but if if he had asked Socrates "define justice", I bet Socrates would have struggled too. — Olivier5

This is part of his knowledge of his ignorance. As long as we cannot say what justice itself is we can only have opinions about whether something just or unjust and no standard by which to measure.

Terms like "idea" and "paradeigma" would evoke the concept of "Forms" in the mind of those familiar with Platonic thought. Fooloso4 has already admitted this. — Apollodorus

They do not "evoke the concept 'Forms'. They are terms we translate as Forms. You have a concept of Forms based on the myth of transcendence from the Republic. It is philosophical poetry, images of what Socrates thinks true knowledge must be.

What is of particular interest is that Socrates (at 6e) says: — Apollodorus

You just quoted the same passage I did using a different translation!

As may be clearly seen, Socrates uses the terms ἰδέα idea and παραδείγμα paradeigma and, significantly, says that he wishes to fix his eye upon it and use it as a standard of reference in deciding what is pious or impious. — Apollodorus

Do you think by repeating the same thing you can avoid having to deal with the problem of instrumental causality?

... he wishes to fix his eye upon it and use it as a standard of reference in deciding what is pious or impious. — Apollodorus

What he wishes to do and what he able to do are two different things. He has no knowledge of the Forms and has never seen them. He says as much in the Republic.

If you want to discuss it further I will do so here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11210/socratic-philosophy/p1

IMO it would be irrational to dispute this. — Apollodorus

The only thing that is irrational is your repetition of what I have said more than once as if it is in dispute. I even quoted myself saying as much some pages back showing I had already said it pages before that.

Socrates certainly describes the Forms as causes in the Phaedo. — Apollodorus

This is what he says about causes in the Phaedo:

If then one wished to know the cause of each thing, why it comes to be or perishes or exists, one had to find what was the best way for it to be, or to be acted upon, or to act. On these premises then it befitted a man to investigate only, about this and other things, what is best.” (97b-d)

So I thought I must take refuge in discussions and investigate the truth of beings by means of accounts [logoi] … On each occasion I put down as hypothesis whatever account I judge to be mightiest; and whatever seems to me to be consonant with this, I put down as being true, both about cause and about all the rest, while what isn’t, I put down as not true.” (99d-100a)

“I am going to try to show you the kind of cause with which I have concerned myself. I turn back to those oft-mentioned things and proceed from them. I assume the existence of a Beautiful, itself by itself, of a Good and a Great and all the rest. If you grant me these and agree that they
exist, I hope to show you the cause as a result, and to find the soul to be immortal.

I no longer understand or recognize those other sophisticated causes, and if someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons—for all these confuse me—but I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else.” (100c-e)

Later he reintroduces physical causes:

“Tell me again from the beginning and do not answer in the words of the question, but do as do. I say that beyond that safe answer, which I spoke of first, I see another safe answer. If you should ask me what, coming into a body, makes it hot, my reply would not be that safe and ignorant one, that it is heat, but our present argument provides a more sophisticated answer, namely, fire, and if you ask me what, on coming into a body, makes it sick, I will not say sickness but fever. Nor, if asked the presence of what in a number makes it odd, I will not say oddness but oneness, and so with other things.” (105b-c)

He does not discuss them hypothetically. They are hypothetic.

Socrates calls the Forms hypothesis in the Phaedo.
— Fooloso4

He doesn't call them that in the Euthyphro though. — Apollodorus

No he doesn't. He doesn't talk about Forms at all. He talks about one Form and calls it a pattern. He says nothing about instrumental causality, a concept of central importance to Gerson. I suspect you do not understand what you copied and pasted and used as an argument from authority.

The fact is that the Platonic Forms were simply a way of expressing abstract nouns in the same way Goddess Dike represented Justice before Plato. — Apollodorus

You're getting closer. Plato replaces the mythology of the gods with the mythology of Forms.

The term "pattern" (paradeigma) refers to Platonic Forms which, as you yourself admitted, were known to Plato and his immediate disciples at the time he wrote the Euthyphro. — Apollodorus

No one disputes that the Forms are often talked about in the dialogues. We went through this already. What is at issue is what they are.

Of course pattern refers to the Forms, that is the point. The dialogue refers to the Form as a pattern, not as an instrumental cause. Socrates calls the Forms hypothesis in the Phaedo. An hypothesis is not an instrumental cause. If you cannot provide textual evidence that a Form is an instrumental cause and not, as Socrates says, a hypothesis, then, despite what you may believe, your interpretation is without grounds.

But I believe it to be true. — Apollodorus

Well, that settles the matter. You go from demanding proof of everything I say to what you believe to be true.

The divisions of the tripart soul do not correspond to your division of the unawakened, the awakened, and the wide-awakened or enlightened.

