Euthyphro dilemma
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The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" (10a)
Although it was originally applied to the ancient
The dilemma
Socrates and Euthyphro discuss the nature of piety in Plato's Euthyphro. Euthyphro proposes (6e) that the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) is the same thing as that which is loved by the gods (τὸ θεοφιλές), but Socrates finds a problem with this proposal: the gods may disagree among themselves (7e). Euthyphro then revises his definition, so that piety is only that which is loved by all of the gods unanimously (9e).
At this point the dilemma surfaces. Socrates asks whether the gods love the pious because it is the pious, or whether the pious is pious only because it is loved by the gods (10a). Socrates and Euthyphro both contemplate the first option: surely the gods love the pious because it is the pious. But this means, Socrates argues, that we are forced to reject the second option: the fact that the gods love something cannot explain why the pious is the pious (10d). Socrates points out that if both options were true, they together would yield a vicious circle, with the gods loving the pious because it is the pious, and the pious being the pious because the gods love it. And this in turn means, Socrates argues, that the pious is not the same as the god-beloved, for what makes the pious the pious is not what makes the god-beloved the god-beloved. After all, what makes the god-beloved the god-beloved is the fact that the gods love it, whereas what makes the pious the pious is something else (9d-11a). Thus Euthyphro's theory does not give us the very nature of the pious, but at most a quality of the pious (11ab).
In philosophical theism
The dilemma can be modified to apply to philosophical theism, where it is still the object of theological and philosophical discussion, largely within the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. As
Many philosophers and theologians have addressed the Euthyphro dilemma since the time of Plato, though not always with reference to the Platonic dialogue. According to scholar Terence Irwin, the issue and its connection with Plato was revived by Ralph Cudworth and Samuel Clarke in the 17th and 18th centuries.[3] More recently, it has received a great deal of attention from contemporary philosophers working in metaethics and the philosophy of religion. Philosophers and theologians aiming to defend theism against the threat of the dilemma have developed a variety of responses.
God commands it because it is right
Supporters
The first horn of the dilemma (i.e. that which is right is commanded by God because it is right) goes by a variety of names, including
Criticisms
- Sovereignty: If there are moral standards independent of God's will, then "[t]here is something over which God is not sovereign. God is bound by the laws of morality instead of being their establisher. Moreover, God depends for his goodness on the extent to which he conforms to an independent moral standard. Thus, God is not absolutely independent."[20] 18th-century philosopher Richard Price, who takes the first horn and thus sees morality as "necessary and immutable", sets out the objection as follows: "It may seem that this is setting up something distinct from God, which is independent of him, and equally eternal and necessary."[21]
- Ash'ari got rid of the whole problem by denying the existence of objective values which might act as a standard for God's action."[22] Similar concerns drove the medieval voluntarists Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.[23] As contemporary philosopher Richard Swinburne puts the point, this horn "seems to place a restriction on God's power if he cannot make any action which he chooses obligatory... [and also] it seems to limit what God can command us to do. God, if he is to be God, cannot command us to do what, independently of his will, is wrong."[24]
- Freedom of the will: Moreover, these moral standards would limit God's freedom of will: God could not command anything opposed to them, and perhaps would have no choice but to command in accordance with them.[25] As Mark Murphy puts the point, "if moral requirements existed prior to God's willing them, requirements that an impeccable God could not violate, God's liberty would be compromised."[26]
- Morality without God: If there are moral standards independent of God, then morality would retain its authority even if God did not exist. This conclusion was explicitly (and notoriously) drawn by early modern political theorist Hugo Grotius: "What we have been saying [about the natural law] would have a degree of validity even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to him"[27] On such a view, God is no longer a "law-giver" but at most a "law-transmitter" who plays no vital role in the foundations of morality.[28] Nontheists have capitalized on this point, largely as a way of disarming moral arguments for God's existence: if morality does not depend on God in the first place, such arguments stumble at the starting gate.[29]
Responses to criticisms
Contemporary philosophers Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz take the first horn of the dilemma, branding divine command theory a "subjective theory of value" that makes morality arbitrary.
