READ MINI LECTURE BELOW AND WRITE MINI ESSAY explaining why you are either a Rationalist or a Volunteerist when it comes to the Euthyphro problem. Describe what the set up to the question is, what the Euthyphro question is, and the various ways of answering it. Give an argument in favor of the way you answer it. What is the argument from the other side against your position? How do you defend against that argument.
Thinking about the Euthyphro Problem: Level 2
A Mini Lecture
Part One
A good start to any philosophy class is to think about Plato’s approximately 2400 year-old dialogue called Euthyphro.
There’s a lot of background we could go over, but first let’s dive right in and do background later.
Imagine two people (Socrates and Euthyphro) having the following conversation:
“Why is the pious thing pious?” asks Socrates. (Substitute “good” for “pious,” if you like.)
“Because it is loved by the gods,” answers Euthyphro.
“Yes, but is it pious because the gods love it or do the gods love it because it is pious?” asks Socrates. (In other words, the gods love the good things, but are those good things good because the gods love them or do the gods love them because they are good things?)
“Uh…” says Euthyphro.
Think on it! Can you do better than “Uh…”?
Part Two
Did you give yourself time to think about it? You may or may not have gotten your head around the tongue-twisting brainteaser yet. But give it a moment either way.
Now, let’s continue together. The question Socrates starts with is about why things we say are good are good. Socrates is asking for a definition of goodness or, in his language, piety. What do you think the definition of “good” is? What is The Good? Try out a few answers in your mind.
Famously, Euthyphro said earlier in the dialogue that what he was doing was good. Euthyphro was suing someone whom he thought had acted unjustly. And Euthyphro offered that as a definition of good. But Socrates rebuked him, telling him that at best that is only an example. What we are looking for is the definition of good, not an example of good things.
There have been a variety of answers to this definitional question over the eons, but one answer is “Something is good because it’s loved by the gods” or by God, in the monotheistic context. Other answers might include: “The criterion of goodness in an action (i.e., a good action) is that the action create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people,” and so on. If an action does that then it’s good, it meets the definition. If it doesn’t, then it’s not.
But let’s stick with the religious answer: What’s good is whatever God says is good. You want a definition? That’s it. You want to know what the good things are, then just find out what things are loved by God.
That’s Euthyphro’s first real answer. He thinks that things are good or actions are pious etc., because they are loved by the gods. But Socrates sends him what I’ve called a tongue-twisting, brainteaser. Socrates basically says, Yes I agree with you that the good things are those loved by the gods, but are they good because they are loved by the gods or do the gods love them because they are good?
Are you starting to get it?
Part Three
The first thing to get is that the tongue twister is a two-part question. Are things this way or that way? Is the truth of the matter X or the opposite, not-X?
It’s a two-part question. Either good things are good because God loves them or that’s not the case, but rather God loves them because they are good.
After figuring out that it’s a two-part question where it’s either one way or the other but not both simultaneously, then you’ve got to figure out which it is. That is, which is the true one? But even before doing that, you have to understand what the two options are in and of themselves.
So, to repeat: the first option is that the good things are good because God loves them. The second is that God loves them because they are good. See? Both agree that the set of good things is equal to the set of things God loves. But they disagree about which is in virtue of which. God loves all and only the good things. And all and only the good things are loved by God. But which fact explains which?
If you think that something is pious or good because God loves it then you are sort of thinking that God makes the thing pious or good in virtue of loving it. So, it’s like God sprinkles piety-dust on the things that He likes. That’s got a name, kind of strange name. It’s called Volunteerism: God’s will voluntarily deems things pious or not. It’s his choice of them that makes them good.
The other option is that God loves the thing because it is pious or good. That is, there is something about the thing that makes it pious or good and that’s why God loves it. This is called Rationalism because God uses his reason to infallibly judge what’s pious and what isn’t.
Part Three
Okay. If you are starting to get your head around the two different positions, then it’s time to think about which one you believe to be correct. Are you a Volunteerist or a Rationalist on this question?
Throughout history there have been famous Volunteerists and famous Rationalists among philosophers and theologians or anybody who thinks about these questions.
Volunteerists, again, hold or believe that good things are good because God choose them to be. That means, that He makes them good. So if He had chosen something else to be good then it would have been good and the things we think to be good would not have been. For example, loving your neighbor is good because God’s love of it made it good. But God could have decided to make murder good instead.
On the other hand, according to Rationalism, murder could not possibly be good. See, according to Rationalism, good things are good and that is why God loves them. It is not the case, that God’s love merely makes certain things good, according to Rationalism. Rather, the good things were already good and their being good explains why God loves them. God loves them because, using His reason or rationality, He sees that they are good. That’s why murder could not possibly be good according to the Rationalist. It’s because murder is not good according to reason or rational thinking. It’s just not. The only way murder could be thought to be good would be if God acted against reason and rationality and deemed by fiat that murder is now good going forward. But to do that would be to act against reason or rationality.
So, that’s another implication of what appeared to be a simple question at the beginning. The implication is that if you are a Volunteerist then you think God can be unreasonable. But if you are a Rationalist, then you think that God will not go beyond reason. As many people know, the Bible says, “In the beginning was the word,” but the word for “word” in that famous sentence is logos in Greek. But logos means more than “words,” it also means reason and rationality and logic and cosmic order.
So according to Rationalism, it is the cosmic order of things that murder is bad and it’s opposite is good. But according to Volunteerism, it is merely contingent that murder is bad; it could have been that murder was good.
So which are you? Rationalist or Volunteerist?
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|