This. In lieu of his own interpretation one of his many cut and paste. This one from Lloyd Gerson:

Socrates in Euthyphro does not just want to know what the Form of Piety is; he also believes that there is such a thing as Piety that is the instrumental cause of the piety in pious things [see 6D 10 – 11 — Apollodorus

The key is the theory that the Forms are instrumental causes.

First, the passage cited. Socrates is asking what the pious itself is:

that eidos itself by which all the pious things are pious

Gerson takes this to mean something that causes pious things to be pious. But Socrates goes on to say:

... it is by one idea that the impious things are impious and the pious things pious.

That one thing that is the cause of the pious would then be the cause of the impious. But what he means is that:

... this idea itself is, so that by gazing at it and using it as a pattern, I may declare that whatever is like it, among the things that you or anyone else may do, is pious, and whatever is not like it is not. (6e)

A pattern is not an instrumental cause, it does not cause anything to be like it. It is, rather, that by which we can identify something as being of that kind.

Kass' work is based on that of Leo Strauss. Unfortunately Strauss' commentary is hard to find.

If this stuff interests you another student of Strauss, Robert Sacks, wrote a commentary on Genesis:
https://interpretationjournal.com/shop/lion-ass-commentary-book-genesis-chapters-1-10-robert-sacks/
"The Lion and the Ass"

The essays are compiled here: https://www.greenlion.com/books/LionandAss.html

These two qualities would have made him pretty average. — frank

The average person does not say he is an expert on divine matters. Euthyphro would deny that he is superstitious. It is his assumption that he knows what he does not know about such things that is at issue. He does not simply hold this misguided belief he acts on it.

Not only that, but it seems rather weird not to discuss it when Socrates and Euthyphro discuss it from one end of the dialogue to the other. — Apollodorus

They do not discuss it from one end of the dialogue to the other. Socrates quickly dispatches it.

The dialogue comes to an end when Socrates once again asks him what piety is. There can be no dilemma where the terms have not been adequately determined.

Starting on page one what is called the "Euthyphro Dilemma" is not what is found in the dialogue.

Here's Dr William Lane Craig (one of the more competent).

Dr. Craig:

For those that aren't familiar with it, the question is: does God will something because it is good, or is something good because God wills it? — Tom Storm

We already know that. — Apollodorus

From many of your posts it is evident that you don't or until some point did not.

You said the point is not to show that belief in God in not necessary for being good, even though the OP states this to be "the question that engendered this post": — Apollodorus

Do I need to explain to you what engendered means? This topic and the one that engendered it are two different things. One started out one way shifted to general opinions on the relationship between God and morality. This one started by looking at the dialogue Euthyphro and some of us have been doing our best to keep it on topic.

You said it is to "discuss the dialogue" and that the dilemma "is not part of the dialogue": — Apollodorus

As some posts here show, what is generally thought of as the Euthyphro dilemma is not what is found in the dialogue. See my response to frank: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/555554

obsessing about the alleged "five-year gap" — Apollodorus

It is this kind of misrepresentation that leads me to ignore you. What is the point? Do you really think such tactics are persausive?

I held off answering him. You provided a better answer than I would have.

I think Euthyphro did have an agenda. He could have done what his father did and asked an exegete, an official who expounded the sacred and ancestral laws of the city. Instead he brought it to a public forum to demonstrate his own expertise in such matters. He says:

... whenever I say something in the assembly concerning the divine things ... I have spoken nothing that is not true ... they envy all who are of this sort. (3c)

He is blindly convinced that he knows divine things and that what he is doing is right. In addition, he makes a public display of it.

As to his family, he tells Socrates that they are indignant and that they tell him that it is impious for a son to proceed against his father for murder. But he claims they:

knowing badly, Socrates, how the divine is disposed concerning the pious and impious. (4 d-e)

Wittgenstein said:

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there. (Culture and Value)

The problem is, many who are drawn to philosophy do not feel at home in the confusion of not knowing. They look to philosophy to find answers. Plato seems to provide answers. However, what may seem to be is not what is. Behind the inspiring image of transcendent Forms is, as he says in the Phaedo, hypothesis. But hypotheses do not not satisfy the desire for answers.

Socrates’ Forms stand as the substitute for the myths of the gods. They are a salutary public teaching disguised as an initiation into the sacred mysteries. As the noble lie is to the city in the Republic the hyperuranion beings are to the actual city.

The Euthyphro dilemma isn't in Euthyphro? — frank

The Euthyphro dilemma as it is referred to today is not the problem that Socrates posed to Euthyphro.

