Euthyphro’s Dilemma and Its Effect on Our Modern Lives

A dilemma is a situation in which we have two possible choices and both choices are unpleasant. One of the Ethical dilemmas in philosophy is the Euthyphro’s dilemma. In this paper, I will write about Euthyphro’s dilemma. I will start by briefly showing how did Socrates come up with this dilemma? Second, what is Euthyphro’s dilemma? Third, I will analyze each part of the dilemma and my own point of view towards the dilemma. Finally, I will discuss how the importance of causality in this dilemma puts effects on our life.

To understand the idea of Euthyphro’s dilemma better I will briefly show the path that leads Socrates and Euthyphro to this dilemma. Socrates was indicated for being impious while Euthyphro wanted to prosecute his own father. Socrates asks Euthyphro what is Piety? Euthyphro’s definition for piety was what all the gods love is pious and what is hated by all the gods is impious. Socrates accepts it but he asks two questions from Euthyphro that leads him to two undesirable choices which is known as Euthyphro’s dilemma. 

The Euthyphro’s dilemma is “Is pious being loved by the god because it is pious or is it pious because it is being loved by the god” (Cooper, 2009). To make this dilemma more understanding I will write the same dilemma but with different words. “Is something good because Gods wills it, or Gods will it because it is good” (Mawson, 2019).

The first part of the dilemma says an action is good because god commands it. This means that we judge ad monitor our actions based on god will. An action is good because god says it is good and an action is bad because god say it is bad. This statement is also called divine command theory (DCT). DCT is an ethical theory which says the original goodness is god’s command. In another word “An action’s status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God”.

To analyze the first part of the dilemma where pious is gods’ command and will, we will end up determining piety by god. In another word “we put god as source of everything therefore he must me the source of mortality”. This means we will see morals becoming arbitrary. Morality will end up with in an unstable state where goodness changes according to gods’ decisions. For instance, if gods say genocide is bad, we should not do it, but what if gods say genocide is good then should we do it. Therefore, when piety goes completely under god’s approval the idea of goodness and badness (morality) will become unstable and can change with god’s desire.

The second part of the dilemma which god command an action because the action is good claims that goodness of actions is already within themselves. We can deduce that in this condition god will or command has nothing to do with making an action pious since goodness does not dependent on gods command anymore.

In this part, where piety stands out as an independent standard, it is not god’s command and approval anymore that makes an action pious. This shows that God is not all-powerful, and god’s power is also limited. Hence, the source of piety or what makes an action pious is out of god’s authority. “This position denies that God is necessary for morality”.

Before I start discussing the effect of Euthyphro’s dilemma in our contemporary life, I must make my own stance toward the given dilemma. I do agree with second horn that god command an action because it is good, for two reasons. First, by taking this position morality will not depend on god’s will hence it will not become arbitrary. Second, the only reason that makes us accept the first part of dilemma is that since god is good, god will always command good and will never command what is bad. In this part there are two things which contradict with the sentence good is god. First, we say God is good and we also accept that God command good. By this we can conclude that “God obey his own command”, Or God is God’s command which does not give any logical sense. Second, as Kai Nielsen (1973) asked about the basis of this belief and a religious people will respond by saying that god is good since it is written in holy books like Quran and Bible. This was how Nielsen questioned it back “These response show that the believer herself has some logically prior criterion of goodness based on something apart from the mere fact that God exists or that God created the universe. Otherwise, how does she know that her other belief about the bible, Jesus, or the state of the world support her belief that God is good?”

Since my position toward this dilemma is clear enough, I would like to discuss the effects of this dilemma in our nowadays life. One of the main aims of this dilemma is to find the causality of the pious actions. Most of the main issues and problems that we face in today’s world is because we never pay attention to their causes until they lead to a big problem. For instance, in 2003, thousands of people in Europe died as a result of a two-week heatwave. At the beginning no one really cared about the cause of the heatwaves. They faced these heatwaves over and over again until Nikolaos Christidis from Hadley Center did a researcher on climate change and “by comparing simulation of a world and without greenhouse-gas emissions, they found that climate change had made the record-breaking heatwave at least twice as likely as it would otherwise have been. Climate change had made the record-breaking heatwave at least twice as likely as it would otherwise have been” (The Economist, 2019). People start thinking and feeling responsible toward this topic after finding the cause of the heatwaves. They came up with solutions for how to decrease these heatwaves and avoid causing it. The same way we can investigate in any topic after we are aware of the cause of both sides. 

To sum up, although the response to Euthyphro’s dilemma remains unclear, we can always see Plato’s writing and this dilemma as a lesson of how to investigate logically and think critically. There is much to learn and approach by these writing in to our nowadays life.

References

• Mawson, T. (2019). THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA. [online] Ora.ox.ac.uk. Available at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ed5df60e-98df-4a50-aa12-3fae00ce3aaa/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=Publisher%2527s%2BVersion&type_of_work=Journal+article [Accessed 14 Dec. 2019].
• Cooper, J. (2009). Complete works. Indianapolis: Hackett, p.9.
• Rationalwiki.org. (2019). Divine command theory - RationalWiki. [online] Available at: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory [Accessed 14 Dec. 2019].
• Rabbani, S. (2019). The Euthyphro Dilemma and Personal Reasons. [online] academia.edu. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/keypass/TGVydUFXU1hJV3E2SDN5c0ZMbk03ZnZHbStqSkgvTWtPdlZiMVIybTBUOD0tLUNDV2lTSlBFQ3ZIN0VLd0YrQ3J4OHc9PQ==--a3fb55d6e7eb7fec3e7904e70e11c755eeefaa8a/t/mDJSA-Nw4kP78-bppyRJ/resource/work/15692681/The_Euthyphro_Dilemma_and_Personal_Reasons [Accessed 14 Dec. 2019].
• Philosophy-index.com. (2019). Euthyphro Dilemma { Philosophy Index }. [online] Available at: http://www.philosophy-index.com/plato/euthyphro/dilemma/ [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].t
• Iep.utm.edu. (2019). Divine Command Theory | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [online] Available at: https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/ [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].
• The Economist. (2019). Greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing the frequency of heatwaves. [online] Available at: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/25/greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-increasing-the-frequency-of-heatwaves [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].