Euthyphro Dilemma

Abstract

The Euthyphro dilemma is named after a particular exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro . In a famous passage, Socrates asks, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” He proceeds to advance arguments that clearly favor the first of these two options. The primary interest in the Euthyphro dilemma over the years, however, has concerned the relationship between God and morality in the monotheistic religious tradition, where God is taken to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, having created the universe initially and still actively involved in it today. But there has also been a recent surge of interest in a version of the dilemma that applies to so‐called response‐dependent accounts of normative properties in metaethics.