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Course 14 · Lesson 6.2

The Euthyphro question and moral realism without God

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 14 outline

Module 1: Arguments, Existence and Necessity

  1. What natural theology attempts and what it does not
  2. Necessary and contingent existence
  3. How to read and test an argument for God
  4. Philosophy of religion today: a map of the field

Module 2: The Ontological Argument

  1. Anselm and the argument of the Proslogion
  2. Gaunilo and the perfect island objection
  3. Kant: existence is not a real predicate
  4. What the ontological argument would show if it worked

Module 3: Cosmological Arguments

  1. Aquinas: the first three ways
  2. Infinite regress: what is the problem?
  3. Leibniz, the principle of sufficient reason and the argument from contingency
  4. Objections: the brute fact reply and the fallacy of composition

Module 4: The Kalam Cosmological Argument

  1. The kalam tradition: Philoponus, al-Ghazali and Bonaventure
  2. The modern argument: whatever begins to exist has a cause
  3. Did the universe begin? Philosophy and cosmology
  4. Objections and replies, and what follows about the cause

Module 5: Teleological and Fine-Tuning Arguments

  1. From Aquinas’s fifth way to Paley’s watch
  2. Hume and the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  3. Darwin and the change in the design argument
  4. The fine-tuning argument: what is claimed and what is debated
  5. The multiverse and other replies

Module 6: The Moral Argument and Divine Hiddenness

  1. The moral argument: Kant, Lewis and contemporary forms
  2. The Euthyphro question and moral realism without God
  3. Evolution and moral knowledge
  4. The argument from divine hiddenness and Christian replies

Module 7: Contemporary Modal Arguments and Evaluation

  1. Possible worlds and modal logic in plain language
  2. Plantinga’s modal ontological argument
  3. Assessing the modal argument: what it needs and what it shows
  4. Weighing the arguments together, and what none of them prove

All courses

Program / Course 14: Arguments for the Existence of God / Lesson 6.2

What you will learn

  • State the Euthyphro question and the dilemma it poses for divine command views.
  • Describe the main Christian replies, including the appeal to God’s nature.
  • Explain how some philosophers ground objective morality without God.
  • Say what each side must show to make its case.

The big idea

In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks whether the gods love the pious because it is pious, or whether it is pious because the gods love it. Applied to God: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? The first answer seems to make morality arbitrary. The second seems to place a standard above God. Many Christian philosophers answer that God’s own good nature is the standard. Many secular philosophers answer that objective moral facts need no divine ground.

Key terms

Euthyphro dilemma
The question whether an act is good because God approves it, or God approves it because it is good.
Divine command theory
The view that moral duties are constituted by the commands of God.
Voluntarism
The view that God’s will, not his reason, is the basis of what is right.
Divine nature theory
The view that goodness is grounded in God’s own character, which is neither arbitrary nor external to God.
Non-natural moral realism
The view that there are objective moral facts that are not reducible to natural, physical facts, and that need no God.
Naturalistic realism
The view that moral facts are objective but are facts about human well-being or similar natural features.
Arbitrary
Without a reason; determined only by will or chance.

Background

Plato wrote the Euthyphro around 399 BC. Socrates meets Euthyphro near the court, where Socrates is to be tried, and asks what holiness is. The discussion leads to the question whether the gods love what is holy because it is holy. The dialogue ends without an answer.

Medieval theologians discussed the question at length. Aquinas held that God’s commands flow from his wisdom, so are not arbitrary. William of Ockham and some later thinkers placed more weight on God’s will. In the Reformation period, some Reformed writers were thought to emphasize divine will, though their intention is disputed. In recent decades Robert Adams, William Alston and others have defended a refined form of divine command theory in which God’s nature is the ground.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The dilemma stated

First horn: if something is right only because God commands it, then God could have commanded cruelty, and it would have been right. Morality seems arbitrary, and praising God as good becomes empty, since good just means what God does. Second horn: if God commands it because it is right, then rightness exists independently of God, and God is subject to a standard he did not make. Then morality does not depend on God, and God is not the source of it.

Step 2: The reply from God’s nature

Many Christian philosophers take a third option. God does not command arbitrarily, and does not answer to a standard outside himself. God is good by nature, and his commands express that goodness. Goodness is not a rule over God, but the character of God. Aquinas and Augustine are cited as sources. Critics ask whether the claim that God is good has any content, if goodness is whatever God is. Defenders answer that people have an independent grasp of goodness, which they recognize in God as the fullest example.

Step 3: The claim that morality does not need God

Many secular philosophers accept that there are objective moral facts. They hold that torturing the innocent is wrong in the way that two plus two is four, as a necessary truth. Derek Parfit’s On What Matters (2011) defends such non-natural realism. Others, including Peter Railton and Richard Boyd, defend naturalistic realism, in which moral facts are facts about well-being. On these views, Euthyphro’s second horn is accepted without worry: goodness does not depend on God or on anyone.

Step 4: Replies to the secular realist

Defenders of the moral argument raise two problems. First, they say that abstract moral facts are strange things, which would not be expected to exist in a purely physical universe, and which seem to have no connection to human minds. Second, they say that it is odd to think that moral duties could be binding on persons without being commanded by a person. A duty, they claim, is a kind of demand, and demands come from someone. Secular realists reply that mathematical truths are also abstract and yet known, and that a duty need not be a command.

