211; the religious pollution of spilling blood – equal for the offender and the beholder. He then delineates the circumstances of his case: an inferior day laborer cut the throat of a slave and, after being bound by Euthyphro’s father, died inadvertently as he attempted to get advice from a priest. Socrates asks Euthyphro if he has enough divine knowledge to prosecute his father under such extraordinary circumstances. Euthyphro responds affirmatively. Thus, Socrates asks Euthyphro “…what sort of thing…the pious and impious are…” (Plato, Euthyphro, 5d) and “…is not the holy, just by itself, the same in every action…” (Plato, Euthyphro, 5d). Euthyphro, responding to the second question first, affirms that piety and impiety have discernible characteristics. Subsequently, he states that piety is “…prosecuting murder and temple theft and everything of the sort…”(Plato, Euthyphro, 5e). Socrates points out that this answer is not a definition, since, instead of stating what constitutes piety, it merely provides examples of it. Consequently, Euthyphro states that piety is what is dear to the gods. Socrates responds that, if the gods disagree as Euthyphro previously states in the dialogue, different gods would believe that different things are “…just and beautiful and ugly, good and evil…” (Plato, Euthyphro, 7e). Thus, since they love what is good and hate what is evil, the same things would be loved by some gods and hated by others, in turn making piety and impiety the same, which can’t be true. Socrates then induces Euthyphro to state that piety is what all the gods love. Subsequently, Socrates poses a question about this statement’s causality: is piety what it is because all the gods love it or do all the gods love it because it is piety? Euthyphro replies that all the gods love piety because it is piety &...
