Ramifications from the lack of inherent qualities from Plato's Euthyphro

Socrates expounds a line of questioning with Euthyphro about the source of the state (intrinsic quality) of an object comes from. It goes something like this: if a think is being seen, it is not being seen because it has some inherent property of “visible”, but rather it earns the “visible” property because someone is seeing it. Likewise, something that is being carried is not a property that is inherent to the object being carried, rather being carried is a property it earns because in that moment in time, it is being carried. Something outside of the objects in both questions are acting on the object to give it its “visible” or “carried” properties, and thus those properties cannot be intrinsic to the object itself. At first, this distinction seemed to me useless to point out. What difference does it make if the object is being seen because it is visible or visible because it is seen? In either case, it is seen and it is visible. Whether or not one precedes the other seems like a surface level issue, a “pulling a part of words” that Socrates would certainly not have appreciated had it come out of the mouth of his interlocutors. But, when examining this question and it’s underlying principle closer, this distinction reveals the incompleteness of using attributes and external sources to conclude an essential definition of a universal. Socrates uses visibility, being carried, and a few more properties to build up to an even more monumental point: is something holy because the gods love them or do the gods love that thing because it is holy? This question has far greater impact on ontology, epistemology, and even theology.

In regards to ontology, if the only reason some action or some object is ‘holy’ is because the gods so love that action or object, then that action’s or object’s essential nature is not holy or unholy, it’s neutral. It’s like a black and white movie; without the gods’ attribution of love towards it, there is no color. This doesn’t mean that the action or object in question is unholy, just that it is neither. The object just is without any sort of inherent holiness. If a X has to wait for Y to install more properties then the X does not intrinsically carry those properties. This can call into question the essential nature of almost everything that we seem to think we know. I think this is why Socrates fails throughout all of Plato’s dialogues to arrive at some proper, complete definition of a universal. All his dialogues are left with more wrong answers than any right ones and it points to the fact that maybe it is not possible because our own basis for understanding the being of any one thing is in relation to the being of some other one thing. For example, we can call something red because we find a lot of different things that all look similar in hue. We group all those things together and give that property of it’s color the named ‘red’. But, that same group of things could easily be called ‘green’ or ‘blue’. Our understanding of the being of red is wholly dependent on our attribution of such a property to the group of things that give off that color. It seems that all of reality is described in relation to other things and so no one thing can have an independent, essential nature to it free of external dependencies.

In regards to epistemology, Socrates is dismantling a large swath of how we ‘know’ something is or is not another thing. If we take fire for example, a child might touch a hot coal, get burnt, and find that the fire is ‘bad’ or at least ‘harmful’. However, the fire was not bad or harmful anytime before the child touched the hot coal. Before that, the fire was just fire, containing intrinsic properties like bright and hot. Before the child interacted with the fire, the properties of bad or harmful could not be attributed to it. And, these properties in some way are subjective. If, for example, human skin was not easily dismayed by the touch of hot coals then maybe in that reality the properties of ‘bad’ and ‘harmful’ would never be attributed to fire. Even the seemingly ‘intrinsic’ properties like bright and hot are dependent human senses. Because we can see the fire, we can say it’s bright. Because we can feel the fire, we can say it’s hot. Being dependent on our senses, even the fire’s stronger intrinsic properties are dependent on other facts like our eyes and interaction with light. This reminds me of the challenges Bertrand Russell’s brings up on ‘appearance vs. reality’ in Problems of Philosophy. Because what we see is ‘distorted’ in a way due to our specific eyes, the interaction with light, the position at which we are viewing an object, the quality of the air, etc. the reality of the object we are ‘seeing’ is not what it appears to us to be. Thus, we can never know reality’s intrinsic nature, even if we must accept appearance to continue building knowledge.

In regards to theology, this line of questioning strikes at the heart of absolutism in regards to morality. A theist, like myself, might expound that the reason X is holy or good is because the Christian God has said that X is holy and good. Socrates would respond with the same question, "Is X holy and good because God says so, or does God say it is holy and good?" My reply, would be that it is because God says it is, fully supporting the assertion that X is not intrinsically holy and good. This brings up a challenge: why would God say that X is holy and good if it does not have those properties on it’s own? I’d argue, because He alone has the power to do so. This is the theological underpinning of the [[197. Divine Command Theory|Divine Command Theory]]; that an action’s status, and by extension all things as ‘being’ is an action, is morally good or not based on whether God has deemed it so. It would mean then, that if God was not real, then all things would be morally neutral and that there would be a need to find another way to create moral categories and place all things in the good or bad boxes. Without God, you’d still have the challenge of taking black and white film and giving it color. With God, there is an outside source of moral sovereignty that can illuminate onto things moral significance. I think of it as such: if we cannot know reality truly given the distortion by our senses and environment, then it would behoove us to look towards something or someone that can see reality for what it is. Given that God created all things, He would be able to know it’s intrinsic properties and by extension, His nature would be imparted on His creation. This last point is of great significance. Theologically speaking (and I assume the Christian God here), God is the only being whose essence is intrinsically benevolent. Because He is uncreated, His nature is His fully without the need for an outside deity to affirm or deny it. To go even deeper, His triune nature is what allows each person of the Trinity to affirm their collective, one nature together. When Jesus came to earth He was witness to the Father and the Father was a witness to Him; both affirming the power and Godliness of the other as members of the Godhead. Because the Christian God is uncreated and eternal, He is His own witness. It’s fascinating actually to think that maybe a witness like Y, something beyond X, is needed to give credence to the properties of X because X can either not know it’s own properties or be deceptive of it’s own properties. Satan can say one thing and mean another. Humans too, can lie to each other. Their properties and nature need to be attested to or denied by others. If this relationship between Y being a witness to X is inherent to the nature of reality as the problem of ‘appearance vs. reality’ makes it seem, then the Triune nature of God is well-equipped to solve it; God’s triune nature allows Him to be a witness to Himself giving all of created reality that same necessary principle that X needs the witness of Y to be X.

There is the question that if X cannot have intrinsic properties without an external witness Y, then would that rob X of all intrinsic properties including ones like goodness, holiness, and piety? If these universals are man made creations then yes, without human beings to be that Y witness, X would not be good, holy, or pious. If all humans suddenly disappeared, these sorts of universals would no longer exist and anything that previously shared in the nature of these universals could share in them no longer. If these universals come from an external source, like God, then their goodness, holiness, and piety is dependent on whether God’s mind changed on that matter. Socrates mentions this concern regarding the Greek Pantheon: how could Euthyphro claim that piety is what the gods find pious if all the gods are not in agreement and share different values? Socrates is right and this criticism is fit for any pantheistic or polytheistic religion that does not affirm one supreme being whose moral commands are final. The Christian Trinity avoids this problem because all three persons act in unison and share the same being and nature. Plus, the Christian God affirms throughout His Scripture that His nature does not change and His mind does not change. With both of these combined, the Christian God would be able to rebut Socrates’ critique of appealing to an outside entity like the 'gods' as the Christian God could safely say that what is good today has been good since the eternity past and will be good til eternity future. This attestation can then allow humans who can’t see reality for what it intrinsically is, to safely rely on those declarations by that God on what is good, holy, and pious (given of course, that the Christian God is real and faithful). This is one framework to know things without knowing their intrinsic properties.