Rethinking the Euthyphro Dilemma
The Euthyphro Dilemma (ED) is a supposed logical dilemma taken from Plato’s eponymous dialogue. The dilemma poses a challenge to theories of morality and axiology which hold that goodness is grounded in God. Let’s call such theories ‘Theistic Grounding Theories’ (TGTs).
One interesting response to the ED is to deny that it is a dilemma. For example, one might present a third option. If the third option is legitimate, then ED is an example of the fallacy of false dilemma.
What is a plausible third option? William Lane Craig provides a candidate. But first, let’s articulate the ED. In the dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the nature of piety or holiness. Socrates asks:
“Soc. And what do you say of piety, Euthyphro: is not piety, according to your definition, loved by all the gods?
Euth. Yes.
Soc. Because it is pious or holy, or for some other reason?
Euth. No, that is the reason.
Soc. It is loved because it is holy, not holy because it is loved?”Here, Socrates introduces into the dialectic what seems to be a dilemma:
Is piety pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious?
The problem raised here is a matter of grounding or explanation. What makes pious acts pious? In virtue of what is a pious act pious? Are pious acts pious because the gods endorse them, or do the gods endorse them because they are pious?
These days, we tend to frame the ED in terms of goodness or moral value rather than piety or holiness, and we’re inclined to think according to monotheism rather than polytheism. Hence, a contemporary articulation of the ED might look like this:
Are good acts good because God wills them, or does God will good acts because they are good?
Many thinkers interpret this question as a genuine dilemma and hold that both horns therein pose problems to TGTs. If you select the former horn, then goodness seems wholly arbitrary, and you are thus impaled on the problem of moral arbitrariness. But if you select the latter horn, then the standard for goodness seems independent of God, and you are stuck on a different problem, namely, one which suggests that TGTs are false.
Craig suggests a third option: God wills something because he is good.
“I think, however, that the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma, because there’s a third alternative. It’s not the case that God wills something because it is good, nor is it the case that something is good just because God wills it. Rather, God wills something because he is good. That is to say, it is God’s own nature which determines what is the good. God is, by nature, essentially compassionate, just, fair, kind, loving, and so forth. And because he is good, his commandments to us reflect, necessarily, his nature. And therefore, the commandments of God and our moral duties are rooted in God’s essence. They are not arbitrary, they’re rooted in God himself, but they aren’t grounded in anything external to God. God is himself the good who is the source of our moral duties.”
According to Craig, the ED is better characterized as a trilemma:
Good acts are good because God wills them. (I.e., God’s willing an act makes that act good.)
God wills good acts because they are good. (I.e., God wills only some possible actions, namely, the good ones, precisely because they are good. But God’s willing them doesn’t make them good.)
God wills good acts because he is good. (I.e., God is essentially and necessarily perfectly good; moreover, his goodness is a se and therefore not derived from anything external to him. He is the very standard and source of goodness, and therefore his will is pure and he only wills what is good.* God’s willing an act is not what makes the act good. Rather, an act is good insofar as it corresponds in some sufficient degree to God’s perfectly good nature.)
Now, if you hold, as I do, that goodness is not the product of some arbitrary act of will, then you should reject (1). We are thus left with (2) and (3). Craig rejects (2) and offers (3) instead. However, I don’t believe this dialectical move is required, at least not as a third option. We can account for Craig’s idea without positing a trio of horns. Consider (2):
God wills good acts because they are good.
(2) does not entail that goodness is grounded in something external to God’s nature, pace the many philosophers who seem to assume such an entailment. Suppose we select (2). We can ask the further question: If God wills good acts because they are good, what makes such acts good? What is the ultimate standard which determines that such acts are good? It seems to me that there are four options: (a) there is no standard at all; (b) there is no standard external to the acts themselves; each good act is endoaxic (i.e., each good act contains its own standard of goodness in itself); (c) the standard is God; (d) the standard is something other than God and other than the acts themselves.
Let’s look at each option. (A) is dubious. If there is no standard at all, then we are back with the problem of arbitrariness.
(B) is also questionable, given the countless acts of goodness that have occurred in human history. Is each of these good acts also its own standard of value? What, then, do they have in common such that it makes sense to call them “good?” If they have nothing in common, why call them all “good?” And if they have some common feature(s), wouldn’t that feature(s) indicate an independent standard(s) for goodness? Moreover, isn’t it simpler to have one standard rather than an enormous swarm of them?
(C) is similar to Craig’s option. But there’s a key difference: (c) is a sub-option of (2), not a third horn in addition to (1) and (2). Hence my inclination to hold that Craig’s posing of a third option is superfluous qua third option, though his idea qua idea is significant and not superfluous if offered as a sub-option of (2).
(D) would present a problem to TGTs. I hope to explore this option in a separate post.
If (c) is a sub-option of (2), then it seems the ED is a legit dilemma. The solution for supporters of TGTs is to reject (1), select (2), and pick (2c), which would enable one to grant that ED is a dilemma but argue that it doesn’t threaten TGTs because their supporters can choose the second horn without facing the problem commonly associated with it.
*Interestingly, at the end of Republic, Book II, Plato represents Socrates himself arguing for something like this view of God:
Socrates: God is always to be represented as he truly is, whatever be the sort of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in which the representation is given.
Adeimantus: Right.S: And is he not truly good? And must he not be represented as such?
A: Certainly
…
S: Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.