Step 5: What the debate shows

The argument is not settled. Both sides agree that morality is not arbitrary and that some acts are plainly wrong. They differ about its foundation. Believers say that an ultimate good, God, makes the best sense of a world of persons who are bound by moral truth. Unbelievers say that moral truth is part of the nature of things and needs nothing more. A student can hold either view and still understand the strongest form of the other.

  1. Could an act of cruelty become right if God commanded it? What does your answer imply?
  2. Is it satisfying to say that God’s nature is the standard of good?
  3. Can moral facts exist without anyone to command them?
  4. Is a moral duty more like a command or more like a truth of mathematics?
  5. What would it mean for goodness to be independent of God?
  6. Which of the two horns troubles you more?

Examples

Abraham and Isaac

In Genesis 22 God commands Abraham to offer his son, and then prevents it. Some philosophers, including Kierkegaard, saw here a case of divine command overriding ordinary morality. Many Christian interpreters see in the story a test, a prefiguring of Christ, and a sign that God does not accept human sacrifice. Interpretations differ.

The prime numbers

That there are infinitely many prime numbers is true whatever anyone thinks, and even whatever God commands. Secular realists say that moral truths such as the wrongness of cruelty are similar. Theists reply that numbers are not demands on persons, as duties are.

A loving parent

A loving parent does not command a child to do things for no reason, nor is she subject to an outside rule about being loving. Her commands come from who she is. Defenders of the divine nature theory use this kind of case to illustrate how God can be neither arbitrary nor under an external standard. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching, following Aquinas, holds that the moral law is rooted in the eternal law, which is God’s wisdom, and that human reason can know natural law. This avoids the arbitrary horn, since God’s commands express his wisdom, and the independent horn, since the standard is God’s own nature.

Orthodox

Orthodox theology speaks of God as the good, and of virtue as participation in God’s life. The dilemma assumes a picture of God as a lawgiver outside the creature, which Orthodox writers find foreign. They stress that the moral life is union with God.

Protestant

Protestants vary. Some Reformed and Lutheran writers stressed divine will. Contemporary evangelical philosophers like Adams and Alston defend the divine nature view. Others hold a divine command theory in a modified form. Plantinga has discussed the dilemma at length.

Secular realist views

Parfit and other secular philosophers hold that moral truths are objective and necessary, so need no God. They add that a theistic account does not escape the dilemma, since it must say why God’s nature is good, and the answer will have to appeal to a standard.

Anti-realist and skeptical views

Anti-realists such as Mackie hold that there are no objective moral facts at all, and that moral language expresses attitudes or social conventions. For them the question of the ground of objective morality does not arise, since there is none.

Why it matters

The Euthyphro question is one of the oldest in philosophy and is a clear test of how a view of God and a view of morality fit together. It helps a student see that believers and unbelievers often share a conviction that morality is real, and differ on what makes it so.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Christianity teaches that anything God commands is right, whatever it is.

Correction: Most Christian traditions hold that God’s commands come from his good nature and wisdom, and that God cannot command what contradicts his character.

Misunderstanding: The dilemma refutes theism.

Correction: Few philosophers hold that. Most think the nature reply is at least coherent. Whether it succeeds is debated.

Misunderstanding: Secular realists think morality is only opinion.

Correction: Many hold that morality is objective, like mathematics. Those who deny objectivity are anti-realists, a different group.

Misunderstanding: Plato believed in the God of the Bible.

Correction: Plato’s gods were the gods of Greek religion, and his own thought pointed to the Good. Christian thinkers later read him in light of their faith.

Knowledge check

State the Euthyphro dilemma as applied to God.

Is an act good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? If the first, morality seems arbitrary, since God could have commanded cruelty. If the second, goodness exists independently of God, and God is subject to a standard. The dilemma is meant to show that morality cannot depend on God in a satisfying way.

How do many Christian philosophers respond?

They say a third option exists. God is good by nature, and his commands express that nature. Goodness is not a rule over God, nor an arbitrary choice, but his character. Critics ask what content the claim has, and defenders reply that people have a grasp of goodness that they recognize in God. The debate continues.

What is non-natural moral realism?

It is the view that there are objective moral facts that are not facts of physics or biology, and that are true whatever anyone thinks. Derek Parfit defended it. Its supporters hold that moral truths are necessary, like mathematical ones, and so need no God. Theists reply that such abstract facts do not explain duties as demands.

What do both sides agree on?

Both sides agree that morality is not arbitrary and that some acts are plainly wrong, for example torturing the innocent for amusement. They differ about the foundation. Believers say that a perfectly good God best explains it, and secular realists say that it is a basic feature of reality. Anti-realists reject the shared starting point.

Think it through

  1. Do you find the divine nature reply satisfying or evasive?
  2. Is it plausible that moral truths are like mathematical truths?
  3. How does a view of God affect a view of what duty is?
  4. Do you know people who hold a different view from yours but share yhuman morality?

Independent assignment

The two horns

In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Write the Euthyphro dilemma in your own words with a concrete example of an act. Then write the divine nature reply and the best objection to it. Finish by saying what a secular realist would add. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study