2*. On Piety, or: Plato’s Euthyphro

I

Modern commentators are not particularly interested in piety. Lacking this interest, it seems to me they do not get to the heart of the questions discussed in the Euthyphro.

We can make a parallel between piety and obedience:

What actions are obedient?—Actions ordered by people.—Do people order them because they are obedient, or are they obedient because of being ordered?

To this double question the answer is: (a) there is no general reason why anyone orders an action, but a possible reason is the obedience of the action, i.e. that if the recipient of the order does what is ordered he will have done something obedient. And (b) actions are obedient because or at least partly because they are ordered. That is, to be obedient an action has to be ordered, even if that is not all that is necessary.

There is, we see, no incompatibility between saying that a superior, say, orders you to do something because it will be an act of obedience if you do it, and saying that it is an obedient act because you do what the superior ordered.

If we hear of an act’s being ordered for the sake of obedience, that tells us nothing of what it is an order to do. This may even be a matter of indifference to the one giving the order. He must just order something or other—the most obedient person in the world, who leaps to attention at the words ‘Do just what I tell you’, will do nothing obedient if the order-giver does not go on to say e.g. ‘Jump off that cliff’ or ‘Move that object from there to there’.

Still, the one may give such an order for no other reason than that it will be obedience for the other to carry it out. And it, the act itself, will be obedient because it was ordered and was done because it was ordered. It will be as it were a vehicle of the desired obedience.

Let us try these considerations for fit, as it were, with piety:

What actions are pious?—Ones which are god-pleasing. - Do they please the gods because they are pious, or are they pious because they are god-pleasing?

To this double question the answer is: (a) there is no general reason why a god is pleased by an action, but a possible reason is the piety of the action, i.e. if [    ] does it he will have done something pious. And (b) actions are pious because, or at least partly because, they are god-pleasing. That is, in order to be pious, an action has to be pleasing to a god, even if that is not all that is necessary.

The space between square brackets is blank because it is not off-hand clear what would occupy this space comformably to the model passage. Should we put ‘anyone’? But that might include another god, perhaps equal. ‘A man’? Perhaps, but that makes large assumptions.

‘A devotee’? That would introduce confusion: people may be impious as well as pious. ‘One whose god it is’, though familiar, is mysterious.—Socrates gives the lightest of hints that there is a question here. Caring for horses is the concern of horse-experts, caring for dogs of dog-trainers, but care for gods?[1] But on the whole the dialogue assumes that it is men as such who will be pious or impious, men as such who are related thus, in some problematical fashion, to ‘the gods’. So we will settle for ‘a man’ to fill the gap, while noting that, in idea, we are making some assumptions.

The next thing to notice is that what was obvious about giving orders—that there is no general reason—is not evidently true about what pleases gods. Euthyphro and Socrates seem to agree that there is a general reason for an action to please a deity, namely that it is pious.

Socrates argues from this that ‘pious’ cannot mean ‘god-pleasing’. We may indeed note a circle:

actions are pious if god-pleasing, god-pleasing if a god is pleased with them, and a god is pleased with them if they are pious,

but a circle is harmless, only non-explanatory until we can break into it. Socrates’ argument does not rest on this circularity; he leads Euthyphro into a contradiction.

Still, it is not clear that we should accept that there is a general reason—its piety—why a deity is pleased with an action. At least Euthyphro held that the gross injustice of murder was hateful to the gods. If, then, he derives ‘impious’ from ‘god-hated’, still he seems not in this case to explain ‘god-hated’ as ‘hated by the gods for its impiety’ but rather ‘hated by the gods for its injustice’. Why not then, in parallel fashion, derive ‘pious’ from ‘god-pleasing’ and explain ‘god-pleasing’ as ‘pleasing to the gods for being just’?—Well, it does not really sound right: as Socrates later remarks, an act is not pious merely because it is just. But this leaves us with a problem: why is it impious if it is unjust, at least if it is unjust killing?

