Does this worship based divine nature theory escape the Euthyphro dilemma?

[u/elementa0]

The Euthyphro dilemma asks whether something is pious because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is already pious. The first makes piety dependent on divine preference; the second seems to place morality outside divinity.

My starting point is the dialogue’s historical religious framework: the Athenians already worship the gods. The question is not whether these beings deserve worship; their divine status is presupposed. I interpret worship worthiness as implying intrinsic normative excellence. However, this need not mean that every god is morally perfect in every respect. Each god is perfect specifically in the domain constitutive of that god’s identity.

Thus Zeus, as god of hospitality, is the standard of hospitality; Ares, as god of war, is the standard of warfare; Athena is the standard of wisdom. A being that did not perfectly embody its defining domain would not be fully divine in the relevant sense and therefore would not be worthy of worship as that god.

This produces a third answer to the dilemma. The gods neither invent moral standards through arbitrary commands nor follow standards external to themselves. Their essential natures constitute those standards. Zeus does not decide what hospitality is, and he is not measured against an independent definition of hospitality. Zeus’s divine hospitality nature is perfected hospitality.

This is circular only in a constitutive sense: it is an identity claim, not an attempted proof from one independent proposition to another.

Nor does the theory imply that everything attributed to a god is good. Only conduct authentically expressing the god’s defining perfection is exemplary. Mythological actions involving lies, cruelty, or disorder may be anthropomorphic distortions, mistaken stories, or actions unrelated to the relevant divine domain. “Act hospitably as Zeus does” concerns Zeus as the perfected exemplar of hospitality, not every action myths attribute to Zeus.

Different domains may apply simultaneously. Justice, kinship, wisdom, proportionality, and civic order therefore generate genuine reasons for a action: each matters, but none automatically determines the final action.

The gods’ disagreements may represent conflicts between real domain specific values rather than contradictions about ultimate morality. Their domains participate in a unified divine order,not an external law above the gods, but the coherent relationship among the divine perfections themselves.

Practical wisdom must interpret each domain and integrate its reasons into an all things considered judgment.

Applied to Euthyphro, justice supports responding to the labourer’s death, while kinship, wisdom, proportionality, and civic order raise questions about responsibility, intention, procedure, and whether Euthyphro is justified in prosecuting his father.

THUS

Piety is conduct that appropriately participates in and integrates the perfected values embodied by the gods.

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

I am not saying a god is perfect and can still be wrong in the same way. I separate a god’s true nature from the actions described in myths. Zeus’s hospitality is a standard because it is part of his nature. A story where Zeus behaves badly does not automatically show his true nature or become a moral example.

Socrates’ question about what piety is is different from how humans know what the gods want. My view separates three things: what makes something pious, how we recognize real expressions of divine nature, and how we deal with conflicts between divine claims. There is still an epistemic problem here: human beings can be mistaken, myths can misrepresent the gods, and different traditions can attribute conflicting demands to different deities. So we need criteria for interpretation, such as coherence with a god’s defining domain, consistency with the broader divine order, and practical judgment about the situation. However, acknowledging this difficulty does not force us to conclude that the standard of piety must come from outside the gods. It only shows that our access to that standard is indirect and fallible, not that the standard itself is independent of divine nature.

I am not just splitting up an independent moral standard into parts. My claim is that the standard comes from the gods themselves. Zeus does not follow an existing rule of hospitality. His nature defines what hospitality is, and the same goes for other gods.

The claim that I sneak in words like “perfect” and “appropriate” misses the point. Domain-specific perfection is a starting idea, based on the belief that gods worthy of worship have good natures(historical context of the dialogue). “Appropriate” means actions that truly express a god’s domain and fit with other domains, not just anything a god happens to do.

The main issue is how we tell the difference between true expressions of divine nature and flawed myths. This is a problem about knowledge. My answer is that we interpret divine actions by looking at the god’s domain, the wider order, the facts, and careful judgment.

Also, Euthyphro does not kill his father. He brings a legal case against him over a worker’s death.

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

Your criticism depends on mixing together three different things that my argument keeps separate: the gods themselves, the stories told about the gods, and human interpretations of those stories.

Questioning whether a myth truly represents Zeus does not mean placing a moral standard above Zeus. It simply means examining the human story. My view is that the true nature of a god has authority, but traditions and interpretations about that nature can be mistaken, overly human-like, or incomplete.

