The Battle for Influence in 4th/5th Century Athens: Philosophers, Sophists, Artists, and Powerful Figures

The Battle for Political andSocial Influence in4th/5th Century B.C. Athens The competitors were: Philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) Sophists (Protagoras, Thrasymachus, Gorgias, Cratylus, et al.) Artists (Poet-Dramatists like Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles) Heads/Members of Powerful Families, Generals (Pericles, Cephalus, Polemarchus, etc.)

What is the difference between these competitors? • Philosophers care about what is true, and want to find ways to reveal what is true, regardless whether what is true is what we WANT TO BELIEVE! • Sophists care only about winning arguments. In Athens, Sophists were experts at rhetoric(the art of persuasion through conversation). They are like lawyers: they want their clients to win, regardless whether their clients are right. [In Athens, Sophists were teachers who would, for a fee, train people in the art of persuasion. This was of great interests to Athenians because their form of government was based on democratically-established citizen councils who arrive at laws and policies through discussion about what laws to institute/what policies to pursue.

Artists (poets, dramatists, etc.) believe that they have special powers of perception and insight that give them knowledge of what is true, and their poems, plays and songs express and reveal these truths. • Heads of influential families, generals, and other prominent social and political figures believe (like Donald Trump), that they know what is true because they equate their social/political success with special powers of insight and knowledge.

What Socrates Offered • Idea that knowledge is hard to find, and “Socratic Dialogue” (rational conversation following a method that reveals whether what is being asserted is known to be true, or not known to be true) is the only way to find it. • The method: Elenchus (First, ask a question about something that we want to know [What is Justice? What is Moral Goodness? What is right/wrong?]; Second, propose an answer; Third, consider what follows from that answer [what else must be true if that is true]; Fourth, consider whether the answer, and what follows from it, is consistent with anything else we believe is true. If our answer, and what we discover follows from it, and all of our beliefs we take to be true, are not consistent with each other, this suggests that one of the beliefs, at least, is false. {WHY?}

Socrates’ Mission • Chaerophon (Socrates’ friend) asked the oracle at Delphi “who is the wisest of men”. The oracle answered: “There is none wiser than Socrates”. • Socrates thought this suggested, falsely he thought, that he was wise. • His mission became to try to establish that the oracle was wrong by interrogating anyone who claimed to have knowledge, and thus to be wise, in order to show that there were people wiser than he. • The conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro represents an example of Socrates pursuing this mission.

The Euthyphro Dialogue • Plato wrote a series of reports of conversations Socrates had with various people in Athens during the period in which he was pursuing his ‘mission.’ • These are often called “The Socratic Quest Dialogues of Plato” and Plato implies that these are literal ‘transcriptions’ of what was said on the occasion of these conversations (some of which Plato witnessed himself, others of which he heard about from those that did) • These dialogues usually include: the Apology, the Euthyphro, the Meno, the Phaedo. • The Euthyphro demonstrates “Socratic Dialogue” and the Elenchus Method in the way Socrates deployed it to answer the question “What is Piety [morally acceptable]?”.

Let’s Try to See If We Can Discover What We Already Believe makes an action Morally Unacceptable (the opposite of pious, i.e., impious) • One way to does this is to ask: “Why is it morally wrong/impious to commit murder?” • Let’s try to break into groups of 2. Each group will answer the question as best they can, then we will hear from each group and try to decide what is the correct answer.

Idea of a Definition in the Euthyphro Dialogue A. Picks out some feature found in every pious action. B. This feature not shared by any impious action. C. This feature (or lack thereof) makes an action pious (impious).

Euthyphro’s First Definition piety=the variety of pious actions. Problem: not general, not the form of pious things, just a grab bag of examples. Why this is a problem: Because examples only help me know what piety is if I already can see what it is in pious actions that makes them pious (so it assumes I already know what piety is!)

