Scholarship Review

Title: "Euthyphro: A Guide for Analytic Instruction", Teaching Philosophy, 15/1, 1992, 33-49.

Author: M. Glouberman

Date: August 2002

Reviewer: John Sellars

Summary

[33] Many analytic philosophers teach Plato within the context of a general introductory philosophy course. The author suggests that the Euthyphro is an especially good dialogue for analytic philosophers to use in such a context.

Dramatic Content, Literary Structure, and Philosophical Message

The Euthyphro is not merely a dialogue about piety but also a complex literary composition. [34] Euthyphro has charged his father with murder. For him to bring such a charge he must be extremely confident in his knowledge of the relevant events. Thus he is an ideal candidate for Socratic cross-examination. This mirrors the accusation of Socrates by Meletus, and the author offers a diagram of the relationships between these various figures. Relevant factors include relative age, [35] social position, and authority. However, the usual order has been subverted, with the young Euthyphro and Meletus challenging the older father and Socrates respectively. [36] The central philosophical theme of the dialogue is the 'conditions for stable knowledge' that would ground the claims to authority made by the younger characters.

The General and the Particular

At one point in the dialogue Socrates makes clear to Euthyphro that he is not interested in individual examples of piety but rather what makes such examples pious. [37] This is a useful point at which the teacher can introduced the ideas of abstract concepts, universals, and particulars.

The Exploitable Theme: Definiteness and Objectivity

Another important topic to signal is the distinction between subjective and objective claims. What counts as an objective claim? For Socrates, in order to know something objectively one must be able to supply a definition. [38] The author outlines eight conditions for an objective defintion ('objective definiteness'), each with its own 'code name': non-contradiction, discursive definability, bivalence, effectiveness, non-relationality, non-generality, necessity and sufficiency, and contradictories are contraries. These are discussed in some detail and applied to the dialogue [38-43].

A Bonus: Advanced Treatment

[44] As well as being useful at the introductory level, the Euthyphro also forms a good point of departure for more complex issues. These include Dummett's discussion of vagueness in language, Leibniz's treatment of relationality, and Russell's claims concerning negative facts. [45]

Appendix: Analytic Metaphilosophy and the Euthyphro

The Euthyphro is not merely a good text with which to teach, it is also 'superior to many of those historical documents which are typically enlisted'. In particular, it is a better text to use than Descartes' Meditations or Locke's Essay. [46] The problem with such texts is that they might lead new students to confuse philosophical reflection with psychological reflection. [47] In contrast to Descartes, Socrates is critical of claims to knowledge 'but his criticism does not leave commonsense battered and reeling'.

Comment

The author offers a spirited account of the pedagogical value of the Euthyphro. In terms of the author's own stated aims - to show why analytic philosophers should teach this dialogue - the article is, I think, very successful. The concluding remarks comparing the dialogue with the Meditations are also interesting. It is also nice to see a sensitivity to the dialogue's literary form alongside the more formal analysis.

However, the schematic diagram outlining the various relationships between the characters (and concepts) in the dialogue - a hexagon with internal diagonals - seems a little too neat and perhaps somewhat arbitrary. The use of fairly typical analytic abbreviations or 'code names' (NC, DD, BIV, EFF, NR, NG, N&S, CC) may give the piece the appearance of logical rigour, but this is very much at the expense of clarity of presentation. Some, if not many, students may well be put off by this sort of analysis, even if they have encountered it before. But it should perhaps be remembered that this sort of more formal analysis on the classroom board will be balanced by the reading of Plato's always accessible prose.

Despite these minor reservations, overall the author makes a strong case for the claim that the Euthyphro forms an excellent introduction to modern philosophical modes of reasoning. Anyone who doubts the philosophical benefit of continuing to teach Plato to new undergraduates should be directed to this article.