Euthyphro denies that a pious act is pious because the gods like it, thus delivering himself into Socrates’ hand. In view of his definition ‘the pious is what the gods like’, this denial is disastrous for him. Socrates secures it by asking whether the gods like what is pious because it is pious, or it is pious because they like it—as if both could not be true, as may hold for what is ordered and what is obedient.

We may display the contradiction clearly as follows with the parallel situation for obedience. First, we define a pious act as a god-pleasing one, and an obedient act as an act done according to orders. Then we give Euthyphro’s admissions, followed by what would be the parallel ones for obedience:

1. Acts are god-pleasing because they please the gods.

2. Not: Acts please the gods because they are god-pleasing.

3. Acts please the gods because they are pious.

4. Not: Acts are pious because they please the gods.

1. Acts are done according to orders because they are ordered.

2. Not: Acts are ordered because they are done according to orders.

3. Acts are ordered because they are obedient.

4. Not: Acts are obedient because they are ordered.

If we replace ‘pious’ and ‘obedient’ in (3) and (4) by their definitions we get (3) contradicting (2) and (4) contradicting (1). So the definitions, assertions and denials are inconsistent. Socrates assumes we retain the assertions and denials and so faults the definition of ‘pious’.

But Euthyphro ought never to have accepted the negations. He ought to have rejected (4) and distinguished two senses in (2).

That definition of obedience will be found faulty but not on account of such an argument. Of course (3) ‘Actions are ordered because obedient’ is generally false; Socrates would no doubt happily delete the ‘not’ in (4) for obedience, and grant that ‘Actions are obedient because ordered’ is true, as it must be if (1) is true and the definition right. But though (3) is generally false about orders, we have noticed that it may be true. If Socrates’ argument is sound the truth of (3) at all will be incompatible with (2), if we replace ‘obedient’ with its definition.

Socrates’ Either/Or was merely forcing a card on Euthyphro. The right solution, for both piety and obedience, is to delete the ‘nots’ in (4), and to retain them in (2) only if we can understand (2) as stating ‘logical priority’ of ‘the act pleases the gods’ and ‘the act was ordered’ over ‘the act is god-pleasing’[2] and ‘the act is according to orders’. In this, very obscure, sense, in which alone (2) is true, there is no conflict with the truth, general or occasional, of (3).

The definition of obedience was defective, however. It should have run ‘an obedient act is an act done intentionally according to orders’. If someone had ‘Open Sesame’ powers in respect of any order he gave, he might give orders purely for the sake of happenings’ being in accordance with his orders, but that would not be the same as giving orders for the sake of obedience. Now how is it with piety? We have a definition of the pious as the god-pleasing and the statement that the gods are pleased with the pious act precisely for being pious. It sounds like ‘My favourite colour is the colour I like best; and I like it best for being my favourite colour’. If it is, then it is absurd and either the definition or the statement must be dropped. But there is another possibility: that ‘god-pleasing act’ is not a description that applies to an act independent of the intention of pleasing the deity. (Compare ‘act of honouring’.) If we do so understand ‘god-pleasing’ the definition of piety is not defective like that of obedience, and its conjunction with the statement is not absurd. The description ‘intentionally god-pleasing’ will be pleonastic; ‘unintentionally god-pleasing’ absurd.

What we have here is a substantive doctrine that gods are not pleased with any acts that are not done with the intention of pleasing them. This is obviously a theological doctrine of enormous importance, to accept or reject.

We should like a description which parallels ‘what was ordered’ in being a description of what was done independent of whether it was pious or not, so that we can define the pious by means of that description with the intention added.

Our explanation will then run: ‘Pious acts are such acts as please the gods when done with the intention of pleasing them, when done with the intention of pleasing them’.