Euthyphro’s Second Definition piety=what the gods love. Problem: gods love and hate the same things. Why this is a problem: Because it says that the same actions can both be pious and not pious. But whatever is true of piety cannot be also false!(definition says: Piety = P and not P!)

Euthyphro’s Third Definition&Euthyphro’s Dilemma piety=what ALL the gods love. The Trap (Socrates’ Question): Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because the gods love it??? Why this is a problem: Because it says that the same actions can both be pious and not pious. But whatever is true of piety cannot be also false!(definition says: Piety = P and not P!)

Euthyphro’s Two (Equally Bad) Options Once Euthyphro agrees that pious actions depend on something about the Gods’ loving them, then he is left with two possible outcomes depending on which of the two possible answers to Socrates’ question he decides to give: • If he answers “Actions are Pious Because the Gods Love Them”, then it follows that piety is an arbitrary property of actions • If he answers “The Gods Love these Actions Because they are Pious”, then what makes the action lovable AND THEREFORE PIOUS involves something besides the fact that the Gods love them (so the Gods are not what make actions pious…something ELSE determines that they have this property!!)

ConclusionPiety is either a God-based, but Arbitrarily-Determined property of ActionsORWhat makes actions pious is Unexplained (thus, the Gods’ love of the actions is IRRELEVANT to the fact that they ARE PIOUS)

What Follows From This? Given the dilemma posed by Socrates, Euthyphro must again look for an alternative definition of piety. Why? Because his definition either makes piety an arbitrary property of actions, or makes the role of the Gods irrelevant to what makes actions pious (and thus, makes his definition fail [a definition must tell us why the thing defined is the kind of thing it is and NOT SOMETHING ELSE, a requirement of all real definitions that this definition fails to provide!).

Does this mean that NO Account of Piety Could be Determined by Something about the Gods? Not necessarily, but it cannot be determined simply by Divine Command alone. SO The Divine Command Theory of Morality (very popular then, and now) is shown to be FALSE by this shrewd and subtle question posed by Socrates. SO IS PIETY ESTABLISHED WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO GOD/GODS?

Not necessarily. Here’s how: God could, in having Moral Perfection as an essential divine property, be the Source and Ground of all Moral Goodness. In other words, Moral Goodness could be grounded in God’s Nature. In that case, what is pious would be determined by God. Of course, God would recommend that we be good (because, in being morally perfect and able to both infallibly detect what is right and what is wrong and also bound to promote moral goodness in the world God Created, that would be God’s duty), but the source of moral goodness would lie in God’s moral perfection, not in the mere fact that God commands us to be good.

4th/5th defns. (12e): pious = part of the just, concerned with care of the gods Problem: we cannot care for the gods as we might care for horses....their benefit cannot be an objective of ours, so we can only care for the gods by making ourselves slaves to their wishes. (14c) pious = prayer and sacrifice. trad'l reverence for gods. Same problem: with traditional reverence, we have the same problem as caring for the Gods. Since all we can do is give Gods what they want from us by way of prayer and sacrifice. FULL CIRCLE!! This is just to be concerned to provide the gods with what pleases them. Again piety=what pleases the gods. But that means these definitions are vulnerable to the same dilemma posed by Socrates to Euthyphro’s third definition. Result: Aporia (what’s that?)

Elenchus Revisited • How does it work? It produces an inconsistent triad of beliefs: • P [hypothesis...initial claim, i.e., Piety is What the Gods Love] • P-->Q (or alternatively, P-->Q) [draw some reasonable consequence from P; e.g., “The Gods must love all the same things”] • Q (alternatively, not Q) [note a fact which denies the consequence drawn from P; e.g., “The Gods do not love all the same things”] • These are not consistent propositions: one of the three must be rejected to maintain consistency. Appeal to principle of noncontradiction and claim that all true beliefs are consistent.

Is Elenchus Purely Destructive? • What did we discover in this dialogue? Did we make progress? If so, what kind of progress? Discuss.

The Battle for Influence in 4th/5th Century Athens: Philosophers, Sophists, Artists, and Powerful Figures