Richard Swinburne and T. J. Mawson have a slightly more complicated view. They both take the first horn of the dilemma when it comes to necessary moral truths. But divine commands are not totally irrelevant, for God and his will can still effect contingent moral truths.[33][34][18][19] On the one hand, the most fundamental moral truths hold true regardless of whether God exists or what God has commanded: "Genocide and torturing children are wrong and would remain so whatever commands any person issued."[24] This is because, according to Swinburne, such truths are true as a matter of logical necessity: like the laws of logic, one cannot deny them without contradiction.[35] This parallel offers a solution to the aforementioned problems of God's sovereignty, omnipotence, and freedom: namely, that these necessary truths of morality pose no more of a threat than the laws of logic.[36][37][38] On the other hand, there is still an important role for God's will. First, there are some divine commands that can directly create moral obligations: e.g., the command to worship on Sundays instead of on Tuesdays.[39] Notably, not even these commands, for which Swinburne and Mawson take the second horn of the dilemma, have ultimate, underived authority. Rather, they create obligations only because of God's role as creator and sustainer and indeed owner of the universe, together with the necessary moral truth that we owe some limited consideration to benefactors and owners.[40][41] Second, God can make an indirect moral difference by deciding what sort of universe to create. For example, whether a public policy is morally good might indirectly depend on God's creative acts: the policy's goodness or badness might depend on its effects, and those effects would in turn depend on the sort of universe God has decided to create.[42][43]
It is right because God commands it
Supporters
The second horn of the dilemma (i.e. that which is right is right because it is commanded by God) is sometimes known as
Criticisms
This horn of the dilemma also faces several problems:
- No reasons for morality: If there is no moral standard other than God's will, then God's commands are arbitrary (i.e., based on pure whimsy or caprice). This would mean that morality is ultimately not based on reasons: "if theological voluntarism is true, then God's commands/intentions must be arbitrary; [but] it cannot be that morality could wholly depend on something arbitrary... [for] when we say that some moral state of affairs obtains, we take it that there is a reason for that moral state of affairs obtaining rather than another."
- No reasons for God: This arbitrariness would also jeopardize God's status as a wise and rational being, one who always acts on good reasons. As Leibniz writes: "Where will be his justice and his wisdom if he has only a certain despotic power, if arbitrary will takes the place of reasonableness, and if in accord with the definition of tyrants, justice consists in that which is pleasing to the most powerful? Besides it seems that every act of willing supposes some reason for the willing and this reason, of course, must precede the act."[66]
- Anything goes:[67] This arbitrariness would also mean that anything could become good, and anything could become bad, merely upon God's command. Thus if God commanded us "to gratuitously inflict pain on each other"[68] or to engage in "cruelty for its own sake"[69] or to hold an "annual sacrifice of randomly selected ten-year-olds in a particularly gruesome ritual that involves excruciating and prolonged suffering for its victims",[70] then we would be morally obligated to do so. As 17th-century philosopher Ralph Cudworth put it: "nothing can be imagined so grossly wicked, or so foully unjust or dishonest, but if it were supposed to be commanded by this omnipotent Deity, must needs upon that hypothesis forthwith become holy, just, and righteous."[71]
- Moral contingency: If morality depends on the perfectly free will of God, morality would lose its necessity: "If nothing prevents God from loving things that are different from what God actually loves, then goodness can change from world to world or time to time. This is obviously objectionable to those who believe that claims about morality are, if true, necessarily true."[67] In other words, no action is necessarily moral: any right action could have easily been wrong, if God had so decided, and an action which is right today could easily become wrong tomorrow, if God so decides. Indeed, some have argued that divine command theory is incompatible with ordinary conceptions of moral supervenience.[72]
- Why do God's commands obligate?: Mere commands do not create obligations unless the commander has some commanding authority. But this commanding authority cannot itself be based on those very commands (i.e., a command to obey commands), otherwise a vicious circle results. So, in order for God's commands to obligate us, he must derive commanding authority from some source other than his own will. As Cudworth put it: "For it was never heard of, that any one founded all his authority of commanding others, and others [sic] obligation or duty to obey his commands, in a law of his own making, that men should be required, obliged, or bound to obey him. Wherefore since the thing willed in all laws is not that men should be bound or obliged to obey; this thing cannot be the product of the meer [sic] will of the commander, but it must proceed from something else; namely, the right or authority of the commander."[73] To avoid the circle, one might say our obligation comes from gratitude to God for creating us. But this presupposes some sort of independent moral standard obligating us to be grateful to our benefactors. As 18th-century philosopher Francis Hutcheson writes: "Is the Reason exciting to concur with the Deity this, 'The Deity is our Benefactor?' Then what Reason excites to concur with Benefactors?"[74] Or finally, one might resort to Hobbes's view: "The right of nature whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those that break his laws, is to be derived, not from his creating them (as if he required obedience, as of gratitude for his benefits), but from his irresistible power."[75] In other words, might makes right.