And now we can ask what are examples of such acts, i.e. are acts which may or may not be done with the intention of pleasing the gods, and which do please them if so done. But how can we hope to learn what these acts are? We cannot observe divine pleasure, so there is no path from the definition of the pious like the path from the definition of the obedient. Even when an act is ordered for no reason but its obedience, the one who wishes to be obedient knows what to do as soon as he grasps a performable order.

Observation is of course not the only conceivable way of knowing what will please. If it could be argued out that acts of such-and-such a character must please the gods if done with the intention of pleasing them, that would do. But there is a difficulty about this, in our information that what pleases them about the acts is the piety and only the piety. If we argue for example (by any process of internal reasoning) that deeds of signal virtue must please the gods if done with the intention of pleasing them, are we not eo ipso suggesting that the virtuousness pleases them, at least on condition of the extra intention? Then they will be pleased with actions, not just for their piety, but for their virtue together with their piety.

It is rather as if we thought we could argue what sort of performable acts must be ordered by one who orders things to be done only for the sake of obedience. It seems clear that other than performability there can be no restriction placed on what such an order-giver may order, no restriction implying any other point for him in the act besides it obedience.

We must stress that the thesis being considered is not that the pious is whatever is done with the intention of pleasing the deity. Indeed such an idea hardly makes sense for the pious agent. For the agent must have some idea that what he does will please. Geach[3] remarks that parents may be pleased with something done with the intention to please; but the child at least must think that the thing he actually does will please. I cannot say: anything I do with the intention to please will please, so I will just choose something to do, and do it with the intention to please. That is a point about intention: if I do a with the intention of bringing about b, I must believe that doing it will effect b; it may be that—and that I recognise that—it will bring about b only if I do it with the intention of bringing b about, but at any rate I must think that a is an appropriate thing to do with this intention.

There will then be the question: what makes it an appropriate thing? Now the pious agent need not have any answer to this; he will have no internal grounds, but merely believe on external grounds, on information perhaps from someone like Euthyphro, that certain things are appropriate. Euthyphro said he knew a lot about piety; no doubt he could give expert information here. Another source of belief about what are materially pious things to do would be custom. And so long as the pious agent believed that such-and-such were pious things to do, he could do them with the intention of pleasing the gods, without racking his brains about why they were pleasing to the gods beyond the fact of being done to please them.

But Socrates will quiz the expert. The pious agent can perhaps do pious things without answering the question; but still the question remains: what does make these actions and not those appropriate vehicles of piety? Whatever it is, won’t the gods be interested in it and not just in the piety? But Euthyphro defined the pious as the god-pleasing, and said that what the gods were pleased with the pious for was the piety.

That is to say: the suggestion was that piety is always what obedience is sometimes. Obedience is sometimes what the order-giver is after. But piety is always what the god is pleased with. Then just as, when obedience is what the order-giver is after, it may not matter what the particular content of the order is, so the pious act may always be in itself indifferent. In order for there to be a pious act at all, there will have to be something or other specified to be the vehicle of the piety, something for the gods to be pleased at one’s doing. But it will be substantively pointless.

Now there are many pious acts—acts conceived to be pious—of which this is strikingly true. For example, pouring a libation. And the argument may be aided by another: Euthyphro speaks of the ‘cultivation’ (cult) or service of the gods, but is quick to agree that gods cannot need anything from men, cannot possibly be benefitted by anything men do. Then if there is a type of act called ‘pious’, if there are material classes of action which are supposed to be acts of piety, given just as ‘god-pleasing’, and with no significance except that they are ‘for’ a god—they must be acts with no substantive purpose.

