Socrates and Plato's Dialogues: Piety, Wisdom, and Truth

Piety and Relativism in the Euthyphro

In the Euthyphro, Socrates' questioning centers on discovering the true definition of piety — but it is geared toward arriving at a sense of reasonable judgment. After all, he himself is about to go before the judges, and he would like to receive a judgment that is reasonable from them. What he meets in Euthyphro is willfulness and subjectivity. Socrates attempts to show why it is important to remain objective about the law and to what extent we can judge others. In fact, it is Socrates who is searching for an objective standard — an absolute outside himself by which he may judge: "Tell me what is the nature of this idea, and then I shall have a standard to which I may look, and by which I may measure actions" (6e). Euthyphro happily engages in the dialogue and states that "piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them" (7a) — thus opening the way for Socrates to expose Euthyphro's own supposed "piety" as relativistic.

Socrates begins his exposé on piety and intellectual honesty by questioning that which causes hatred and war, asserting that differences in mathematics may be settled by measurement and summation, but that differences regarding "the just and unjust, good and evil, honorable and dishonorable" are those which cause hatred and war (7d). Yet he points out how even the gods are often in dispute — thus signifying that even the gods fail to agree about what is just and unjust, pious and impious. If piety is that which is pleasing to the gods, it stands to reason that piety is relativistic, since some of the gods may see some actions as holy and others as unholy. Euthyphro agrees with this assumption. Again, Socrates demonstrates that he himself is searching for absolute truth, while Euthyphro accepts relativism.

As Socrates further presses Euthyphro to define piety, the arguments that Euthyphro presents fail to satisfy him. Finally, Euthyphro expresses some frustration at the way in which Socrates makes his definitions appear to be anything but: "You make them move or go round, for they would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned" (11d). Here, Euthyphro admits to being "doubly ignorant" — that is to say, he prefers to think that he knows better than Socrates, even though he cannot explain himself in such a manner as to avoid appearing contradictory or incomplete. Instead, he puts the fault on Socrates, suggesting that Socrates simply fails to grasp his meaning. What this dialogue shows is that relativism leads to unjust and unreasonable judgments.

Socrates' Defense of the Philosophical Life in the Apology

Philosophy is the study of wisdom, and in the Apology, Socrates critiques political life — which encompasses religion, laws, and custom in Athenian society — by showing how its followers are hypocrites and he alone is the true politician: the one who embraces religion, law, and custom honestly because he embraces, first and foremost, philosophy. Indeed, Socrates shows that his accusers are unfit to cast judgment on him, for he is simply proving the will and wisdom of the gods — in whom all wisdom truly resides.

Socrates defends the philosophical life simply and humorously in Plato's Apology by bringing to the minds of his judges the exact reason he had begun his public teaching. Socrates admits that his intention was to "refute the god of Delphi" (21c), who had answered Chaerephon that there existed no man wiser than Socrates. Here, Socrates begins his defense by establishing that it is not he who considers himself to be wise, but rather the gods who consider him to be wise. He himself states how he believes himself to be ignorant and how all his efforts have gone into displaying his ignorance in an attempt to find someone truly wise who might offer enlightenment and thus provide Socrates with a "refutation" for the oracle. As Hugh Tredennick states, "His wisdom lay in recognition of his own ignorance…[and] it was the oracle's intention that he should convince others of their ignorance too, and so help them on the way to knowledge and goodness" (9–10).

Socrates cunningly professes that the assertion from the divine oracle at Delphi was surely false: "When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? And what is the interpretation of this riddle? For I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature…I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in hand" (21c). In such a way does Socrates defend himself by humbly admitting that he does not consider himself to be a wise man at all — but, ironically, that the gods do. Thus, Socrates so much as says: do not put me on trial, but the gods — for they are the ones who insist that I am a wise man.

As his defense continues, Socrates shows how all of the different men of Athens whom he interrogated — whether politicians, poets, or artisans — failed to show themselves to be any wiser than he. But then Socrates admits something truly profound. What seemed like humorous jesting before now becomes illuminative and sincere: he maintains that his own wisdom is nothing, and yet upholds the judgment of the god of Delphi by saying that what the oracle actually meant was that the wisdom of men is nothing — and that no man is wiser than Socrates because no man is actually wise, including Socrates himself. It is a brilliant philosophical point, honest and true: "O men of Athens…God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing" (23a).