- God's goodness: If all goodness is a matter of God's will, then what shall become of God's goodness? Thus William P. Alston writes, "since the standards of moral goodness are set by divine commands, to say that God is morally good is just to say that he obeys his own commands... that God practises what he preaches, whatever that might be;"[68] Hutcheson deems such a view "an insignificant tautology, amounting to no more than this, 'That God wills what he wills.'"[76] Alternatively, as Leibniz puts it, divine command theorists "deprive God of the designation good: for what cause could one have to praise him for what he does, if in doing something quite different he would have done equally well?"[77] A related point is raised by C. S. Lewis: "if good is to be defined as what God commands, then the goodness of God Himself is emptied of meaning and the commands of an omnipotent fiend would have the same claim on us as those of the 'righteous Lord.'"[78] Or again Leibniz: "this opinion would hardly distinguish God from the devil."[79]That is, since divine command theory trivializes God's goodness, it is incapable of explaining the difference between God and an all-powerful demon.
- The open question argument) that the notion good is indefinable, and any attempts to analyze it in naturalistic or metaphysical terms are guilty of the so-called "naturalistic fallacy."[82] This would block any theory which analyzes morality in terms of God's will: and indeed, in a later discussion of divine command theory, Moore concluded that "when we assert any action to be right or wrong, we are not merely making an assertion about the attitude of mind towards it of any being or set of beings whatever."[83]
- No morality without God: If all morality is a matter of God's will, then if God does not exist, there is no morality. This is the thought captured in the slogan (often attributed to Dostoevsky) "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." Divine command theorists disagree over whether this is a problem for their view or a virtue of their view. Many argue that morality does indeed require God's existence, and that this is in fact a problem for atheism. But divine command theorist Robert Merrihew Adams contends that this idea ("that no actions would be ethically wrong if there were not a loving God") is one that "will seem (at least initially) implausible to many", and that his theory must "dispel [an] air of paradox."[84]
Restricted divine command theory
One common response to the Euthyphro dilemma centers on a distinction between value and obligation. Obligation, which concerns rightness and wrongness (or what is required, forbidden, or permissible), is given a voluntarist treatment. But value, which concerns goodness and badness, is treated as independent of divine commands. The result is a restricted divine command theory that applies only to a specific region of morality: the
A significant attraction of such a view is that, since it allows for a non-voluntarist treatment of goodness and badness, and therefore of God's own moral attributes, some of the aforementioned problems with voluntarism can perhaps be answered. God's commands are not arbitrary: there are reasons which guide his commands based ultimately on this goodness and badness.[89] God could not issue horrible commands: God's own essential goodness[81][90][91] or loving character[92] would keep him from issuing any unsuitable commands. Our obligation to obey God's commands does not result in circular reasoning; it might instead be based on a gratitude whose appropriateness is itself independent of divine commands.[93] These proposed solutions are controversial,[94] and some steer the view back into problems associated with the first horn.[95]
One problem remains for such views: if God's own essential goodness does not depend on divine commands, then on what does it depend? Something other than God? Here the restricted divine command theory is commonly combined with a view reminiscent of Plato: God is identical to the ultimate standard for goodness.[96] Alston offers the analogy of the standard meter bar in France. Something is a meter long inasmuch as it is the same length as the standard meter bar, and likewise, something is good inasmuch as it approximates God. If one asks why God is identified as the ultimate standard for goodness, Alston replies that this is "the end of the line," with no further explanation available, but adds that this is no more arbitrary than a view that invokes a fundamental moral standard.[97] On this view, then, even though goodness is independent of God's will, it still depends on God, and thus God's sovereignty remains intact.
