Do you define yourself as anti-materialist? — Olivier5

I don't define myself as anything for the purposes of this discussion. You guys are taking things too seriously just like you are taking Euthyphro's character too seriously and forget he is just a character that Plato uses to convey a message or set of messages.

Anyway, IMHO the facts of the matter are as follows:

1. The central question of the dialogue is “If x is pious, is it the case that [x is pious] obtains in virtue of [The gods love x], or is it the case that [The gods love x] obtains in virtue of [x is pious]?”

Evan’s Interpretation of the Explicit Euthyphro Argument may be of interest to those who profess an interest.

2. Another question is, in view of Plato’s well-known metaphysical ideas, does the Euthyphro have a metaphysical message?

The affirmative answer is given, among many others, by Gerson Rabinowitz, Platonic Piety: An Essay towards the Solution of an Enigma, Phronesis, Vol. 3, No. 2, (1958), pp. 108 -120.

What would be the relevance of the Naxos reference?

What would be the relevance of the Naxos reference? — Olivier5

I don't think it has anything to do specifically with Naxos other than it provides dates to indicate there was a five year gap between the time it happened and the time he was going to prosecute.

I have no definitive answer. There are a few things we can piece together. Euthyphro's father's defense of his negligence is that the servant was a murderer and:

it was no matter even if he should die.

(4d)

Euthyphro says that he died before the exigete arrived. According the the translators (Thomas and Grace West) the exigete is an official who expounded the sacred and ancestral laws of the city. His father regarded this as a matter of sacred rather than civil law. Euthyphro does not dispute this. So why does he prosecute his father rather than appeal to the exegete to interpret? Euthyphro does, after all, claim it is a matter of purification and piety. Perhaps it has something to do with the exegetes being officially recognized authorities on such matters and Euthyphro being laughed at for his professed knowledge of the gods and piety. And perhaps it also has to do with the private activity of conferring with the exegete versus a public trial in which Euthyphro can display his knowledge of divine things.

I take it as one of these details a skilful writer will include in his prose to make his story sound real and grounded in one place or another.

I don't think it has anything to do specifically with Naxos .... I have no definitive answer. — Fooloso4

Just as I said from the start. It is a line of inquiry that leads nowhere. Speculation should not be substituted for fact.

Any other ideas?

Yes, but this leads to the question of why this detail, why this place. In this case I think Plato leads to reader to ask further questions about Euthyphro's intentions. It does seem suspicious to me that he waited all this time and then brought the case to a public rather than private forum.

To begin with, it needs to be established that the five-year gap is actual and not just imagined. If it is actual, then it may indeed seem suspicious. But in the absence of reliable verification and further relevant data, it still leads nowhere.

No offense, but Umberto Eco said somewhere that there can be such a thing as over-interpretation. It's about ignoring the noise/signal distinction.

A somewhat similar case in Luke's gospel is in the story of the 'good Samaritan', which happens on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Some scholars have asked why this location, and what would a Samaritan do there, far away from Galilee. But it could well be that Jesus just invented whatever location came to mind, not even aware that there weren't many Samaritan's outside of Galilee.

But it could well be that Jesus just invented whatever location came to mind, not even aware that there weren't many Samaritan's outside of Galilee. — Olivier5

Good point.

It could well be the case as a theoretical hypothesis, but unlikely as it wasn't Jesus who was telling the story.

So, Eco was probably right about over-interpretation.

It could well be the case as a theoretical hypothesis, but unlikely as it wasn't Jesus who was telling the story. — Apollodorus

That makes no difference. Whoever invented the story might have chosen whatever location came to his mind.

It just needed to be out in the country, sort of isolated.

Exactly. Any plausible place for the story.

That makes no difference. Whoever invented the story might have chosen whatever location came to his mind. — Olivier5

I think it does matter. If it wasn't Jesus who wrote the story, then it wasn't he who "invented" the story.

But I agree that Plato probably invented the Naxos location and possibly the rest of it. After all, the dialogue is just a story he uses to make a point. We don't even know that Euthyphro is not a fictitious personage.

Likewise, Euthyphro being real or not is a meaningless detail which makes no difference whatsoever to the philosophical meaning of the story.

Which to me, incidentally, is exactly the same meaning than that of the good Samaritan parable: God is unimpressed by empty, ritualistic piety, be that from the high priest, the levite or Euthyphro; He loves justice best, even when it comes from the impious.