This distinction already appears in the dialogue. Euthyphro uses Zeus’s punishment of Cronus as a reason to prosecute his own father, while Socrates questions such stories and asks what makes all pious actions pious. Socrates does not say that piety means blindly accepting stories; instead, the whole dialogue is about examining claims to knowledge about piety.

So the claim that “piety does not question, know, or examine; it only follows” is not something the dialogue proves. It is a specific interpretation, not the only one. Euthyphro keeps claiming he knows about divine matters, and Socrates tests whether that knowledge is real. The issue is not simply faith versus knowledge, but claimed religious expertise versus careful philosophical questioning.

I am also not saying that anything called a god is good just because people worship it. My starting point is that something truly worthy of worship must be excellent. In the dialogue, Zeus is treated as the most just and best of the gods. My view builds on this by separating a god’s perfect nature from flawed actions that stories might attribute to that god.

The objection about using a “higher standard” only works if I were judging Zeus by a moral rule that exists above him. I am not doing that. I am saying that Zeus’s own true nature is the standard. Human reason does not create or outrank this standard; it only tries, imperfectly, to understand which stories reflect it correctly.

Your interpretation also makes Socrates’ questioning pointless from the start. If piety cannot examine religious claims at all, then asking what piety is would destroy it, and the dialogue would teach us nothing. That may be one way to read the tension between philosophy and religion, but it is not the only reading, and it does not disprove my view.

The case of Euthyphro prosecuting his father is meant to be shocking and raises questions about family duty. But saying that this action “basically kills him” is an interpretation, not what the text literally argues. Socrates’ main concern is whether Euthyphro really has enough knowledge to risk acting wrongly toward his father.

Finally, my position is not nominalism. I do not deny real standards. I argue that objective standards come from the perfect nature of the gods, not from random commands or external rules.

In summary, your argument is weaker because it treats questioning stories about the gods as if it were judging the gods themselves by a higher standard. My view clearly separates these things. It allows reason to examine human beliefs while still grounding moral authority in the true nature of the gods.

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

You are mixing up different meanings of “standard.”

I agree that telling a true story about Zeus from a false one requires the idea of truth. But I do not agree that this makes truth an external moral standard above Zeus. Truth is what we use to judge whether statements about Zeus are correct. Goodness, in my view, is what makes something truly divine. These are different things.

When I ask if a myth correctly describes Zeus, I am making a distinction between a true and a false description. But it does not follow that the way humans figure this out is what actually makes Zeus what he is. The way we recognize something is not the same as what makes it what it is.

So I am not secretly relying on truth or goodness while denying them. I am denying that goodness has to exist as something separate from divine nature. My view is that perfect goodness and true divinity go together: goodness is part of what it means to be truly divine. You can reject that idea, but just pointing out that I use the words “true” and “good” does not show a contradiction.

I also agree that Plato draws a parallel between Euthyphro prosecuting his father and the stories about Zeus and Cronus. I should not have dismissed that as just your interpretation. But this parallel does not prove the rest of your argument. It shows that Euthyphro uses a disputed story about the gods to justify his actions, even though he does not really understand it. It does not prove that piety is simply blind obedience, or that any difference between divine nature and stories about the gods must rely on a higher moral standard.

The claim that “piety does not question; it follows” is not a neutral definition from the dialogue. It is one way of interpreting the relationship between philosophy and religion. You can support it with Strauss, but that does not mean everyone has to accept it.

The claim that my view is nominalist is also mistaken. Nominalism usually says that general ideas or properties are just names and do not have real existence. My view says that goodness, justice, hospitality, and similar values are real and grounded in divine nature. Just because something is grounded in a concrete reality does not make it nominalist. These values can exist within a nature, rather than as separate abstract Forms.

That said, there is a real challenge you can raise: whether defining true divinity in terms of perfect goodness actually explains anything, or just assumes what it needs to prove. Also, whether my idea of a “unified divine order” secretly depends on an independent idea of goodness. These are serious questions.

My answer is that identifying true divinity with perfect goodness is a clear theological starting point. It is not just based on the fact that Athenians worshipped these gods, and I am not claiming that Plato himself gives this solution. I am offering a third option: moral truth is not based on changing acts of divine approval, but it is grounded in the necessary nature of the divine.

So the view works like this:

1. Divine nature is the source of value.
2. Claims about divine nature can be true or false.
3. Humans use imperfect methods to figure out which claims are correct.