This solution has been criticized by Wes Morriston. If we identify the ultimate standard for goodness with God's nature, then it seems we are identifying it with certain properties of God (e.g., being loving, being just). If so, then the dilemma resurfaces: is God good because he has those properties, or are those properties good because God has them?[98] Nevertheless, Morriston concludes that the appeal to God's essential goodness is the divine-command theorist's best bet. To produce a satisfying result, however, it would have to give an account of God's goodness that does not trivialize it and does not make God subject to an independent standard of goodness.[99]
Moral philosopher Peter Singer, disputing the perspective that "God is good" and could never advocate something like torture, states that those who propose this are "caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God?"[100]
False dilemma in classical theistic perspective
Jewish thought
The basis of the false dilemma response—God's nature is the standard for value—predates the dilemma itself, appearing first in the thought of the eighth-century BC
Hebrew has few
Tsedeq is something that happens here, and can be seen, and recognized, and known. It follows, therefore, that when the Hebrew thought of tsedeq (righteousness), he did not think of Righteousness in general, or of Righteousness as an Idea. On the contrary, he thought of a particular righteous act, an action, concrete, capable of exact description, fixed in time and space.... If the word had anything like a general meaning for him, then it was as it was represented by a whole series of events, the sum-total of a number of particular happenings.[109]
The Hebrew stance on what came to be called the
St. Thomas Aquinas
Like Aristotle, Aquinas rejected Platonism.[114] In his view, to speak of abstractions not only as existent, but as more perfect exemplars than fully designated particulars, is to put a premium on generality and vagueness.[115] On this analysis, the abstract "good" in the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is an unnecessary obfuscation. Aquinas frequently quoted with approval Aristotle's definition, "Good is what all desire."[116][117] As he clarified, "When we say that good is what all desire, it is not to be understood that every kind of good thing is desired by all, but that whatever is desired has the nature of good."[118] In other words, even those who desire evil desire it "only under the aspect of good," i.e., of what is desirable.[119] The difference between desiring good and desiring evil is that in the former, will and reason are in harmony, whereas in the latter, they are in discord.[120]
Aquinas's discussion of
Thomist philosopher Edward Feser writes, "Divine simplicity [entails] that God's will just is God's goodness which just is His immutable and necessary existence. That means that what is objectively good and what God wills for us as morally obligatory are really the same thing considered under different descriptions, and that neither could have been other than they are. There can be no question then, either of God's having arbitrarily commanded something different for us (torturing babies for fun, or whatever) or of there being a standard of goodness apart from Him. Again, the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one; the third option that it fails to consider is that what is morally obligatory is what God commands in accordance with a non-arbitrary and unchanging standard of goodness that is not independent of Him... He is not under the moral law precisely because He is the moral law."[132]
William James
William James, in his essay "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life", dismisses the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma and stays clear of the second. He writes: "Our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject to an overarching system of moral relations, true 'in themselves,' is ... either an out-and-out superstition, or else it must be treated as a merely provisional abstraction from that real Thinker ... to whom the existence of the universe is due."[133] Moral obligations are created by "personal demands," whether these demands[134] come from the weakest creatures, from the most insignificant persons, or from God. It follows that "ethics have as genuine a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well." However, whether "the purely human system" works "as well as the other is a different question."[133]
For James, the deepest practical difference in the moral life is between what he calls "the easy-going and the strenuous mood."
In philosophical atheism
Atheistic resolutions
Atheism challenges the assumption of the dilemma that God exists (or in the original formulation, that the many gods in Greek religion existed). This eliminates the need to decide whether God is either non-omniscient or arbitrary, and also eliminates the possibility of God as the source of morality.
Rejection of universal morality
The other assumption of the dilemma is that there is a universal right and wrong, against which a god either creates or is defined by. Moral nihilism challenges that assumption by rejecting the concept of morality entirely. This conflicts with the teachings of most religions (and thus is usually accompanied by atheism) but is theoretically compatible with the notion of a powerful God or gods who have opinions about how people should behave.
