Euthyphron, a person who professes to be thoroughly conversant in the
knowledge of divine things, is represented as meeting Socrates at the
king’s porch, that is, the entrance of the court in which trials for
murder and impiety were carried on. He is surprised at seeing Socrates
at such a spot, for he cannot believe that he has a cause pending there.
Socrates tells him that he is indicted by one Melitus, a person of no
note at Athens, but one who knows how to govern the city rightly, for
that he charges Socrates with impiety in introducing new gods and
corrupting the youth. Socrates then asks Euthyphron whether he too has a
cause in the same court, and is informed that he has indicted his own
father for murder, because he had occasioned the death of one of their
hired servants, who had himself first slain a slave of Euthyphron’s
father, and then been cast bound into a ditch, where he died from hunger
and cold. On hearing this, Socrates asks whether he has such a perfect
knowledge of holiness and impiety that he is sure he is right in
bringing his father to trial; and on Euthyphron’s asserting that he has,
Socrates begs that he will accept him for his disciple, in order that he
may learn how to clear himself in his own approaching trial, and first
of all desires to know what holiness and impiety are. Euthyphron
confidently answers that what he is now doing is holy, namely, to
prosecute any one who acts unjustly, whoever he may be, but that not to
prosecute such an one is impious. Socrates, however, is not satisfied
with this answer, for that he did not ask about particular actions, but
about holiness in the abstract. “That, then, which is pleasing to the
gods is holy,” says Euthyphron. But Socrates shews that different things
are pleasing to different gods, so that the same things are both loved
and hated by divers of them, whence it follows that the same things are
both holy and unholy.
Euthyphron, feeling the force of this objection, next says that the holy
is that which all the gods love, and the impious that which they all
hate: but here again Socrates shews that this cannot be a correct
definition of holiness, for that it is not holy because they love it,
but they love it because it is holy. To help him out of his difficulty,
Socrates suggests that holiness is a part of justice; to which
Euthyphron assents, and adds that it is that part of it which is
concerned about our care for the gods. But, asks Socrates, what care for
the gods will holiness be? A kind of service paid to them, is the
answer. But to what end do our services of the gods avail? Euthyphron
evades the question by saying they are many and beautiful; but when
further pressed, he says that holiness consists in sacrificing and
praying to the gods, wherein, he is led to admit, men beg those things
that they need, and sacrifice such things as the gods need, from whence
Socrates concludes that holiness is a kind of traffic between gods and
men. But it is clear that the gods cannot be benefited by men;
therefore, as Euthyphron says, it must be that which is most dear. But
this definition of holiness had been already rejected. Socrates,
therefore, proposes to renew the enquiry, but Euthyphron, finding
himself defeated at all points, suddenly breaks off the discussion, on
pretence of business elsewhere.