PHILOSOPHY AND "THE RELIGIOUS" (2)
We began the class with the Euthyphro, the first dialogue in Plato’s tetralogy enacting the philosopher’s trial and death. Euthyphro (“Mr. Orthodox” or “Straight-brain” in Greek) plays the comically inflated defendant to the tragically ignorant prosecutor Socrates, who puts Euthyphro’s divine wisdom and piety on trial as a stand-in for the Athenians who also want to “punish the wicked.” In fact Euthyphro is an unnaturally pious figure compared to the ordinary faithful, no mere earthling but enthused by his knowledge of the wonders of the city’s gods, wanting proudly to do as they do, to please them, to serve them in all righteousness, even onto parricide. It is not only Socrates who is “fascinatingly ugly.”
I met Euthyphro most recently in Utah, where I spoke at a conference on evolution and higher education. He was the “sainted” visitor guide glowing with histories of LDS miracles, the doctor who would never die, the transported young girl about to leave on her mission to Lithuania. The spectre of Euthyphro haunts American politics these days, and he carries a gun.
I have mostly thought of the world of faith and the faithful as beyond reason; you step through its door and will yourself not to look back. But what then to make of the other door, which tags that world with questions, marks it as a shadow place, made up of hope and fear? Not that the hope and fear is any less real, even if you now consider the images may be no more natural than human clothing, and even if in that regard Euthyphro represents an extreme (albeit part of the norm). Euthyphro’s mind cannot endure the Socratic dissection, though it may not really matter, since Socrates speaks in mere human words. Or does Socrates penetrate his mask, expose it to him? I’ve never been sure, one way or the other, how to interpret the end. (And this may be important, for in Plato's art of writing, both word and deed are relevant to the meaning.)
A comforting reading of the dialogue suggests that Euthyphro would have been better off, had he believed in (the) just and good god(s) Socrates believes in, poetic god(s) worthy of the highest service, virtue and the therapy of souls, the piety of knowing we do not know as gods know. But the same analysis suggests that/those god(s) would also have been measured by ideas of justice and goodness above them. I wonder then: can this still imply the ultimate principle = “<God>”? Or must that not--since nothing could be more perfectly incomprehensible--be meaningless to mortal reason? The contradiction Socrates exposes in the theology of warring gods will then turn out, on this discomforting reading, to reveal a worm at the core of all theology. I have myself been drawn toward both alternatives, sacred and profane, but my nature is always to return to the profane.
The Socratic dialogue does not ask what is god? even if it touches on this question. It asks what is piety? if we assume piety is a virtue. It suggests piety could not be a virtue if we did not know what it is, i.e. if we did not possess Socratic wisdom to seek it. But that is the wisdom of ignorance, including and perhaps especially of divine things whatever form they take. Or will that conclusion too not put an end to it, if we have encountered wondrous things in the souls and logoi in which we sought our answer?
Like Socrates, I did not take the path of faith, but of “skepsis,” examination as a critical mode of my "care for the self," my "art of living." My world is mortal, bounded by things wholly, not partially transcendent. I am like the medieval inquirer who pulls back the fair tapestry of faith, and sees a limitless less beautiful cosmos beyond. I do not know what or if there is anything beyond those limitless limits. I am pricked by the spur of time and unfulfilled desire. I live and think, uneasily, in a world of becoming, not being.
I met Euthyphro most recently in Utah, where I spoke at a conference on evolution and higher education. He was the “sainted” visitor guide glowing with histories of LDS miracles, the doctor who would never die, the transported young girl about to leave on her mission to Lithuania. The spectre of Euthyphro haunts American politics these days, and he carries a gun.
I have mostly thought of the world of faith and the faithful as beyond reason; you step through its door and will yourself not to look back. But what then to make of the other door, which tags that world with questions, marks it as a shadow place, made up of hope and fear? Not that the hope and fear is any less real, even if you now consider the images may be no more natural than human clothing, and even if in that regard Euthyphro represents an extreme (albeit part of the norm). Euthyphro’s mind cannot endure the Socratic dissection, though it may not really matter, since Socrates speaks in mere human words. Or does Socrates penetrate his mask, expose it to him? I’ve never been sure, one way or the other, how to interpret the end. (And this may be important, for in Plato's art of writing, both word and deed are relevant to the meaning.)
A comforting reading of the dialogue suggests that Euthyphro would have been better off, had he believed in (the) just and good god(s) Socrates believes in, poetic god(s) worthy of the highest service, virtue and the therapy of souls, the piety of knowing we do not know as gods know. But the same analysis suggests that/those god(s) would also have been measured by ideas of justice and goodness above them. I wonder then: can this still imply the ultimate principle = “<God>”? Or must that not--since nothing could be more perfectly incomprehensible--be meaningless to mortal reason? The contradiction Socrates exposes in the theology of warring gods will then turn out, on this discomforting reading, to reveal a worm at the core of all theology. I have myself been drawn toward both alternatives, sacred and profane, but my nature is always to return to the profane.
The Socratic dialogue does not ask what is god? even if it touches on this question. It asks what is piety? if we assume piety is a virtue. It suggests piety could not be a virtue if we did not know what it is, i.e. if we did not possess Socratic wisdom to seek it. But that is the wisdom of ignorance, including and perhaps especially of divine things whatever form they take. Or will that conclusion too not put an end to it, if we have encountered wondrous things in the souls and logoi in which we sought our answer?
Like Socrates, I did not take the path of faith, but of “skepsis,” examination as a critical mode of my "care for the self," my "art of living." My world is mortal, bounded by things wholly, not partially transcendent. I am like the medieval inquirer who pulls back the fair tapestry of faith, and sees a limitless less beautiful cosmos beyond. I do not know what or if there is anything beyond those limitless limits. I am pricked by the spur of time and unfulfilled desire. I live and think, uneasily, in a world of becoming, not being.
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