(3e-5a) Euthyphro explains the specifics of his case. The question: ought a son to prosecute a father? How to know? Euthyphro’s first stab at an account: families ties don’t bind in these matters

S: What about your case, Euthyphro? Are you defendant or prosecutor?

E: Prosecutor.

S: Whom do you prosecute?

E: One whom I am thought insane to indict.

A BIT ABOUT ATHENIAN LAW AND JUSTICE: A son, Euthyphro, is preparing to prosecute his own father for murder. Most peculiar. But please step back and notice that it is hardly less peculiar, by our lights today, for a private citizen to prosecute any murder case. Prosecutor is surely a public office, is it not? Not in Athens. MORE ...

S: You’re chasing after someone who is sure to get away?

E: Hardly; he is rather old.

S: Who is it?

E: My father.

S: My dear sir! Your own father?

E: Certainly.

S: What is the charge? What is the case about?

E: Murder, Socrates.

S: By Olympus! Certainly most men would not know how to go about a thing like this and end up in the right, Euthyphro. This isn’t a thing for just anyone to do. This is a job for one far advanced in wisdom!

E: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, that is so.

S: Is it a case, then, of your father killing another relative? But I suppose that much is obvious. It wouldn’t make sense to prosecute your father for killing a stranger.

E: What makes no sense, Socrates, is for you to think it makes a difference whether the victim is a stranger or a relative. One should only consider whether the killer acted justly or not; if he acted justly, let him go; if not, prosecute even a killer who shares your hearth and home. You are just as polluted, remaining under the same roof with such a one, when you should be helping yourself and him by leading the way to divine cleanliness and justice. The victim was a dependent of mine, and when we were farming in Naxos he acted as our servant. In a drunken rage, he killed one of our household slaves, so my father bound him hand and foot, threw him in a ditch, then sent a man here to inquire of the priest what should be done. While awaiting an answer, he gave not a thought nor care to the prisoner – who, being a killer, might as well be dead, which he soon enough was. Hunger, exposure and his bonds did for the man before the messenger came back from the seer. Now my father and other relatives are angry that I am prosecuting him for murder on behalf of a murderer when my father didn’t even murder him, so they say; and even if he did, the dead man doesn’t deserve a second thought, being a murderer. They say it is impious for a son to prosecute a father for murder. But their notions of how the gods view holiness and unholiness are wrong, Socrates.

A PUZZLE: Euthyphro is mixing up possible lines of justification. He says he is acting out of supreme moral disinterest, ignoring the fact that the killer is related to him. He also implies that he is acting out of prudential self-interest, because he is related to the killer (hence more likely to be polluted by him.) Is this already a contradiction? What do you think?

THE COMPLEXITY OF THE CASE: If your only tool is the Hammer of Thor, every problem starts to look like a nail. MORE ...

THE CONFUCIUS CONNECTION: There is a very famous passage from Confucius' Analects, in which a case astonishingly like Euthyphro's is considered, and a different answer is arrived at. MORE ...

S: Whereas, Euthyphro, you think your knowledge of the divine, of holiness and unholiness, are so accurate that – by Zeus – given that it all happened just as you say, you have no fear of acting i mpiously now by bringing your father to trial?

E: Euthyphro would hardly be superior to the crowd – I should be of no use, Socrates – if I did not have accurate knowledge of all such things.

ARROGANT, isn't he? MORE...

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