The Concept of Piety and Its Construction in Euthyphro

Socrates, being a lover of inquiry, begins to question Euthyphro for the true definition of piety[1]. In the end, there never is a clear definition on what piety is because Euthyphro’s argument has no substantial evidence to back up what he’s trying to prove. Piety[2] is the quality of being religious or reverent, in other words, it is religious devotion or religious duty. Socrates questions Euthyphro since he is a prophet and is capable of “divine[3] matters.” Euthyphro’s ability to foretell the future is defined as divine, in the sense that he makes discoveries by intuition, one of his faults for being a “gut-thinker.” Finally, the discussion of piety led to defining justice[4] as something that is man’s care, while piety is that of god’s care.

Is the divine sign a form of “gut-thinking?” Through out the convoluted dialect between Socrates and Euthyphro, it becomes obvious that Euthyphro’s sense of piety is easily refutable because of his lack of epistemic evidence to buttress his definition of piety. Euthyphro attempts to empathize for Socrates and his indictment, he claims that Socrates is being indicted for saying that the “divine sign keeps coming to (him).”[5] Socrates doesn’t consider himself a prophet and thus, the word “divine” is being used in a different way than that of being godly or holy. Euthyphro, being a prophet, his intuition revolves around his beliefs; in other words, he is a “gut-thinker[6]”.

Does Euthyphro even have an opinion on what is pious and impious? It is inevitable that Euthyphro has no argument or evidence, of that matter, to even teach Socrates of what piety is. Socrates calls Euthyphro Daedulus for having an argument that goes in a circle, just like Johnson had illustrated in the last reading; one cannot think with his or her gut and defend their opinion with their beliefs because it works interchangeably. Thinking with the gut is thinking with one’s intuition, hence, one’s beliefs.

Finally, Euthyphro agreed that the gods are always in a state of discord. If the gods are always in a state of discord of what is pious and impious, does that make them themselves impious? Each god is a god; hence, it is impious for one god to be impious to another god. Just like the gods have issues over what is pious and impious, men struggle over what is just and unjust. Euthyphro never mentions what the pious is; he just agrees that pious is pious because it is loved by the gods. The taciturn Euthyphros is stuck when he makes an invalid point that “the godly and pious is the part of the just that is concerned with the care of the gods,”[7] because Socrates easily refutes him when Euthyphros compares us as slaves to the god. As slaves to the gods, this contradicts his belief that piety is care of the gods but rather is service to the gods. From sacrifice and praying, or in simpler terms, gifting and begging the gods is how one shows care for the gods, and in turn, the gods are gifted with honor and reverence from our piety. All of which ultimately leads Socrates and Euthyphros back to the beginning of their argument, that piety is pleasing to the gods, not beneficial.

I consider my mom to be pious because she is an unbounded Catholic; she practices and believes in Catholicism yet, she is not a churchgoer. She is pious because she is god-fearing, just like Euthyphro is as well god-fearing.