At least we have come to see point in the characteristic pointlessness of acts of formal piety. And there would be a logically faultless answer to the question ‘Why these acts?’, if it could be given: namely, that they had been ordered by the gods. (The expert Euthyphro would no doubt claim to give information about this too.) We have so far adduced orders and obedience as an object of logical comparison to help clarify the questions arising from piety; but if this is right, obedience is even materially relevant to our topic. If the gods ordained certain things for men to do in order to please them, they were like the order-giver who was out for obedience; and the particular things ordained would be in themselves as arbitrary and indifferent as in his case. This saves the explanation that the gods are pleased with the pious just for its piety. It makes piety into a form of obedience, and it equates the gods with the order-giver whose aim is obedience. But it raises the question: Why should they want obedience? (On the other hand, if the answer to the question ‘Why these acts?’ were that men choose them as expressive, that explanation is not saved—a god will be pleased with the pious because of what is expressed by it.)

And there is that other matter outstanding, of the impiety of murder. What we have said might throw some light on piety narrowly conceived, on the specific acts of religious piety, though it leaves us perplexed about the nature of gods. But their hatred of murder, of unjust killing, makes it seem that they have some interest in actions other than those of formal piety; an interest in justice and injustice. How does this fit in with the claim that what pleases the gods is piety; and, more specifically, that only pious acts please them? We may distinguish between the formally pious, i.e. the acts with no point but piety, and other acts, which may have a point of their own but which will be acts of piety if done in order to please the gods. But the question will arise, why they are supposed to be god-pleasing. Will it be because of the ‘point of their own’ or because they are done to please? If Euthyphro’s definition and explanation of what pleases the gods are right, then the latter will be true. Such actions could still be arbitrarily specified as pious, merely because something has to be. But if some things that an order-giver ordered for the sake of obedience were also, say, systematically useful or systematically harmful to the order-receiver, one would be puzzled at the suggestion that they were matters of indifference to the order-giver. It would certainly seem that he was not giving orders for the sake of obedience to them, or not for that alone. And similarly it would seem that a deity was not pleased with—or at least did not want—the pious actions only for their piety.

II

As the Euthyphro obliquely reminds us, piety is not necessarily piety towards gods. Euthyphro was going to prosecute his father for murder. Some called this an impious act on the part of a son: an act of filial impiety.

Let us consider filial piety. We shall find that it has some of the obscure and paradoxical character which Socrates has uncovered in religious piety:

What actions are filially pious? Actions which give honour to a parent. Do they give him honour because they are filially pious or are they filially pious because they give him honour?

The same pattern-of-a-problem occurs here as before. But we know now that the double question does not—as Euthyphro was made to think—hold the gun of an Either/Or to our heads. We know that we can say yes to both arms of the question. We do say yes to the second because of the definition, which is not going to be faulted. What about the first? ‘A parent is honoured by filially pious acts because they are filially pious.’ Is that always or merely sometimes true?

It will be useful to speak of the honouring aspect of something that gives honour to a person. A parent (at least given certain conditions) may be said to get honour from any known creditable actions on the part of his child. Then the honouring aspect is the creditability. ‘He got honour from his child’s discovery, because it was a great achievement.’ Now when we ask whether a parent is honoured by such and such acts because they are filially pious, we are asking whether the piety is the, or at least an, honouring aspect of what was done. It is plain that not all actions which are honouring to parents are acts of filial piety. To be so, they have also to be done in order to honour the parents. But the question before us is whether in all acts which are acts of filial piety, the piety is necessarily the—or an— honouring aspect. And it appears that the answer is: no. For the piety may not be known. Suppose that the great discovery was what brought honour to the parents; and suppose that the child worked to achieve something worthwhile, precisely in order for this to be an honour to the parents. The child succeeds; and the work was for the child an act of filial piety. But this motive has been a secret one. Here we have a case in which a parent gets honour from a filially pious act, but not because it is filially pious. The achievement, not the piety which inspired the achievement, is the honouring aspect. By contrast, suppose the child showed the motive, dedicated the work to the parent, made acknowledgment of the parent in connection with it, even, as it were, performed the work as an explicit present to the parent, then the parent would not merely get honour from acts which were filially pious, but would get honour from them because they were filially pious. (As well as because they were substantively creditable.)

