Robert Stern

In the Philosophy of Religion module, the A level syllabus presents the Euthyphro dilemma as arising out of difficulties of understanding compatibility of God’s characteristics: omniscient, omnipotent and supremely good ‘Issues with claiming that God has these attributes, either singly or in combination, including: �  the paradox of the stone �  the Euthyphro dilemma’

In latter case, the problem is how to combine God’s omnipotence with his supreme goodness The Euthyphro dilemma is one of the standard problems for theistic ethics, and often used as a knock-down argument against any ethics that appeals to God But is it as big a problem as it appears?

� Named after one of Plato’s dialogues, 10a-11c Socrates meets Euthyphro, who is prosecuting his

father for murder, which he claims is the holy or pious thing to do, because the gods disapprove of murder and approve of punishing it.

Euthyphro thus bases his position on the thought

that ‘what is pleasing to the gods is holy, and what is not pleasing to them is unholy’ (6e-7a)

Socrates argues against Euthyphro that what is approved of or loved by the gods is not made holy or pious by that love – rather, it is because it is holy or pious that it is approved of or loved by the gods

So, even if Euthyphro is right that the gods

approve of punishing murder, doesn’t show what is holy or pious about doing so – haven’t shown what it is that makes it holy or pious

This form of argument then often used against religious ethics by the secularist:

The Euthyphro dilemma: There are two ways we might see a relation

between the will or command of God, and what is good, right, obligatory etc:

Either x is good, right etc because God commands

it: i.e. G è M (first horn of the dilemma) Or God commands x because it is good, right etc:

i.e. M è G (second horn of the dilemma)

Problems for religious ethics if they opt for either horn:

First horn: x is good, right etc because God

commands it But then:

(a) God’s willing is arbitrary (b) Morality itself is arbitrary: he could have made anything good, so no longer necessary and universal

(c) God must himself lack moral properties, as he exists before anything has moral value

� But also problems with opting for second horn: God commands x because it is good, right etc:

If opt for this horn, then

(a) seems to render God redundant: acts already good, bad, right, wrong etc without him

(b) limits freedom of God, as he cannot make these things right, wrong etc just through his willing, but seem independent of him

� So, some theists have opted for first horn of the dilemma:

= X is good, right etc, because God has commanded it

Call this extreme divine command theory

Cf. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will [1525], in John Dillenberger (ed), Selections from his Writings (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 196:

God is He for Whose will no cause or ground may be laid down as its rule or standard; for nothing is on a level with it or above it, but it is itself the rule for all things. If any rule or standard, or cause or ground, existed for it, it could no longer be the will of God. What God wills is not right because He ought, or was bound, so to will; on the contrary, what takes place must be right, because He so wills it. Causes and grounds are laid down for the will of the creature, but not for the will of the Creator – unless you set another Creator over him!

Cf. also Rene Descartes, Objections and Replies [1647]: Replies to Sixth Set of Objections, no. 8:

If anyone attends to the immeasurable greatness of God he will find it manifestly clear that there can be nothing whatsoever which does not depend on him. This applies not just to everything that subsists, but to all order, every law, and every reason for anything’s being true or good… If some reason for something’s being good had existed prior to his preordination, this would have determined God to prefer those things which it was best to do. But on the contrary, just because he resolved to prefer those things which are now to be done, for this very reason, in the words of Genesis, ‘they are very good’; in other words, the reason for their goodness depends on the fact that he exercised his will to make them so.

� And Cf. William Ockham [c 1287-1347]: I reply that hatred, theft, adultery, and the like may involve evil according to the common law, in so far as they are done by someone who is obligated by a divine command to perform the opposite act. As far as everything absolute in these actions is concerned, however, God can perform them without involving any evil. And they can even be performed meritoriously by someone on earth if they should fall under a divine command, just as now the opposite of these, in fact, fall under a divine command. [Opera Theologica V, p. 352]

But note some complications even here: � Even if God can commit theft without that

act being wrong, doesn’t mean he has made theft okay in general

� If God commands me to take your book, it isn’t theft: not the same as making theft right?

� But, objections to this first horn may seem to mean we have to go for the second horn, and drop God from our ethics altogether?

� But if extreme DCT seems problematic because of Euthyphro dilemma, not all divine command theorists have been extreme divine command theorists:

� There are more moderate possibilities, that perhaps escape the dilemma, and so leave a place for God?

� One form of moderate DCT:

� = acts are right or wrong independently of God’s will, but they are only made obligatory by God’s willing or commanding we act in these ways and not others

What’s the difference? Suppose a school makes it obligatory to take a certain

course: it is now something students are required to do

Extreme DCT: The department could make ANY course obligatory – cooking, tiddlywinks, whatever

Moderate DCT: It is already the case that doing this course is good for students to do in lots of ways – and school can only make courses of this sort obligatory

But, by making it compulsory, has altered the normative status of the course: not just something it is advisable or optional for you do to, but now you must do it- where the school has the authority over you to do this

� Cf. the position of Francisco Suarez:

Suarez (1548-1617) was a Jesuit priest, whose best known work is De Legibus, ac Deo Legislatore (1612) – or On Law and God the Lawgiver

�  Cf Suarez , On Laws and God the Lawgiver, Book II, Chapter VI, §17, p. 202: Therefore, my own [view] is that in any human act there dwells some goodness or evil, in view of its object, considered separately in so far as that object is in harmony or disharmony with right reason; and that, in its relation to right reason, such an act may be termed an evil, and a sin, and a source of guilt, in view of the considerations above mentioned, and apart from its relation to law, strictly speaking. In addition to this [objective goodness or wickedness], human actions possess a special good or wicked character in their relation to God, in cases which furthermore involve a divine law, whether prohibitory or preceptive; and in accordance with such laws, these acts may in a special sense to be said to be sins or to involve guilt in the sight of God, by reason of the fact that they transgress a true law of God Himself. It was to this special form of wickedness that Paul [Romans 4:15] apparently referred in the term ‘transgression’, when he said: ‘For where there is no law, neither is there transgression.’

