Is Good Just What the Gods Want?

In this lecture, Lee Braver continues the discussion of Plato's Euthyphro. Now that Socrates has laid out the requirements that an ethical theory must meet, Euthyphro attempts to define piety as "what the gods love," a claim Socrates once again dismantles. As the dialogue continues, Socrates poses his famous question: do the gods love something because it is good, or is it good because the gods love it? Braver illustrates the far-reaching implications of this question. The value of a country's currency is a matter of collective belief, while an apple's nourishment exists regardless of what anyone thinks. If ethics are simply a creation of the gods then morality becomes arbitrary to their whims. But if goodness exists objectively, independent of divine will, then philosophy has real work to do. By the lecture's end, Braver turns to what he calls the dialogue's supreme irony: the search for a definition of piety turns out to be the most pious act Socrates and Euthyphro could perform. This examined life, Braver argues, is the inheritance Socrates leaves us across two thousand years.