An order’s being given only for the sake of the obedience of the act, though possible, is relatively rare, and it might have seemed that there was an absolute contrast between obedience and filial piety in this respect. That the obedience is a merely possible reason, while the piety is an integral aspect of parental honour, when this is effected by a pious act. But we have now seen that this is not so: that, just as we can think of cases where the ordering was because of the obedience, so we can construct a case where the honour is not (in the relevant sense of ‘because’) because of the piety.

However, it is important that our cases are relatively rare. That the natural and typical picture of an order and its relation to obedience is that it is for the sake of some substantive purpose of the act done in obedience to it, and that the natural and typical picture of parents being honoured by an act of filial piety is that the honouring aspect is precisely the piety. This contrast may do something to explain why we have the feeling: Wouldn’t there be something really pointless and disgusting about an act’s being required for the sake of obedience if the sole ground was the obedience, there not being even any further utility in the fact of obedience? But not the feeling that there is something really pointless about acts, gestures, performances, whose sole point is filial piety.

We stressed that when the order-giver only wants obedience and has no further purpose, it doesn’t matter what he orders, he just has to order something or other that the other can do. Now this feature is reproduced, at least to some extent, in the case of filial piety: if the sole honouring aspect is the piety, it might be said, it doesn’t matter what the act is, just so long as it is done for the sake of honouring the parent. But here a new logical difference appears. The substantive content of the order given for the sake of obedience can be anything; or rather, the only restriction on it is that it is performable by the recipient. The connection between the act and the order, which makes it possible for this act to be an act of obedience to (intentional execution of) the order, is the identity of description between the act and what the order orders. Nothing like that is to be found which may connect the act done to honour the parent with the intention to honour. We said that the act’s being creditable meant (given the right circumstances) that it did honour the parent, and we may say that a requirement of creditability puts a restriction on what can be an act of filial piety, comparable to the restriction in ordering to the act’s being performable by the recipient of the order. But beyond that—what makes the connection? Simply that the act is done with the intention of honour? And what sort of intention is that? Is having such an intention a special, recognisable experience, such that if you have it, then what you decide to do (so long as it is creditable) is an act of honouring? And how is it creditable, if there isn’t a separate substantive creditability, but the whole honouring aspect is only the piety? Must we not say: anything will do and be creditable—so long as it is not discreditable? Just as we would say in the obedience case: anything will do—so long as it is performable. But then we are left with the motive of honouring as an inexplicable, indefinable phenomenon, apparently just a special mental experience. It seems obvious that we are making a mistake about this. How would one explain what feeling was meant, what ‘honouring’ meant, if that is what it is? How know if we all mean the same? One doesn’t at all want to say: ‘You just have to be acquainted with it’—as one is rather inclined to say ‘You just have to be acquainted with blue’.

But it is not true that anything will do. I mean that when actions have no substantive point except that they are honouring, then they may vary from one society to another but are fixed for the society. In Mexico, for example, they used to burn incense in honour of a guest; this, then, would be a guest-honouring action there. It is thus a matter of civilisation which actions are tokens of honour, varying perhaps according to the object of honour—a guest, an uncle, a parent, a god—and when we speak of a ‘pious’ act, narrowly, but in a very general kind of way, we may mean precisely an act without a substantive point, but one which is intelligible in the society as an act of honour to those of some class to whom honour is paid.

‘Narrowly’, because I am now speaking of the ‘act of piety’ in a sense in which it is restricted to what I call ‘substantively pointless’ acts. In this narrow sense, sending an aged parent the means of making a journey in comfort is not an act of filial piety; but, since it might be done partly with the motive of showing him respect and consideration such as are his due, it would be an act of piety in the broader sense when done with that motive.