If it wasn't Jesus who wrote the story, then it wasn't he who "invented" the story. — Apollodorus

Why isn't it Jesus' story?

No offense, but Umberto Eco said somewhere that there can be such a thing as over-interpretation. — Olivier5

[Added: No offense taken. Mature people can have, express, and discuss different points of view.]

From Eco's Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Here is a partial list of the main
features of what he calls a Hermetic approach to texts:

A text is an open-ended universe where the interpreter can discover infinite interconnections.

Language is unable to grasp a unique and preexisting meaning — on the contrary, language’s duty is to show that what we can speak of is only the coincidence of the opposites.

Language (and authors’) fate is nevertheless redeemed by the pneumatic reader who, being able to realize and to show that Being is drift, corrects the error of the author-Demiurge and understands what the hylics (those who thinks that texts can have a definite meaning) are condemned to ignore.

Language mirrors the inadequacy of thought: our being-in-the world is nothing else than being incapable of finding any transcendental meaning.

Language (and authors’) fate is nevertheless redeemed by the pneumatic reader who, being able to realize and to show that Being is drift, corrects the error of the author-Demiurge and understands what the hylics (those who thinks that texts can have a definite meaning) are condemned to ignore.

To salvage the text — that is, to transform it from an illusion of meaning to the awareness that meaning is infinite — the reader must suspect that every line of it conceals another secret meaning;
words, instead of saying, hide the untold; the glory of the reader is to discover that texts can say everything, except what their author wanted them to mean; as soon as a pretended meaning is
allegedly discovered, we are sure that it is not the real one; the real one is the further one and so on and so forth; the hylics — the losers — are those who end the process by saying “I understood.”
The Real Reader is the one who understands that the secret of a text is its emptyness.

If I understand him correctly overinterpretation is related to the pneumatic reader. I will leave it to the readers here to decide who in this discussion and this form are pneumatic readers.

I don't think a story from Luke is comparable to a Platonic dialogue. Plato was an extremely careful writer, I don't think Luke meets the same standard. In addition to set a timeframe by the detail is not an interpretation, the significance of the timeframe is. With regard to Eco, the interpretation I suggested is mundane, not at all what he is criticising.

More generally, where do we draw the line between interpretation and overinterpretation? I don't think Plato puts that in there without reason.

Likewise, Euthyphro being real or not is a meaningless detail which makes no difference whatsoever to the philosophical meaning of the story. — Olivier5

Exactly. That's why I said that the alleged "five-year gap" is a false lead and the logical thing to do is to focus on what Plato is trying to tell us.

God is unimpressed by empty, ritualistic piety, be that from the high priest, the levite or Euthyphro; He loves justice best, even when it comes from the impious. — Olivier5

Correct. However, what if Euthyphro is, after all, just? I don't think that is has been proven that he isn't.

Maybe Plato makes it deliberately ambiguous to get the reader to think it over and as he goes over the text again, what stands out are words like "idea", "form", "pattern", etc. that lead him to think that the real message lies elsewhere and that Euthyphro's "dilemma" was simply intended to stimulate and sharpen his thought in preparation for the true message.

After all, Plato and other philosophers did believe in several layers of meaning when interpreting the poets and myth-makers.

Euthyphro being real or not is a meaningless detail which makes no difference whatsoever to the philosophical meaning of the story. — Olivier5

Right. This should be too obvious to mention, but unfortunately it is not.

The dialogues are all inventions. Parmenides was a real person but his meeting and discussing the Forms is usually regarded as fictional. The characters is Plato's Symposium are real people, but it is not an historical account. Even the Apology is not an historical account of what was said. It differs significantly from Xenophon's account.

You remind me of him, BTW. — Olivier5

Only someone like him would think the dialogue was not a condemnation of his pretense to wisdom and piety.

Why isn't it Jesus' story? — frank

The narrative is in the third person: “When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her … “ (John 4:7).

It isn't Jesus relating it.

It isn't Jesus relating it. — Apollodorus

I thought he was talking about the parable of the Good Samaritan. That was supposed to be Jesus narrating. Doesn't mean it was, though.

The dialogues are all inventions. — Fooloso4

They are stories. That's why it doesn't make sense to read too much into the alleged "five-year gap" for which there is no evidence anyway.

