1

Final Paper

Saltanat Oral

PHIL 141 Critical Thinking

Ted Parent

Nazarbayev University

April 29, 2022

Word count: 1343

 2

Final Essay

While discussing the nature of piety at the court, Socrates asks his interlocutor Euthyphro

what he says the pious and impious are, to which Euthyphro replies that “what’s loved by gods is

pious, and what’s not loved by the gods is impious” (Plato, 2002, p. 11). However, Socrates argues

that different gods have different interests, so they define the piety and impiety differently, to which

Euthyphro changes his previous reply and answers that “the pious is what is loved by all the gods

love, and its opposite, what all the gods hate, is the impious” (Plato, 2002, p. 15). Having learned

what piety means for Euthyphro, Socrates continues the conversation with the central question of the

whole story: “is the pious loved by the gods because it’s pious? Or is it pious because it’s loved?”

(Plato, 2002, p. 15). Here, Socrates raises what philosophers call “explanatory priority” (Kaplan,

2020). What explains what? Which explanation comes first? Does the fact that gods love something

make it pious? Or do gods love something because it’s pious? After a bit of conversation, Socrates

and Euthyphro agreed that “the pious is loved because it’s pious, not pious because it’s loved” (Plato,

2002, p. 17). However, here Socrates raises another issue of what then makes those pious things

pious if their piety were not determined by gods in the first place? If we assume that certain things

were pious already before gods decided to love them, then what made them pious before the love of

gods? By thinking so, Socrates attacks the Divine Command Theory (DCT), which states that things

or actions are right or wrong because gods command them to be right or wrong. DCT implies that

what is loved by gods is right or pious, and on the contrary, what is not loved by gods is wrong or

impious. According to Socrates, this theory does not really explain why something is pious if we

suppose that certain things or actions were already pious before gods determined them.

But what about the second explanation? What if something is pious because it’s loved by

gods? If we accept this option to be true, then it might be the explanation of what is pious. The love

of gods makes certain things good. However, here Socrates raises another question of then why did

gods choose specific actions to be good? What are the criteria for holiness? For Socrates, there is no
 3

explanation why gods command some actions to be good and love them, making them pious. This is

where arbitrariness comes. Gods may choose to love anything for no reason. They may just pick

some things randomly and label them as pious. This is why Socrates assumes that DCT would make

the rightness of action seem arbitrary. Socrates attacks DCT, which states that gods’ decisions to

make things right or wrong label these things as right or wrong, once again, because he thinks that

there is no reason why particular actions are picked as loved or hated since gods choose them

randomly. This opinion makes people question the rightness of DCT.

However, another philosopher, J. M. Idziak, attacks Socrates’ view on the arbitrariness of

gods’ choices by asserting that gods need no reason to choose something as good, and there is

nothing wrong with this. In order to justify her position, Idziak refers to two different examples from

people’s lives: John decides who to pardon, and someone decides who to give a gift between two

people who are equally deserving of a pardon and a gift. Idziak (2004) says that choosing one person

over another makes the choice of John or someone just to the selected person, “although reason did

not move his will to make this choice” (pp. 297-298). Here, she is basically saying that there is no

need to refer to reason in order to commit justice since all that we need is our will. By focusing on

this idea, she continues that “since we allow that justness can stem from sheer will in the case of

human beings,” then gods also can do so (Idziak, 2004, pp. 297-298). Idziak states that divine will

does not require any reason to be just or do just things that can be reformulated as divine will does

not need any reason to define pious things. By saying so, she argues against Socrates’ insinuation of

DCT that is given in the previous paragraph. If Socrates sees a serious problem in the arbitrariness of

gods’ decisions, Idziak, in her turn, is not even trying to hide this arbitrariness, but she is arguing that

there is nothing wrong with this arbitrariness.

Considering that Idziak’s reply to Socrates’ objection was:

IDZIAK: Socrates, even if you say that the Divine Command Theory makes the rightness of

an action seem arbitrary, there is nothing wrong with this arbitrariness. That is, there is nothing
 4

wrong with the fact that gods choose what is good or just for no reason. After all, people’s actions

lead to justness not because they have reason but due to their will, and the same things happens with

the gods.

[Socrates’ would reply to her argument by saying the following:]

SOCRATES: My dear Idziak, when you tried to defend your position regarding the

appropriateness of justice coming from the divine will, you relied on examples of two situations

where people choose between two identical options. Then you concluded your argument by saying

that if in the case of human beings, it’s the choice of will that leads to just actions, not a decision of

reason, and the same thing occurs in the case of divine will, right? If it’s true, then you are basically

arguing that what is applied to humans also works in the case of gods. Here my question arises: how

do we know what befits men can also be the case with gods? After all, gods are superior beings. You

are comparing two incomparable things since people do not hold any might, but gods do.

Here, we can notice that the defect that Socrates sees in Idziak’s argument is the fact that

Idziak uses situations with humans as the example to justify her position that gods need no reason. I

think that this reply is successful because it points to the problem in Idziak’s explanation. However,

some other people might have this kind of objection about Socrates’ view:

SOMEONE: But, Socrates, what is the importance of identifying similarities between gods

and humans? The only thing that matters is that both of gods and humans have equal ability to

logically think and assess situations. If gods have an ability to determine what is good for no reason,

then it’s absolutely fine, isn’t it?

SOCRATES: My friend, but humans have no power to decide what is good or bad, right? It’s

only gods who command certain actions to be pious or impious, not ordinary people. Therefore, for

making evidence for the benefit of gods’ arbitrary actions, it’s essential to isolate people’s will from

divine will. We are evaluating gods’ decisions, not people, so the reply to my objection should

consider only gods. Otherwise, by introducing another party of humans only because both gods and
 5

humans can think, we come close to committing what’s called the fallacy of false equivalence, which

makes people draw a correspondence between two things based on a few similarities and ignoring

other significant different features. If we go to the very beginning of the problem, my objection was

that gods choose what to favor for no reason, so their actions seem arbitrary. Here, I have not

mentioned the subject of human beings because I believe that in the question of making superior

decisions, people have no power, so no relation. But what you are doing is committing the fallacy of

false equivalence. Your complaint is unwarranted because you think that it’s enough to draw

comparisons between gods and humans since they have mutual abilities to think logically. However,

a few similarities are insufficient to say that divine will and human will are the same. Such a

statement is fallacious.
 6

Reference

Idziak J. M. (2004) “Divine Commands are the Foundation of Morality.” In M. L. Peterson, R. J.

VanArragon (Eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (pp. 292-301).

Blackwell Publishing. (Original work published in 1979)

Kaplan, J. [Jeffrey Kaplan]. (2020, February 25). Plato's Euthyphro - explanation of the central

argument of the dialogue [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oltsfcVWe3A

Plato. (2002). Plato: Euthyphro. In C. D. C. Reeve (Eds.), The Trials of Socrates: Six Classic Texts

(pp. 200). Hackett Publishing. (Original work published ca. 399-395 BCE)