A different example: feeding an aged needy parent. This is different, because one does not fail in respect and consideration by not sending the means of special comfort on a journey; just what is done in the way of showing respect and consideration is highly optional; whereas if you let your parent starve, you are unjust to him, and to be unjust to is to treat with dishonour. Feeding him is an act of justice; it can hardly be an act of piety in the sense of being done to honour him; but it may be an act of piety in the sense that the injustice of letting starve, when done to a parent, is gross filial impiety, and you want not to be guilty of that.

In the wide sense, then, the filially pious will be anything (creditable) done with the motive of honouring, or at least with the motive of not dishonouring, while in the narrow sense filially pious acts will be acts, substantively pointless, which get their point from being acts of honour. In any society there will be many such types of act. (Given that honouring exists, the purely individual and only personally significant act or gesture of honour becomes possible.) And now the pious in the narrow sense is regarded as creditable because of being pious.

III

Socrates and Euthyphro come to a new definition of piety as that part of justice which concerns the cultivation or service of gods.

Piety may be argued to be a part of justice as rendering a god his due. Socrates does not argue this. He merely starts with the assertion, which Euthyphro naturally accepts, that the pious is just; he does not go into why it is just. One would like to know whether it is just only because it is not unjust, like the act of any other virtue such as friendship, mercy, hospitality, courage. The connection looks to be closer than that: piety is a subdivision of justice; is justice towards deity. I suppose that Plato does not make Socrates explore this aspect because it would perforce make the enquiry touch on the general nature of justice; whereas this dialogue focussed simply on piety. But that is not to say that we are not meant to consider why piety is just.

What exercises Socrates is: what can serving the gods amount to? The serving doesn’t do them any good: they need nothing. It is suggested that it is the service of a servant who cooperates in a work. But what work?

Euthyphro replies that it is a laborious business to understand these matters accurately. ‘However, I simply say this to you: if someone knows how to say and do what is acceptable to the gods, praying and sacrificing, those are the pious things, and such things preserve both private houses and commonwealths. The opposite of the acceptable is impious, and that overturns and destroys everything.’ The ‘work’, then, is the good state of men, private and civil.

Socrates does not challenge this, but wants to elucidate prayer and sacrifice as asking and giving; this strikes him as a sort of commercial transaction. He does not remark that Euthyphro counted the prayers (i.e. the asking) as part of what is ‘acceptable to the gods’; hence he is able to say: ‘Piety would then be a sort of commercial art, the art of commercial transactions between gods and men.’ It will be the art of giving something acceptable, and asking for what you can hope to get in return. Euthyphro shows signs of weariness (‘Call it commercial if you like!’) and does not notice the shift that Socrates made. Asked what the gifts are, he dismisses with scorn the suggestion that he thinks gods can be benefitted by men anymore than Socrates does: the gifts are honour, respect and thanks.

Socrates now says: ‘So the pious is the acceptable, but is neither profitable to the gods nor dear to them’. Euthyphro insists that it is dear to them. Socrates: ‘But this is where we were before! We agreed that the pious and what is dear to the gods are not the same thing. Either we were wrong then, or we are wrong now.’ So the dialogue ends with the usual aporia.

Commentators remark that Plato fails to distinguish between the pious and the dear-to-the-gods being the same in meaning and their applying to the same acts—only the identity of meaning was (supposedly) refuted before, and all that Euthyphro is saying now is that the gifts of honour, respect and thanks are dear to the gods. The point is not well taken. The acceptability, the welcomeness, of what is done by the man who knows what to do was offered by Euthyphro as an explanation of that just service of the gods which is piety, and when Socrates says ‘Welcome, but neither profitable nor liked’ he is seizing on what would be an absurdity. How could something be welcome but in being either profitable or pleasing?

We ought to accept as genuine the aporia, and take seriously Socrates’ remark ‘Either we were wrong then, or we are wrong now, and the whole thing needs going into from the beginning.’