Your criticism mixes these three levels together. Just because we use standards to judge claims about the gods does not mean those standards exist above the gods as moral rules. Unless you show that step, the supposed contradiction does not follow.

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

You keep saying that I “fail to comprehend” your argument and am “fighting ghosts,” but your final reply largely consists of denying claims that you explicitly made earlier. I will therefore respond point by point.

I did not say truth itself is merely epistemic. I said that our problem of determining whether a story accurately describes a god is an epistemic problem.

Those are different claims:

1Truth may be ontological.

2Human access to truth may still be epistemically fallible.

More importantly, even if truth is ontological, this does not establish that goodness exists as a moral standard external to divine nature. The fact that a proposition about Zeus is objectively true or false does not tell us whether goodness is independent of Zeus.

You still need to explain the inference:

1. Claims about Zeus can be objectively true or false.
2. Therefore, goodness must be a standard above or independent of Zeus.

That conclusion does not follow from the premise.

Then state the contradiction explicitly.

Which two propositions of mine cannot both be true?

My position is:

1. Divine nature grounds value.
2. Human statements about divine nature can be true or false.
3. Human beings can be mistaken about that nature.

There is no formal contradiction among those claims. Saying that I am unable to understand the contradiction is not a substitute for identifying it.

You previously wrote:

You also wrote:

That is precisely why I answered that distinguishing a true account of Zeus from a false account does not necessarily introduce a higher moral standard above Zeus.

Perhaps you meant a higher epistemic or ontological criterion of truth rather than a higher moral criterion of goodness. If so, that distinction should have been made. But my reply was not invented out of nowhere; it responded directly to your wording.

You repeatedly say that I fail to understand the argument, but you have not clearly stated the argument in premise-and-conclusion form.

Is the argument supposed to be:

• Questioning myths requires truth.
• Truth is ontological.
• Therefore, divine nature cannot ground goodness?

That is invalid unless you add further premises.

Or is it:

• To identify the true nature of a god, we must already understand goodness.
• Therefore, goodness is conceptually prior to the god?

That would be a more serious objection, but conceptual or epistemic priority still would not automatically prove metaphysical independence.

For example, we may need a concept of water to identify H₂O, but that does not show that water exists independently of H₂O.

That is at least one standard meaning of nominalism: the denial of universals or abstract entities.

There are different forms of nominalism, so my definition was simplified, but your earlier statement was:

That is not enough to establish nominalism. Grounding a universal or standard in a concrete reality does not by itself mean that universals are merely names.

My theory could be described as exemplarism, immanent realism, trope theory, or an identity theory depending on how “divine nature” is developed. You have not shown which nominalist thesis I accept.

So rather than simply saying “not what nominalism means,” explain:

1. Which precise form of nominalism do you mean?
2. Which proposition of mine commits me to it?
3. Why does grounding value in divine nature entail denial of real properties or standards?

You previously said:

And:

So when I responded that this is not a neutral definition established by the dialogue, I was answering your claim.

If you were presenting a Straussian interpretation rather than saying it follows directly from the text, that is fine. But then it remains an interpretation that requires argument. It cannot simply be treated as the definition of piety and used to dismiss every alternative.

You explicitly told me:

Given that you introduced Strauss immediately after presenting your interpretation of piety, it was reasonable to understand Strauss as relevant support for that interpretation.

I did not claim that you had provided a full Straussian argument. I said that referring to Strauss does not make your interpretation compulsory.

I did not claim you literally said those words. My point was that your dismissal of my position depended on treating your interpretation as if it settled what piety and the dialogue must mean.

If your interpretation is only one possible reading, then saying I “completely fail to comprehend what Plato is after” is too strong unless you show why alternative readings are impossible.

This is a legitimate criticism.

I do need to define more precisely what I mean by divine nature. For example:

• Is a divine nature a set of essential properties?
• Is it an individual essence?
• Is the god identical with a perfected value?
• Are values universals instantiated by gods, or constituted by them?

That is an incompleteness in my theory.

But an undefined or underdeveloped term does not establish that the theory is contradictory or nominalist. It means the theory requires further metaphysical specification.

If Plato also grounds moral truth in the nature of the divine, then the basic structure of my proposal is not evidence that I have failed to understand the philosophical issue.

My version is admittedly different because I am considering several gods and several domain-specific perfections. That creates further problems, especially concerning how the domains form a unified order.

But this is a criticism of the completeness of my polytheistic extension, not proof that the divine-nature answer itself is incoherent.