Suarez’s view escapes the Euthyphro dilemma?:

� On the one hand, God cannot just make anything obligatory – can only make acts obligatory that are already right and good to do

So avoid problem of arbitrariness � On the other hand, without God’s command,

these acts are not obligatory, while God himself is not obliged to do anything and so is free

So avoid problem of redundancy and limitations to God’s freedom

But still, even if moderate DCT a coherent possibility, might think it has problems of its own?

- reduces morality to self-interest - undermines our freedom - need prior obligation to obey God’s

commands

� reduces morality to self-interest Why? Because what makes moral law

obligatory is that God will punish us if we don’t do what he says; but then motivation to act rightly is self-interested, and so not the right kind of motivation for moral action

Response: What makes moral law obligatory

is that it is commanded by a legitimate authority, and the reason you do it is because it is the law

� undermines our freedom Why? Because someone is obliging you to

act a certain way, and so binding you Response: If following commands of a

legitimate authority, your freedom not taken away

� need prior obligation to obey God’s commands

Why? Not required to obey commands unless this is already obligatory, so need a command to follow God’s command, and a command to follow that command…leading to infinite regress

Response: Don’t need a prior command – it would

just be wrong for various reasons not to obey this command, where rightness etc are prior to God’s commands, on moderate view

But what about the problem raised in the A-level syllabus: How is this compatible with God’s omnipotence? If put put right, good etc prior to God’s willing, does that limit his powers? This is what various extreme DCTs have claimed (cf. Luther and Descartes)

But could have more modest view of omnipotence: Must involve more than capacity to do what is physically possible But could just limit it to that, so doesn’t include: capacity to do what is logically possible capacity to do what is metaphysically possible And making e.g. murder good may fall into one of these categories

So, if moderate DCT is a coherent possibility, the theist can avoid the Euthyphro dilemma, and so show that religion can plausibly form the basis for morality

But still, why does it have to? Even if moderate DCT avoids Euthyphro

dilemma, why should we accept this view as an account of moral obligation?

What is wrong with a purely secular account, that makes morality independent of religion?

� The British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) argued that the notion of moral obligation only makes sense if we take it to come from God’s command – and as we no longer believe in God, we should stop talking about moral obligations

� Argues this in her paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958)

� the concepts of obligation, and duty – moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say – and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of ‘ought’, ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it. (p. 1)

What has gone wrong? Lost belief in God:

Naturally, it is not possible to have such a [law] conception unless you believe in God as a lawgiver; like Jews, Stoics, and Christians. But if such a conception is dominant for many centuries, and then is given up, it is a natural result that the concepts of ‘obligation’, of being bound or required as by law, should remain though they have lost their root; and if the word ‘ought’ has become invested in certain contexts with the sense of ‘obligation’, it too will remain to be spoken with a special emphasis and a special feeling in these contexts.

It is as if the notion ‘criminal’ were to remain when criminal law and criminal courts had been abolished and forgotten. (p. 6)

Anscombe raises the possibility that we might try to replace God’s role in accounting for obligation with something else, where she considers the following possibilities:

-  society -  self-legislation -  natural laws

But she argues that none of these options will work

- obligations come from society: BUT: Society can have and has had norms

that tell people to do things that are clearly objectionable, and so it not a very trustworthy ground for morality

- self-legislation (cf. Kant) But can’t obligate yourself: too easy to let

yourself off, no real authority over yourself

- nature

But: nature is not nowadays seen in a moral light, but as governed by e.g. evolutionary laws, that do not seem very likely to offer us a guide to the moral norms we are after

Might work if saw nature as created by God (cf. traditional natural law theories) – but that also not an option for secular ethics

So, given these problems with the notion of moral obligation, what should we do?

Anscombe’s response: Go back to something more like ethics of ancient

Greeks, that did ethics without God, and so did not have notion of moral obligation, duty etc – had virtues instead

So, Anscombe NOT claiming that without religion, we must give up ethics altogether – just must abandon this part of ethics, where other parts may still make sense to us, even without God

(though she also accepts that virtue ethics may also be more difficult for us than it was for the Greeks, because of our different views of nature)

So, if Anscombe’s right, have two options: � Accept moderate DCT � Reject moderate DCT, and abandon talk

of moral obligation

So, have done the following: � Considered whether religiously based ethics is

incoherent, because of the Euthyphro dilemma � Argued that moderate DCT does not face this

dilemma � Considered if moderate DCT faces problems of its

own � Argued it doesn’t � Considered Anscombe’s argument that nothing

secular can substitute for God as source of moral obligation

� So considered implication of her view: that secular ethics should ‘jettison’ the concept of moral obligation