Alexander Rosenberg uses a version of the Euthyphro dilemma to argue that objective morality cannot exist and hence an acceptance of moral nihilism is warranted.[139] He asks, is objective morality correct because evolution discovered it or did evolution discover objective morality because it is correct? If the first horn of the dilemma is true then our current morality cannot be objectively correct by accident because if evolution had given us another type of morality then that would have been objectively correct. If the second horn of dilemma is true then one must account for how the random process of evolution managed to only select for objectively correct moral traits while ignoring the wrong moral traits. Given the knowledge that evolution has given us tendencies to be xenophobic and sexist it is mistaken to claim that evolution has only selected for objective morality as evidently it did not. Because both horns of the dilemma do not give an adequate account for how the evolutionary process instantiated objective morality in humans, a position of Moral nihilism is warranted.
Moral relativism accepts the idea of morality, but asserts that there are multiple potential arbiters of moral truth. This opens the possibility of disagreeing with God about the rules of ethics, and of creating multiple societies with different, equally valid sets of ethics (just as different countries have different sets of laws). "Normative moral relativism" asserts that behavior based on alternative systems of morality should be tolerated. In the context of religious pluralism, strong relativism it also opens the possibility that different gods and different belief systems produce different but equally valid moral systems, which may apply only to adherents of those faiths.
In popular culture
In the song "
In American legal thinking
Yale Law School Professor Myres S. McDougal, formerly a classicist, later a scholar of property law, posed the question, "Do we protect it because it's a property right, or is it a property right because we protect it?"[141] The dilemma has also been restated in legal terms by Geoffrey Hodgson, who asked: "Does a state make a law because it is a customary rule, or does law become a customary rule because it is approved by the state?"[142]
See also
- Appeal to authority– An argument that justifies the conclusion via an appeal to authority
- Divine simplicity – View of God without parts or features
- Ethical dilemma – Type of dilemma in philosophy
- Morality – Differentiation between right and wrong
- Ethics in the Bible – Ideas concerning right and wrong actions that exist in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles
- Divine command theory – Meta-ethical theory of morality
- Deontology – Class of ethical theories
Notes
- ^ G.W. Leibniz stated, in Reflections on the Common Concept of Justice (circa 1702): "It is generally agreed that whatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just; in other words, whether justice and Goodness are arbitrary or whether they belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things."
- ^ Leibniz 1702(?), p. 516.
- ^ Irwin 2006.
- ^ Wolfson 1976, p. 579.
- ^ Hourani 1962, pp. 13–40.
- ^ Haldane 1989, p. 40.
- ^ Irwin 2007, I, pp. 553–556.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, 2a2ae 57.2.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, 2a1ae 94.5.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, 1a2ae 100.8.
- ^ Pink 2005.
- ^ Irwin 2007, II, pp. 6–10.
- ^ See esp. Grotius 1625, 1.1.10 and Leibniz 1702(?); see also Leibniz 1706, pp. 64–75.
- ^ Gill 1999, esp. pp. 272–74.
- ^ Mackie 1980, Chapters 2, 8.
- ^ Gill 2011.
- ^ Swinburne 1993, pp. 209–216.
- ^ a b Swinburne 2008.
- ^ a b Mawson 2008.
- ^ Murray & Rea 2008, p. 247.
- ^ Price 1769, Chapter 5.
- ^ Hourani 1960, p. 276.
- ^ Haldane 1989, pp. 42–43.
- ^ a b Swinburne 1993, p. 210.
- ^ See Adams 1999, pp. 47–49 for a detailed discussion of this problem; also see Suárez 1872, 2.6.22–23.
- ^ Murphy 2012, Metaethical theological voluntarism: Considerations in Favor.
- ^ Grotius 1625, Prolegomenon, 11.
- ^ Kretzmann 1999, p. 423.
- ^ Oppy 2009, pp. 352–356.
- ^ Hoffman & Rosenkrantz 2002, pp. 143–145.
- ^ Hoffman & Rosenkrantz 2002, pp. 145–147.
- ^ Hoffman & Rosenkrantz 2002, pp. 166, 173–176.
- ^ Swinburne 1974.
