotle, you know, God is the, the unmoved mover. It's, it's a very philosophical God, but it's not really clear that God talks to you, listens to your prayers, or cares, you know, much about you. Socrates on their hand is saying, no, this is, this is my. I mean Socrates has a vocation. Socrates talks about the vocation that the God has called him to. Right, the vocare to be called. He talks about that he's been given the daemon for this reason the Oracle of Delphi was given to him. That kind of prompt him in his vocation. So no, I think that one thing to do here is keep in mind the problem of piety and what is piety and take that question into the apology and see then how Socrates then speaks about his own belief in piety. Not even necessarily in a philosophical way of like abstractly thinking about a principle or the idea itself, but just talk about how he practically articulates his own life and his relationship to the God. And I think that that starts to be somewhat illuminative of this understanding of piety.
- [80:53]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Also Euthyphro gives this, I mentioned it already, this kind of effusive praise of piety as a salvation of families and states and the impious is. Is their ruin and destruction. I think that's worth calling back all the way to the beginning when he says that Miletus is hacking at the foundations of the state in, in targeting Socrates, because I don't think this is an accidental echo. Now again, I don't think Euthyphro is exactly making a particularly good definition here, which Socrates again calls him out for that. You're telling me good things about piety, but not what piety is. But I don't think youth. I think Euthyphro again in his Sort of bumbling way, has intuited that an attack on Socrates is an attack on, ultimately on PI, on a. On a pious life in service of the people, of the state and of the God, and that Meletus is doing exactly what he is warning about here. He's bringing ultimately a ruin and a destruction and a disgrace upon Athens.
- [81:59]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Okay, so let's look at the end of the dialogue. So I think this brings up a lot of questions. So Socrates attempts to restart the conversation that piety must be distinct, you know, from what is God loved? Right? Piety must be something objective, right? The idea of piety. And our boy Euthyphro can't take it, right? He's. He's gotta. Sorry, I gotta be somewhere. Right? He's gotta go. And so, you know, Socrates, you know, kind of laments this fact. And so Euthyphro has to leave. And so I think the question here that I'll. I'll open it up with is how do we interpret Euthyphro leaving? And rather, to be more explicit, does Euthyphro have anything here that we can contextualize as a transformation or a metanoia, a turning around? Right. When we read first Alcibiades, you know, by the end of the dialogue, Alcibiades was like, I will be your student. Now, I'm not sure how much Alcibiades actually absorbed anything, but he's at least had some kind of transformation, that maybe he isn't the wisest person and maybe he shouldn't walk into the assembly and tell them all what justice is. Maybe he should listen to Socrates. So he's had a legitimate transformation. He's had that metanoia, that turning around. Has this happened for Euthyphro, and if so, to what degree?
- [83:17]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, I'll give my two cents. Deacon. I do think that there's a transformation or metanoia here in Euthyphro. I find it interesting just the way he puts. Puts it where in my translation as well. He says, I'm in a hurry to go somewhere. He doesn't say where. He doesn't say, you know, what his business is. Precisely. And I think it's worth returning to the beginning of the dialogue and asking who is meeting whom. In other words, Socrates and Euthyphro, they run into each other. But is Socrates there, waiting at the corner courtroom, and Euthyphro approaches him, or vice versa? The way I read it is that Euthyphro approaches Socrates. Given the way that the conversation starts, you know, what's new and so if he were so, to put it briefly, if Euthyphro happened to be on his way to the courtroom and now he is moving away from the courtroom, then something must have. Socrates must have triggered something in Euthyphro's mind to cause him to maybe reconsider his position, business at the courtroom.
- [84:23]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, it's worth noting that Socrates, who doesn't repeat himself, very often repeats himself at this point, because when he says that, the conversation. I've got to ask you again, because if you had not certainly known the nature of piety, you never would have risked charging your father with this crime and risking angering the gods. Right? So he brings that up again, and it's immediately after that that that Euthyphro says, I'm in a hurry, I must go now.
- [84:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Is the purpose of this dialogue to explain what piety is, or is it to save Euthyphro?
- [84:59]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I would say the latter. Deacon, I think that this is. This has always been Socrates modus operandi. I mean, this, this is his. The gift that he gives to the polis, that he is trying to, in a sense, reform people, to turn them to the life of philosophy. I mean, this is the entire. His entire mission with Alcibiades. So we don't know how old Euthyphro is in this particular dialogue, if he is as young as Alcibiades. But certainly I do think that Socrates sees an opportunity here to, to turn Euthyphro around and to really get him to accept what he deep down believes but is unable to articulate.
