Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Making Philosophy Cool Again, Part 1: Euthyphro, The Spirit of Liberty, TV Lawyers (and more)

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

One this about philosophy is that what an article seems to be about is often not what it is about. Here we have a straightforward account of Plato's Euthyphro, which seems to be a discussion of piety and justice. In this dialogue, Socrates undermines Euthyphro's efforts to define the two terms. But poor Euthyphro never does detect the sleight of hand: Socrates is assuming that concepts such as piety and justice exist independently of instances of them, and independently of the people who instantiate them. If you accept this, there is no way out of the trap. Once we define these concepts, they become unchanging, and we lose control over them, though we - like Frankenstein - created them.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Dec 02, 2024 1:35 p.m.

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