- ^ Swinburne 1993, Chapter 11.
- ^ Swinburne 1993, p. 192ff.
- ^ Swinburne 1993, Chapter 9.
- ^ Swinburne 1974, pp. 217–222.
- ^ Mawson 2008, pp. 26–29.
- ^ Swinburne 1974, p. 211.
- ^ Swinburne 1974, pp. 211–215.
- ^ Swinburne 2008, pp. 10–12.
- ^ Swinburne 2008, p. 10.
- ^ Mawson 2008, pp. 29–32.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967341-4.
- ISBN 978-0-19-967341-4.
- ^ Williams 2013, Ethics and Moral Psychology: The natural law.
- ^ Williams 2002, pp. 312–316.
- ^ See Cross 1999, p. 92 for the view that our duties to others "hold automatically [i.e., without God's commands] unless God commands otherwise."
- ^ William of Ockham. Quodlibeta 3.13
- ^ William of Ockham. Reportata 4.16; see also Osborne 2005
- ^ D'Ailly, Pierre. Questions on the Books of the Sentences 1.14; quoted in Wainwright 2005, p. 74, quoting Idziak 63–4; see Wainwright 2005, p. 74 for similar quotes from Gerson.
- ^ Luther 1525, §88.
- ^ Calvin 1536, 3.23.2.
- ^ Descartes, III 25.
- ^ Descartes, III 235.
- ^ Descartes, III 343.
- ^ Hobbes. "Of Liberty and Necessity" 12
- ^ Hobbes. "A Defense of True Liberty", 12f
- ^ Paley, William. "Principles" 2.3
- ^ Hourani 1960, p. 270.
- ^ See Frank 1994, pp. 32–36 for the view that al-Ghazali incorporated rationalist elements that moved him away from traditional Ash'arite voluntarism.
- ^ harvnb|Baggett|2002}}.
- ^ Murphy 2012, Perennial difficulties for metaethical theological voluntarism: Theological voluntarism and arbitrariness.
- ^ Murray & Rea 2008, pp. 246–247.
- ^ Doomen 2011.
- ^ Leibniz 1686, II.
- ^ a b Murray & Rea 2008, p. 246.
- ^ a b Alston 2002, p. 285.
- ^ Adams 1973.
- ^ Morriston 2009, p. 249.
- ^ Cudworth 1731, 1.1.5.
- ^ Klagge 1984, pp. 374–375.
- ^ Cudworth 1731, 1.2.4.
- ^ Hutcheson 1742, I.
- ^ Hobbes, 31.5.
- ^ Hutcheson 1738, 2.7.5.
- ^ Leibniz 1710, p. 176.
- ^ Lewis 1943, p. 79.
- ^ Leibniz 1702(?), p. 561.
- ^ Hume 1739, 3.1.1.27.
- ^ a b Wierenga 1983, p. 397.
- ^ Moore 1903, Chapters 1, 2, 4.
- ^ Moore 1912, p. 79.
- ^ Adams 1979, p. 77.
- ^ Suárez 1872, 2.6 "Is the natural law truly a preceptive divine law?".
- ^ Adams 1973, esp. p. 109 and Adams 1999, esp. p. 250.
- ^ Quinn 2007, esp. p. 71.
- ^ Alston 1990, pp. 306–307.
- ^ Alston 1990, pp. 317–318.
- ^ Quinn 2007, pp. 81–85.
- ^ Alston 1990, p. 317.
- ^ Adams 1979. In this early work, Adams's view is that it is logically possible but "unthinkable" that God would issue horrible commands: "the believer's concepts of ethical rightness and wrongness would break down in the situation in which he believed that God commanded cruelty for its own sake" (p. 324). In later work, Adams contends that "God cannot be sadistic" (Adams 1999, p. 47).
- ^ Adams 1999, pp. 252–253.
- ^ For criticisms, see Chandler 1985; Morriston 2001; Shaw 2002; and Zagzebski 2004, pp. 259–261
- ^ See Adams 1999, pp. 47–49 on the problems of divine omnipotence and freedom of the will
- ^ See Adams 1999, Chapter 1; Quinn 2007; Alston 1990 distances himself from Platonism; see also Kretzmann 1999, pp. 375–376 for a similar solution, put in terms of divine simplicity.