A Platonic dialogue of this type is not the impertinent publication of failed work, but a display of skill in starting a hundred hares and in exposing the problematic character of its topic. A dialogue may very well do this if, like the Theaetetus, it produces nothing but failed definitions. But the Euthyphro is not even in that sense a failure: it has given us two very good definitions of piety and has pointed to problems about them. Plato may have thought the definitions failures; like many of his readers he may have been convinced by the argument against the first one, to which the second also looks back. But we cannot tell: all we know is that Socrates says ‘The whole thing needs reinvestigation’.

Beginning that reinvestigation, we have seen that Socrates did not after all succeed in refuting Euthyphro’s original definition, but his argument helps us to grasp various interesting things about piety (and similar properties). We have several problems outstanding.

Before going back to them, I should like to consider the character so skilfully portrayed to us as Euthyphro, ‘Right-mind’. People usually seem to think of him as a cardboard character, a conventional religious type, who is thoughtlessly stuck in his attitudes. Socrates is good, Euthyphro is bad and a fool. Now dialectically Euthyphro has the role of the man who is got into difficulties by Socrates; like all who have this role in the dialogues, he is set up to be tied in knots and as usual some answers which he need not have given are put in his mouth so that he shall be tied in knots. This is no more than the well-known Platonic technique for reaching the points he wants to concentrate on. Euthyphro also has the particular character of one who, like the very different Protagoras, thinks he knows, thinks, that is, that he has full knowledge of the theory of the thing: his insistence that he is an expert on piety puts him into the class of Socratic interlocutors who are, as it were, fair game. There is something ludicrous about his manner of making his claims. All the same, he is not at all on the make, and not at all a conventional character. He is at odds with his world, and to his own hurt; precisely because of his seriousness. He is willing to go against everything conventional, to incur the rage of his family and the derision and contempt of the citizens, because he cannot brush aside the fact that his father has callously killed a poor helpless man out of mere negligence. No one cares, because the victim was a nobody and a worthless person—except Euthyphro. I do not believe that Plato was unconscious of the power of Euthyphro’s complaint where he makes him say that his father ‘made little of the man, and did not care whether he died of cold or hunger and his chains, which indeed happened’ and also says that it doesn’t matter who the victim is—serf or his own social equal. I find it astonishing that readers do not notice the justice with which Plato makes Euthyphro speak at this point and the way in which the conceitedness drops out of his style, but mostly seem set on taking him as a contemptible figure. Geach takes the opposite view: he is all on Euthyphro’s side and is furious with Plato for the poisonous attitude expressed by Socrates. But we ought to remember that Plato wrote all those words! This is so, whether or not Euthyphro was a fictitious character. I do not find it credible that Plato wrote the best words he put into Euthyphro’s mouth, all unconscious of their quality.

Euthyphro is portrayed as a man who has thought rather intently, and come to very definite conclusions about what are cases of unjust killing, about piety and impiety, about not letting oneself be compromised by ‘respect of persons’. That is indicated at several places. Socrates does not allow him to expound these thoughts, and he is quite unprepared for Socrates’ kind of question. He does regard the idea of serving the gods and its purpose as one with a lot of difficulty about it, but he has no nose for logical and linguistic points; he grasps them with difficulty (and indeed some of them look like mere will o’ the wisps) and is obviously not much impressed by them. Above all, he has no nose for the more narrowly philosophical problems. That belongs to Socrates and the author.

 

* From an unpublished, undated typescript of which there are two variously corrected copies among Anscombe’s papers. Each copy extends to only three parts, though the text clearly envisages a further part. Despite its uncompleted state the text is sufficiently interesting to warrant publication.

1 Euthyphro 13a 5ff

2 I have used the tenuous contrast between the actives ‘to please’ and ‘to be pleasing’ in place of the equally tenuous contrast between passives which we find in Plato. There is no way of making Plato’s passives go over into English.

3 ‘Plato’s Euthyphro. An Analysis and Commentary’, reprinted in P T Geach, Logic Matters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 31–44, at p. 44.