23.2 Filial Impiety
In this setting Plato presents a dialogue on religion. Socrates, who has just left from the preliminary hearing, encounters his friend Euthyphro. Socrates explains that he is being prosecuted for introducing new gods and learns that Euthyphro, who is a prophet and religious expert, is involved in his own religious trial. Euthyphro grasps the fact that Socrates’ dependence on his divine sign is the grounds for the accusation. Socrates’ sign often warns him against certain actions and thus guides his path.
“What is your case?” Socrates asks. “Are you defending or prosecuting?”
“Prosecuting.”
“Whom?”
“Someone I would be thought mad to prosecute.”
“Really? Is it some fugitive?”
“He’s hardly likely to flee, since he happens to be quite old.”
“Who is it?”
“My father.”
“Your own father, sir!”
“Yes, indeed.”
“What is the charge, and what is the grounds?”
“Murder, Socrates.”
In the world of Athenian law, it is unheard of to prosecute one’s father. Citizens typically bring legal action against members of other families and parties in order to strengthen their own groups against opponents. Indeed, to prosecute one’s father is a breach of filial piety, an attack on the natural order. On the other hand, Euthyphro’s action shows that he has a high level of confidence in his own religious expertise, such that he feels justified in defying ancestral customs and conventional mores.
The seer explains to Socrates that one of his father’s farm laborers killed his father’s slave in a drunken fight. Euthyphro’s father bound the guilty man and had him thrown in a pit while he sent out to the authorities to determine what should be done with him. Before he received word, the killer had died from neglect. Euthyphro’s family are angry with him for blaming his father for what happened to a murderer who was, after all, only a hireling. But Euthyphro stands on principle that a wrong was done.
Socrates immediately hits on the idea of becoming Euthyphro’s student, so that he may defend himself effectively from the charge of impiety he is facing. “So now, by Zeus, tell me what you profess to know clearly. What sort of thing do you say is godliness and ungodliness, concerning murder and everything else?”
In response Euthyphro says, “Well, I say that holiness or piety is what I am now doing, accusing the perpetrator for murder or theft or whatever crime he is guilty of, whether it is your father or mother or anybody else; and not to accuse is unholiness.” In his own defense, Euthyphro points to the Greek myths that recount how the god Cronus attacked his divine father Uranus for his injustice, and Zeus in turn attacked his father Cronus for his injustice.
“This is the very grounds,” Socrates replies, “on which I am brought to trial. For when someone says these kinds of things about the gods, I find it hard to accept their views. For this reason, apparently, people will say I am wicked.” Here is one of the few remarks Socrates makes about his attitude toward popular religion. He finds tales about how the gods fight among themselves and wrong each other to be unacceptable. While he is religious, he does not accept uncritically the traditional myths about how the gods behave. “But tell me,” he asks, “in the name of the god of friendship, do you believe that these things really happened?”
“Yes, and things even more amazing, Socrates, which ordinary people know nothing about.”
“And you believe there was really a war that pitted gods against gods, frightful enmities, battles, and everything else told by poets and great authors, which our sacred rites depict, especially the robe of Athena that is carried to the Acropolis at the Greater Panathenaea covered with embroidered images of these events? …”
“Not only those, Socrates, but as I said a moment ago, I could tell you many other tales about the gods, if you like, that would surely shock you.”