- [85:40]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Well, I agree with Gordini that Socratic irony is always meant for the good of the interlocutor. Right. So I think Socrates was always trying to help Euthyphro not to make fun of him. And so I think it's. I think it's for the good of Euthyphro and. But it may be in the same sense again to go to the example of the maino. Maybe you don't get the child to understand exactly what the area of the square is, but you get him to understand that he made a mistake in the area of the square. And that's. That's enough for right now.
- [86:12]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, because it's actually, there's. It's actually really parallel to First Alcibiades. Right. Because the. We saw several times in First Alcibiades that Socrates kind of set up Alcibiades on the question of, like, well, what is justice? And then Socrates doesn't answer it all. His point is to show that Alcibiades doesn't know what he's talking about. And this saves Alcibiades from going and then presenting to the assembly and maybe making a fool of himself or maybe corrupting himself. And so, you know, is there not a deep parallel here with Euthyphro that what Socrates has done is it's not actually to explain piety and what piety is. The purpose of the dialogue is simply to show that Euthyphro does not know what piety is, or at least to skewer it to such a degree that it robs him of his confidence. And so, yeah, I read this the same way that Euthyphro was going to the court. Right. It's a little bit ambiguous, but it makes it sound like Euthyphro is going to the court to prosecute. And now at the end of it, he, he, he goes away. I think that I can't remember is Dr. Kabowski or maybe Thomas, one of you were talking about an ancient commentary that mentioned Diogenes.
- [87:19]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Laertius says that, that it's just a one line kind of throw away comment that Euthyphro, Socrates convinced Euthyphro to change his course.
- [87:30]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, I want to believe in that ending is what I want to do. But I think it does show because maybe for those who are listening that are pushing back and saying, what do you mean? The purpose of the dialogue is not to explain piety. That's what they've been talking about the entire time. I think maybe something to ask is things that are not in this dialogue that are surprising. For instance, people will point out that we don't talk about the soul in a conversation about piety, which really, in a lot of ways, for the Greeks, piety is a synonym for religion. Right? This thing that binds us, this thing that, you know, the etymology of religion itself, right? To bind this thing that actually binds the cosmos together. There's really no conversation of the soul. But then probably the greatest gap is that if Socrates is really going to take on what is piety, he never presents this question in a monotheistic context. We already know that he doesn't really believe in the pantheon. He basically believes in the God. He does have a deference to the oracle, Adelphi, and outside of that, he really doesn't hold to the Pantheon, and which, which isn't actually uncommon, you know, for the aristocratic Greek class at this time. So Plato has the capacity, he has the capacity to discuss the Euthyphro dilemma in a monotheistic context, and he does not. And my point here is maybe not necessarily like, what does that mean in and of itself, but rather the fact that I think it's a pretty safe holding to show that Plato is not actually taking this dialogue as far as he could. He's only taking it as far as it seems. Euthyphro needs it to go to somewhat deconstruct his understanding of piety, to save him from making a mistake, a similar mistake that first that Alcibiades was going to make with the assembly.
- [89:23]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when reading the other Platonic dialogues. And that is to say that Plato is not a dogmatist. He's not telling us what to think or what to believe. He's not drawing conclusions for us, but rather he's providing us with the premises and then inviting us to draw our own conclusions. And so, I mean, I think in a way, Socrates, he speaks routinely of his daemon in this dialogue. Socrates serves as Euthyphro's daemon, right? He doesn't tell Euthyphro these are the answers, but rather he. How to put it. He helps Euthyphro to realize what the wrong answers are and as a result allows Euthyphro to turn away and, well, possibly, you know, avoiding making a fool of himself or getting himself into trouble, having him be accused of the same things that Socrates is being accused of.
- [90:30]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
So, yeah, there's an analogy that occurs to me for the first time to Bob Dylan's song My Back Pages, which is sort of his leading of the protest movement. But it's got this beautiful line that I was so much older then, but I'm younger than that now. And this idea of again coming to this knowledge of that you were so certain and now you realize maybe you didn't know the things you thought you were so certain about as well as you. You imagined. I mean, I think that's what we're at least all hoping for. Youth fro happened.
