The Euthyphro Dilemma
Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?
Posed by Socrates in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro around 399 BCE, this dilemma targets the foundations of divine command theory. It asks whether morality depends on God or whether God depends on morality, and finds problems in both directions.
Plato. (399 BCE). Euthyphro. Trans. various.
The dilemma as stated
Socrates is on his way to face charges of impiety. He meets Euthyphro, who is prosecuting his own father for murder. Socrates asks: what makes an act pious? Euthyphro says: whatever the gods love.
Socrates then springs the trap. Do the gods love pious acts because those acts are pious? Or are acts pious because the gods love them? These are not the same question, and every answer leads somewhere uncomfortable.
Why both horns cause problems
If something is good simply because God commands it, then goodness is arbitrary. God could have commanded cruelty, and cruelty would then be good. There is nothing to prevent it. This is the first horn, sometimes called the divine command theory in its starkest form, and it makes morality contingent on a kind of divine whim.
If God commands things because they are already good, the second horn, then goodness exists independently of God. God looks at the moral landscape and reports back. But this makes God morally superfluous: the source of goodness is somewhere else, and God is simply a reliable announcer of it.
For theists who believe God is the ground of all value, neither option is comfortable. The dilemma seems to force a choice between an arbitrary God and a redundant one.
The main response: divine nature theory
The most influential theistic reply is that the dilemma presents a false choice. God does not consult external moral facts, and God does not command arbitrarily. Instead, God's commands flow necessarily from God's own nature, which is essentially and necessarily good.
On this view, goodness is not separate from God, nor is it decided by God's will. It is constitutive of what God is. The divine nature theory, developed by thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and later Alvin Plantinga, holds that God is the standard of goodness rather than a legislator of it.
Critics respond that this move renames the problem without solving it. If God's nature is good, we still want to know what makes that nature good, and the dilemma reappears one level up. The dialogue Socrates began has never quite ended.
Discussion questions
- Do you think morality could exist without religion, or does it need something like a divine source?
- If God commanded something you found morally horrifying, would you obey?
- What does your answer say about whether you think morality is objective or defined by authority?
Take it to the dinner table.
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