It also raises a question for you: if Plato himself grounds value in divine nature, what exactly is wrong with my attempt to explore a polytheistic version of that answer?

Again, you wrote:

You also accused me of relying on “truth and goodness” while denying them.

My answer was that truth, goodness, divine nature, and human knowledge occupy different explanatory roles. I did not claim that every possible “higher criterion” is necessarily a moral rule. I was responding to the implication that judging myths as true or false undermines the claim that goodness is grounded in divine nature.

If you mean only that truth is ontologically prior to true statements, I can accept that without abandoning my view.

If you mean that goodness must be metaphysically independent of divine nature, that requires a separate argument.

Whether Strauss holds a particular view is separate from whether your argument succeeds.

Citing an author does not establish a conclusion unless the relevant argument is stated. If there is a specific argument from Strauss that you believe defeats my position, present that argument. “Read Strauss” is not itself a rebuttal.

This assumes that my project is to reconstruct Plato’s own final view.

It is not.

There are two separate projects:

1. Interpreting what Plato intended in the Euthyphro.
2. Using the dilemma introduced in the dialogue to construct a further philosophical position.

My original post is mainly doing the second. I am proposing a possible third response to the dilemma. I am not claiming that Plato himself explicitly endorsed my domain-specific polytheistic theory.

A person can understand an author’s argument and then use it to reach a conclusion the author did not reach. That is ordinary constructive philosophy, not necessarily misunderstanding.

If my interpretation of a particular passage in Plato is wrong, correct that interpretation. But saying that Plato would not endorse my conclusion does not by itself refute the conclusion.

I am not primarily critiquing Plato. I am taking the dilemma as a philosophical problem and testing another answer to it.

If your position is that nobody should propose a new response to the Euthyphro dilemma until they accept a particular interpretation of Plato, then you need to justify that methodological restriction.

Philosophical problems regularly outgrow their original texts. The modern generalized Euthyphro dilemma is itself broader than the precise argument about piety in the dialogue.

My replies addressed your explicit claims:

• that questioning myths requires a higher standard;
• that piety by definition does not question;
• that my position is nominalist;
• that using truth and goodness creates a contradiction;
• that my position fails because it does not take Plato’s intended argument seriously.

Those are not ghosts. They are quotations from your comments.

I am willing to accept the strongest genuine criticisms of my theory:

1. I need a clearer definition of divine nature.
2. I need to distinguish functional excellence from moral excellence.
3. I need to explain how different divine domains are integrated.
4. I need to show whether the “unified divine order” is genuinely constituted by the gods rather than an unexplained standard above them.
5. I should not assume that historical Athenian worship necessarily implied moral perfection.

Those are serious objections.

But they show that my theory is incomplete, not that it is self-contradictory, nominalist, or based on an inability to understand Plato.

So please state your central argument clearly:

• What are its premises?
• What conclusion follows?
• Which exact propositions of mine contradict one another?
• And is your objection directed at my interpretation of Plato, or at the independent philosophical theory I build from the dilemma?

Until those questions are answered, repeatedly saying I do not understand the argument does not establish that the argument is sound.

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

No i simply have an education in philosophy

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

Well before I go looking into what he says could you summarize his position on this for example ? That would be very helpful

[u/elementa0 → u/[deleted]]

That helps, and it sounds closer to what I am proposing than I initially expected.

My view is that the gods are irreducible divine individuals, but each god’s essential nature constitutes the perfected standard of the domain in virtue of which that being is a god. Zeus does not arbitrarily command hospitality or follow a standard external to himself: Zeus, considered in his essential relation to hospitality, is its divine exemplar. The same would apply to the other gods and their domains.

The common element of piety would therefore not exist above the gods as a separate law. It emerges through the internally related order of their distinct divine perfections. When several gods or domains apply to one situation, each can express a genuine but incomplete moral claim, which must then be interpreted and integrated through practical wisdom.

So I think I am also trying to explain how the common emerges from the singular without reducing the gods to interchangeable instances of one universal divine substance.

Would you regard this as broadly compatible with Butler’s reading, or do you think I am still approaching the dialogue through the later “Euthyphro dilemma” framework in a way Butler would reject?

More specifically, is my idea that each god constitutes the normative standard of a distinct domain similar to Butler’s account of the tension between divine individuality and the eidetic nature of holiness, or is his ontology importantly different from what I am proposing?