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Socrates and Euthryphro

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Plato's early series of dialogues,"Euthyphro," discusses holiness and virtue. As is customary in dialogues written by Plato, Socrates engages in dialogue with another character; Euthyphro. The dialogue starts after they cross paths at the porch of King Archon, a judge that practices religious law in Athens. Socrates is there because he is being prosecuted by Meletus for corrupting the youth and being impious. Euthyphro is not the prosecuted, but the prosecutor of his father for which he is holding responsible for the death of a slave that was under his care. Socrates becomes intrigued about Euthyphro's decision to prosecute his own father and asks him to let him know why he would take such a stance. As Euthyphro begins to claim to be an expert in holiness, Socrates begins to ask more questions as if he were ignorant about the subject. The conclusion of this dialogue does not answer definitively the definition of holiness, and it also does not clear the misconceptions that Euthyphro creates. Socrates is left disappointed that Euthyphro's definitions of divinity all rely solely on the relationship between a god and a human, and not the Socratic' idea of human to human correlation. Socrates questions Euthyphro thoroughly about what having holiness truly means and how it also translates to justice. Socrates calls Euthyphro to "tell me what you were just claiming to know so clearly. What sort of thing would you say the holy and the unholy are, whether in cases of murder or of anything else?..." (Plato 5d). Roslyn Weiss, publishes in the "Journal of the History of Philosophy," (Volume 24, Number 4, October 1986, pp.437). “452, an article themed 'Euthyphro's Failure' where she outlines some errors in Euthyphro's logic. Weiss states that Euthyphro's first mistake is when he tries to "define holiness with reference to what the gods love" (Weiss 439). Euthyphro first proposes that the definition of holiness is what is beloved to the gods, when he states that "What is beloved by the gods is pious, and what's not loved by the gods is impious (Plato 6e). Socrates then connects the idea that the gods hold the same comparable human disagreements about good and evil. Since there seems to be different types of gods tend to disagree on what is holy and unholy, then it is saying that something could be both holy and unholy if gods disagree on that thing. The example of Euthyphro dilemma with prosecuting his father as a killer for letting the killer he was in charge of die from negligence. It is abhorrent to the gods the slaying of another being, but at the same time it is conflicting that a son like Euthyphro could accuse his own father in court. Socrates makes this connection,

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