Socrates question: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?" leads to the subsequent versions of the Euthyphro dilemma. Euthyphro says he does not understand the question. It is not for him a dilemma because he does not even understand what the difference is between the two. Euthyphro's claim as it stands - "What is loved by the gods is pious, and what is not loved is impious." (6e) is inadequate. The problem is made clear by his initial response to Socrates question, what is the idea of the pious and impious. (5d) His answer is that what he is doing is pious. (5d) He assumes that the gods love what he is doing because he is pious and that he is pious because he is doing what the gods love. When Socrates introduces the question of the just he shows the inadequacy of Euthyphro's answers.

So can you state very briefly and as clearly as possible what the true point of the thread is? — Apollodorus

The true point of the thread is to discuss the dialogue.

The discussion can only move in circles from this point and IMHO is a waste of time and space.
— Apollodorus

And yet you will continue to post. Please prove me wrong. — Fooloso4

As I suspected, you have not proven me wrong.

Fooloso4 has failed to prove his case on the basis of the dialogue. — Apollodorus

First, do not blame your failure to understand the dialogue on anything or anyone else.

Second, although the thread was engendered by Banno's request, it has been about the dialogue and not the thread that engendered it. I never intended for the discussion of the dialogue to be proof that belief in god is not necessary for being good. That question can easily be answered empirically.

Does anybody want to focus further on the dilemma? — frank

Why don't you start a thread on it? It is not part of the dialogue, which is what this thread was intended to be focused on.

The discussion can only move in circles from this point and IMHO is a waste of time and space. — Apollodorus

And yet you will continue to post. Please prove me wrong.

Euthyphro’s behavior can at the most show that religious belief (religion-based virtue) may lead to undesirable results when improperly understood and or applied. It doesn’t show that religion-based virtue in general is bad.

IMHO you have failed to demonstrate your case. — Apollodorus

You cannot see past your defensiveness. I did not say that religion-based virtue in general is bad. I have said repeatedly that it is about Euthyphro, about what he intends to do in the name of piety. The problem is you are still hanging on to the idea that he did nothing wrong and that Socrates does not say he did anything wrong. It is not clear whether Euthyphro learned anything from Socrates, but it is clear that you have not.

The central question of the dialogue is about men not gods.What should guide Euthyphro’s actions, and how are we to judge Socrates’? Is piety simply a matter of doing what we are told a god or gods want from us, or is it part of the larger question of the just, noble, and good? . — Fooloso4

Socrates' education of Euthyphro begins when he points beyond Euthyphro's circular claim. He replaces the idea that what is loved by the gods is what is pious with the idea that the pious is what is just. (11e) — Fooloso4

It has nothing to do with religious belief (religion-based virtue) per se, but with piety without consideration of the just, noble, and good.I could go on quoting things you ignored, but all that matters to you is to continue trying to find something to argue against.

It would seem more helpful to simply say "I have no evidence, it's just a working hypothesis" or something to that effect. Why can't you do that? — Apollodorus

You mean like this?

In this case I think Plato leads to reader to ask further questions about Euthyphro's intentions — Fooloso4

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. — Fooloso4

In other words same old shit. Be careful! Soon "Euthodorus" will include you in his personal vendetta.

For the story to work, it had to be far away from Athens because a judge had to travel there, and had to arrive too late, after the criminal labourer had already died of his wounds. — Olivier5

Yes, I agree. The question then is why did Euthyphro wait five years?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It is not a personal accusation. It is a Christian bias. It is not a question of it being old but it being superseded.

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.

Sometimes I will side with whoever is more persuasive. Other times I leave it open, seeing no way to reach a satisfactory conclusion one way or the other.

When I like one and not another and one gives a glowing review then I look to see what what I might have missed or what the reviewer might have missed.

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.

Yes.

Does that mean that there is no conceivable way that I could be a brain in a vat? No.

... the Bible, including the Old Testament and The New Testament ... — Jack Cummins

To regard the Hebrew Bible as "the Old Testament" is to prejudge it. Significantly, you do not even mention Judaism. What is often overlooked is the extent to which the Hebrew Bible is about human beings and their ways, both straight and crooked. Very little is said about nature. There is no concept of human nature, only ways that can be chosen. The natural world is secondary, for it is regarded as the work of God and subject to his control.

I remember - a long time ago - trying to figure out what position, if any, I had re analytic v continental philosophy. — Amity

My approach is the read those philosophers who interest me.

Analytic philosophy: "You must think like us because that is what 'thinking' is". — Cuthbert

The study of animal thought has long been thwarted by such narrow mindedness.

Plato was known for seemingly offhand comments regarding dates that situate the time of a dialogue and other events related to it.

There is quite a bit said in the literature about Naxos and the dialogue. Euthyphro indicates that they were no longer farming there. (4c)

I've already done so. — Apollodorus

A proper interpretation is sufficiently detailed. A proper interpretation attends to the text, to what is said and done. Not isolated statements and repeating what others have. What you say does not even come close. But if that's good enough for you then that's good enough for you.