- ^ Alston 1990, pp. 318–322.
- ^ Morriston 2001, p. 253.
- ^ Morriston 2001, p. 266.
- ISBN 978-0-521-43971-8.
- ^ James 1891.
- ^ a b c Rogers 2008, p. 8.
- ^ Rogers 2008, p. 186.
- ^ Rogers 2008, p. 186; see also Rogers 2000, pp. 127–133.
- ^ "PLAto's "EUTHYPHRO": An Analysis and Commentary".
- Amalekites (1 Samuel 15: 1–25). By the time of Amos, however, such "primitive and immature notions" are a thing of the past (Snaith 1944, p. 52; see also pp. 61–62, 66–67). For a recent overview, see Head 2010.
- preferential option for the poor" of late-twentieth-century Latin American liberation theology.
- ^ Snaith 1944, p. 70.
- ^ a b Snaith 1944, p. 77.
- ^ Snaith 1944, p. 174.
- ^ Snaith 1944, pp. 9, 187–188.
- ^ Sacks 2005, p. 164.
- ^ Sagi & Statman 1995, pp. 62–63.
- ^ Aquinas. Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics Archived 2011-07-26 at the Wayback Machine, Bk. 1, lectio 10, n. 158.
- ^ McInerny 1982, pp. 122–123.
- ^ Aristotle, Ethics 1.1; Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics Archived 2011-07-26 at the Wayback Machine 1, 9 and 11.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, I 5,1.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, I 6,2 ad 2.
- ^ Aquinas. Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics 1,10.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, I/II q24, a2.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, I/II 72,2.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, I/II 58,2 and I/II 77,2.
- ^ Aquinas. Summa contra Gentiles 4,92.
- ^ Hartmann, Nicolai. Ethik (3rd edition). Berlin, 1949, p. 378. Cited in Pieper 2001, pp. 78–79.
- ^ a b Pieper 2001, p. 79.
- ^ Aquinas. De Veritate Archived 2012-04-19 at the Wayback Machine 24,3 ad 2.
- ^ a b Aquinas. De Veritate 22,6.
- ^ Aquinas. De Veritate 24,3 ad 2; Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 2d,44,1,1 ad 1.
- ^ Pieper 2001, p. 80.
- ^ Aquinas c. 1265–1274, I 63,1.
- ^ Pieper 2001, pp. 80–81.
- ^ Feser, Edward (26 October 2010). "God, obligation, and the Euthyphro dilemma".
- ^ a b James 1891, Section II.
- ^ Gale 1999, p. 44: In his essay, "James used 'desire', 'demand' and 'claim' interchangeably, using 'desire' and 'demand' each eleven times and 'claim' five."
- ^ a b c James 1891, Section V.
- ^ James is acutely aware of how hard it is to "avoid complete moral skepticism on the one hand, and on the other escape bringing a wayward personal standard of our own along with us, on which we simply pin our faith." He briefly discusses several notions "proposed as bases of the ethical system", but finds little to help choose among them. (James 1891, Section III)
- ^ Gale 1999, p. 40.
- ^ Gale 1999, p. 44.
- ISBN 978-0393344110.
- ^ "Kanye West – No Church in the Wild Lyrics". Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^ See Richard H. Stern, Scope-of-Protection Problems With Patents and Copyrights on Methods of Doing Business Archived 2016-05-18 at the Wayback Machine, 10 Fordham Intell. Prop., Media & Ent. L.J. 105, 128 n.100 (1999).
- S2CID 154894480.
In Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro: 'Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?' ... This dilemma can be converted into matters of state and law: 'Does a state make a law because it is a customary rule, or does law become a customary rule because it is approved by the state?'
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Further reading
- Jan Aertsen Medieval philosophy and the transcendentals: the case of Thomas Aquinas (2004: New York, Brill) ISBN 90-04-10585-9
- John M. Frame Euthyphro, Hume, and the Biblical Godretrieved February 13, 2007
- ISBN 0-19-875049-8
- Plato Euthyphro (any edition; the Penguin version can be found in The Last Days of Socrates ISBN 0-14-044037-2)