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Do Socrates' philosophical methods result in any conclusions of moral importance?

Euthyphro is sure he is doing the correct and pious thing by prosecuting his father. But he has little success in explaining what is pious about the action, and finds no satisfactory account of piety. His most promising effort identifies the pious with what the gods love. Socrates agrees that this account covers all and only the right cases; but he rejects it as a definition. He requires Euthyphro to distinguish different claims: 

 1. x is pious if and only if it is loved by the gods. 

 2. x is pious because it is pious. 

 3. x is loved by the gods because it is pious. 

 4. x is pious because it is loved by the gods. 

 5. The pious is what is loved by the gods. 

Socrates argues that while (1) to (3) are true, (4) is false, and hence (5) must also be false. If (5) were true, then we could correctly replace (2) with (4); but Socrates argues that if (2) and (3) are true, then (4) must be false. The truth of (2) implies that x's being pious must be the explanation of x's being loved by the gods; whatever property piety turns out to be, it should explain why the gods love pious things. But the truth of (4) implies, contrary to (3), that being loved by the gods is the explanatory property. Since (4) does not state a genuine explanatory property, we cannot correctly replace (2) with (4); and hence, once Euthyphro has accepted (1) to (3), he must reject (5).

We might think that (5) simply says the same as (1); and if Socrates thought so, he would have to agree with Euthyphro. But he insists that (1) only states something that is true of piety, not what piety itself is (it may be true of human beings that they are the only animals who laugh, but that is not what it is to be a human being). An answer to his demand for a definition must provide a standard, and so must explain why something is pious. But (5) cannot do this, since Euthyphro has agreed (in (3)) that x's being pious explains why the gods love x, not the other way round.

Euthyphro could consistently reject (3), if he said that religious morality depends wholly on the arbitrary will of the gods. On this view, the gods do not approve of a pious action because of any features that make it pious apart from its being approved of. Nothing about murder, then, causes the gods to disapprove of it; they have no reason not to approve of murder, and it is simply an arbitrary choice of theirs to condemn it.

Socrates' questions to Euthyphro focus attention on the role of (3) in Euthyphro's and Socrates' beliefs. In doing so, they also throw some light on a trend in Hebrew, no less than in Greek, thought about God and morality. Like Aeschylus, the Hebrew prophets distinguish God's moral demands from the ritual observances normally associated with religion. They reject the view, widespread though not universal in Homer and in later Greek religious thought, that religion is a contract, with human beings offering sacrifices and other ritual attentions as payment for divine favour. The prophets insist that God's favour cannot be bought by a fixed schedule of actions, and that God requires moral integrity. Many Hebrews, like many Greeks, believed that they could atone for past misdeeds by offering extra sacrifices. But the prophets reply that moral corruption cannot be wiped out or outweighed by lavish observances. Socrates makes explicit this assumption that underlies the prophetic conception of religion and morality.

But why do they distinguish the moral law so sharply from the ritual law? Do they simply insist that one arbitrary divine command matters more than another? Socrates' questions allow us to see more clearly what the prophets assume. They assume that God expresses a moral ideal because he knows what is morally good and demands it. He knows the principles that we can also know to be morally good. His demands are not arbitrary, but reflect truths about moral goodness that are true independently of his choices.

Though naturalist views about the gods reject the assumption that they can be influenced by sacrifices, Socrates' examination of Euthyphro applies to them also. Socrates implicitly asks Anaximander and Heracleitus what makes cosmic justice just; it cannot be just simply because it is the way the world actually is. To show that it is really just is a more demanding task than they had realized.

Socrates exposes some of the difficulties that face someone who wants to make God's will the ultimate standard of what is morally right. His own position has its apparent difficulties too (it might, for instance, appear to make God superfluous or irrelevant as a source of moral principles or moral guidance); but it presents a reasonable alternative to a traditional view of religion and ethics. Kant (1724- 1808) accepts and expresses the Socratic demand:

Each example of morality which is exhibited to me must itself have been previously judged according to principles of morality to see whether it is worthy to serve as an original example, i.e. as a model. By no means could it authoritatively furnish the concept of morality. Even the Holy One of the Gospels must be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before he can be recognized as such.

Socrates' argument extends beyond piety to morality in general; for it extends beyond divine authority to other claims to moral authority. If someone says that what is right is what the laws require, we can ask the question Socrates asks Euthyphro. Those who maintain this view make morality an arbitrary creature of law, and free law from moral criticism. Protagoras' conventionalist view, treating morality and justice as a matter of convention, also makes them immune to rational criticism. Against him Socrates implies that in fact we apply some further standard in judging whether a norm or convention is just or not, and that this standard makes conventional norms open to rational criticism. . .

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