How about starting a thread on it and get Amity to delete all comments that we choose to disagree with? :grin: — Apollodorus

Again with this. Boring crap :yawn:
Deletions can only be done by a moderator who judges any full-of-shit posts flagged.
I am not the only one but guess I am now on the tag team's 'hit list'.
Unfortunately, I can't flag this off topic post but I will do others...and this should disappear.

It is much easier to scoff than to actually do some research and reading. Doing so shows that this is a subject that has received a significant amount of attention, and as with all things, Plato there is a good deal of disagreement as what it means.

From Nalin Ranasinghe, late professor of philosophy at Assumption College. His writings include:
The Soul of Socrates, Socrates and the Gods: How to Read Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, and Socrates in the Underworld: On Plato’s Gorgias.

Euthyphro’s lawsuit is made stranger yet by the realization that he is prosecuting his father for events that must have taken place at least five years earlier; Athens lost possession of the island of Naxos in 404, at the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates was tried in 399. Bearing in mind the absence of temporal and spatial contiguity with the polluting event, it is hard to escape the inference that something else led Euthyphro to open up this can of worms ...

Like Meletus, Euthyphro is resurrecting old grudges to support his ambitions and prospects. He is impiously digging up matters from the past for his selfish advantage.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/03/theology-socratic-piety-nalin-ranasinghe.html

Could be.

But would you want to return to the dilemma? Or are you finished pondering it?

How about starting a thread on it and get Amity to delete all comments that we choose to disagree with? :grin:
— Apollodorus

Again with this. Boring crap :yawn:
Deletions can only be done by a moderator who judges any full-of-shit posts flagged.
I am not the only one but guess I am now on the tag team's 'hit list'.
Unfortunately, I can't flag this off topic post but I will do others...and this should disappear. — Amity

I appreciate you and others, and there have been several others, for stepping in. They have chosen to make Plato's Euthyphro and Phaedo about me.

I did not get a chance to read the posts that were deleted, but it is certain that they were not substantive or on topic. As you said, it was a moderator who thought they should be deleted.
Unfortunately, you have become a target too. But nothing to them in response.

First of all, the dialogue is not about "the dilemma".

Second, it is my opinion that a proper interpretation of the dialogue looks carefully at the details.

Third, I was asked:

Fooloso4 What would be the relevance of the Naxos reference? — Olivier5

I gave some some suggestions as to what the relevance might be.

And Fourth, I responded to what you and Apollodorus said. But now that I show that this is a real concern in the literature and that my suggestions are not without support, you want to just drop it and move on.

And Fourth, I responded to what you and Apollodorus said. But now that I show that this is a real concern in the literature and that my suggestions are not without support, you want to just drop it and move on. — Fooloso4

Feel free to flesh it out. We're listening.

I kind of feel bad that you're feeling so attacked. I think if we go around the room, we'll find that each of us zeroed in on something in particular and ran with it, to personal benefit if nothing else. As you've mentioned, that's the nature of Plato.

I would like to hear these personal testimonials. I don't want the conversation to be dominated by one and only one viewpoint. I think you'd agree?

A bit of emotional intelligence says: if you want others to listen to you, be a listener. I've found that to be true, haven't you?

But now that I show that this is a real concern in the literature and that my suggestions are not without support, you want to just drop it and move on. — Fooloso4

Well, if Amity is going to delete any posts that are inconvenient to you, then we have no choice but to drop it and move on. People have better thing to do in life, you know.

Anyway, Ranasinghe does not provide any evidence in support of your theory. Even if we were to suppose, for the sake of argument, that "Euthyphro is resurrecting old grudges to support his ambitions and prospects. He is impiously digging up matters from the past for his selfish advantage", that doesn't prove or change anything.

You're saying that you now show "concern in the literature" but that means absolutely nothing without evidence. There are thousands of "concerns in the literature", so what? It's still all just theory, no matter who comes up with it.

And it must be said, not a particularly convincing or interesting theory either. Even you must have noticed by now that there is hardly anyone on this thread. The truth of the matter is that nobody cares about Euthyphro and his "dilemma" or whatever you choose to call it. You're only using him to attack religion which is definitely boring as Amity said and with which I fully agree.

But, by all means, do carry on if it makes you happy.

A bit of emotional intelligence says: if you want others to listen to you, be a listener. I've found that to be true, haven't you? — frank

I think you have enough emotional intelligence to know what is really going on here. I am going to leave it at that.

If you want to discuss the dialogue please do so.