- [91:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Dr. Spencer, what do you think?
- [91:10]
Dr. Joey Spencer
Well, I have more of a question for you guys to. Because I, I believe certainly the conversion did occur and that he's no longer going to take the suit to the father, but he quite abruptly distances himself from Socrates. So do you think that. Why do you think he distances himself so abruptly and so quickly? Quickly? I don't. I don't think it's because he doesn't want to argue anymore. I don't think it's that. I mean, in my mind, I kind of wonder, does he actually get there where he's. Socrates is trying to get him. And then that becomes a scary thing. And he realizes that now he himself is moving towards that monotheistic understanding and it scares him. And then he recognizes that this is why Socrates is being charged with.
- [92:07]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I would be inclined to agree, Dr. Spencer. I think this is an, oh, no moment for Euthyphro where he's like, I need to get out here and quick, because I don't know if I'll like where this is headed. But I do think that Socrates has at least left him with enough to ponder on his own. So I don't think that he's necessarily leaving with. Without having been left with something.
- [92:37]
Dr. Joey Spencer
Right.
- [92:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I really like that read that he's. That he's coming to a certain epiphany, but that epiphany has maybe a layer of dread built into it. Because not only is, I mean, not only just insofar as, like, you know, an existential movement and your religious understanding can be kind of a scary thing in general, but they're literally standing outside the King Archon's court that makes judgments about religious matters and can sentence you to death. And he's standing next to a guy who's being charged with impiety, and he's coming to agree with him. And again, I mean, maybe this is why he's the interlocutor. Because remember, there was this odd sharing at the beginning that, that Euthyphro found himself to be somewhat akin to Socrates.
- [93:26]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Right.
- [93:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
They're both these kind of unorthodox thinkers. They both kind of have this esoteric source of knowledge. But Euthyphro, though, was not the one in danger. Euthyphro was the, you know, the one bringing prosecution. He was not the one being prosecuted. And so I do like that, that, you know, is that dread of coming to understand that he's more like Socrates, even more palpable because of where he is in this current condition of Socrates.
- [93:51]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
One more thing to consider, gentlemen, and that is, since this is written as a direct dialogue, all we're given are the various lines that each of the characters are reciting. But we can imagine, since this dialogue is taking place over an hour or two, there could be potentially a crowd gathering. They are, after all, outside. And Euthyphro might be worried that people are eavesdropping or listening in on their conversation. And so he's going to hightail it out of there before he says something that he might later regret.
- [94:24]
Dr. Joey Spencer
Makes you wonder if later they might have met up at the Lyceum and continued the discussion.
- [94:29]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Any other thoughts Anything else as we kind of come to the end of this dialogue?
- [94:35]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
My only, my only comment. Let me just jump in real quick. I'm sorry, Thomas. And that is, I do think that it pays to reread Homer and the Dramatist with the euthyphro in mind because it does reinforce what we talked about earlier, how piety occupies. It's a central concept, a central virtue within Greek life, that for the Greeks, man is a political, is a rational, but also a religious, religious animal. And so I think that the Greeks, they were. The whole concept of piety to the them was inescapable.
- [95:13]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Any other. Any other final comments, questions, critiques, as we kind of bring the euthyphro to an end? Okay, well, next week we'll be taking up the euthyphro dilemma in a Christian context and looking at it in a monotheistic context with Dr. Donald Prudlow, a Thomistic scholar from the University of Tulsa. And then after that, we'll be reading Plato's Apology, what Peter Kreeft called one of the most important speeches in the history of the West. For that, we're going to have Father Christopher Justin Brophy, a Dominican. He's assistant professor of Political science and the director of the center for Catholic and Dominican Studies at Providence College. And so he's going to come on and kind of guide us through the apology for about a two week period. And so I think we've got good things ahead in our Platonic study, so we'll be taking up the euthyphro dilemma and taking up the apology. So, Dr. Spencer, Dr. Grabowski and Thomas, I am always in your debt for the guidance that you have given us. And thank you so much for joining us today to discuss the euthyphro.
- [96:22]
Mr. Thomas Lackey
Amen.
- [96:23]
Dr. Joey Spencer
All right, joy to be with you guys.
- [96:25]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yes, very good. All right, everyone, we will see you next week.