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Euthyphro's dilemma

In the dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro whether the pious is being loved by gods then because it is pious, or whether it is not pious because it is being loved by gods. There seems to have been a harsh contradiction in Euthyphro's responses because at first , Euthytphro contemplates over holiness covers everything god likes.Nevertheless, after Socrates introduced a counter arguement emphasizing the will of gods might conflict and their expectations might differ,his insistence on this notion will make him seem that he is not fully aware of the concept of the holiness, he is compelled to revise and change his arguement.At this point, Socrates' supportive ideas with his arguement is based on relativists' opinions. According to relativists , knowledge may vary from person to person ,from place to place and from time to time.And this means that there is no absolute truth. Every person may have different backgrounds and that is why the perception of the same concept may differ.It is just like this for the gods.Thus, the gods cannot reach a compromise on a spesific definition of the holiness and piety.If there is no absolute truth that gods can concur with on , According to what this concept indicates , Euthyphro's arguement has already collapsed and so he had to change it.

Another aspect of this dilemma is what socrates is trying to do and what he has in his mind while asking these questions.He is just attempting to draw attention to the differency between being x and getting x. Being x refers to the state of the object,but getting x refers to an action(x refers to a deed ,an action.You can put a verb instead of x,for instance, like carried. And it becomes getting carried and being carried).For instance,"something carried is being carried because it gets carried :it does not get carried because it is being carried" [1].To make it clear by taking the dilemma into account,in short,it can be said that being approved is distinct from getting approved.Something approved is approved because it gets approved,it does not get approved because it is approved.This works in the same way for the dilemma above. Hence, when we apply this rule to the dilemma, we see that Euthyphro was a little bit confused about the difference these two concepts.(getting approved and being approved)At first glance,he seems to believe the pious is being loved by gods then because it is pious ,but after changing his mind , it is not pious because it is being loved by gods.Because,Socrates convinced him of more than one gods have more than one different thoughts and attitudes.And after changind his mind , Euthyphro contradicts himself on determining the resource of piety as i mentioned in the example that he confuses to differentiate the difference between getting approved and being approved.

When we consider Euthyphro's two different answers to Socrates' similair questions , While answering socrates questions, he is just like going around in a circle . After he gave a far more different replies to second questions than he gave reply to former questions,in other words,we can consider this differency as opposition, it seems, after his two distinct responses to what socrates asked, that Euthyphro has reached the point in this circle where he was at the begginning of the conversation and this gives us a clue of how wisdom he is about piety and holiness.His lack of information about these issues(what is piety and impiety or what is holiness ) makes him incompetent to make someone prosecute.

References

[1] http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/euthyphro/section5.rhtml

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