MLK – Letter From a Birmingham Jail
Description
Read “MLK – Letter From a Birmingham Jail”
Read “Study Aids form MLK” . This is for a reference from the lecture videos.
Read “The Euthyphro in Plato’s “The Last Day of Socrates”
Read “Practical Companion of Ethics – by Weston”
Essay on:
Discuss King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail in terms of how it incorporates ideas similar to those we find in Euthyphro.
Euthyphro: divine command ethics made rational – first determine what expedites the good, then interpret divine will (not vice versa.)
Consider also the application of Weston’s constructive dialogue methods.
Euthyphro
Euthyphro is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. The events in the dialogue occur a few weeks before Socrates” trial in 399 BC. The dialogue involves Socrates questioning Euthyphro on what is holy and what justifies an act as being holly. Euthyphro tries to justify his reasons for prosecuting his father in which Socrates evaluates each basis providing a reason why each cannot be right. This document discusses Euthyphro and how the issues raised by the dialogue show how humans are wrong in their justifications methods on morality.
Euthyphro considers his acts as being virtuous because he is prosecuting someone guilty of murder. He states that his action is moral because anyone guilty of murder or a crime similar to murder should be charged. This is not subject to them being your family member or relatives and failure to which is impiety. He offers “notable” proof to Socrates in which he mentions the Gods. Euthyphro states that people ought not to look at him as a mad man for persecuting his father since Zeus, a god considered the most righteous, did a similar act on his father. Zeus bound Cronos because of devouring his sons, and Cronos, similar to Zeus, also punished Uranus, his father, for the same reasons. Euthyphro sees his acts as virtuous since learning from the most righteous of gods; all evildoers should be punished. Euthyphro believes that people should perceive him in the same consistent way they perceived gods when prosecuting their fathers for crimes. For him, relation or no relation makes no difference in motive to persecute an evildoer. His father killed a worker unjustly; hence the matter cannot be left alone. To clear himself from knowingly associating with a murderer, he has to go against the murderer by prosecuting him.
Euthyphro justifies his doings and his perception in several ways that Socrates challenges. First, he states that piety is doing acts such as the one he was doing in prosecuting his father. Socrates inquires on what holiness is, in which Euthyphro says that it is doing what is dear to the gods. To Euthuphro, his prosecuting his father is virtuous because the gods would agree on the murder being unjust. Socrates claims that Euthyphro cannot claim virtue is doing what is dear to the gods because even the gods have disagreements on what is dear. If the gods have been claimed to have enmity and hatred issues with each other, then not all gods will agree on what holiness is and impiety. As such, he claims Euthyphro cannot justify his actions with gods, considering them virtuous since the gods disagree over what is evil and good, unjust and just. Socrates also denounces the justification of gods agreeing to Euthyphro’s acts as making the actions virtuous. He asks Euthyphro whether an act is made moral by the act of gods loving it or is an act virtuous because it is inherently virtuous, which draws gods love for the action? He claims that an act is not made virtuous because gods love it; it is intrinsically virtuous without the gods’ influence. Being holly is independent of the perceptions of gods of the act as being holly; hence Euthyphro cannot use gods agreeing with his act as a justification for its holiness.
Humans encounter several challenges as they try to invoke gods or other authorities as moral sources. The significant problem is that invoking this authority as being a source of moral decision-making defies the nature of a decision being moral inherently. A moral decision is virtuous in itself and does not draw its morality from an external authority. Sourcing moral decisions from gods creates problems because the gods also disagree on what is evil and good and dishonorable and honorable. On issues that cannot be measured or there is no practical method of determining the truth from different claims, the gods have also had disagreements similar to humans. Therefore, if gods quarrel over issues that we also fight about, basing out the truth on morality depending on their opinions is misinformed since they do not have a consensus over such decisions. This is also similar to deriving moral decisions from other sources of authority, which diminishes the inherent nature of a decision as being virtuous. A moral decision should be moral without outside influence since outside influence creates subjectivity, leading to questioning the decision’s morality. Moral decisions should be superior to all the authorities invoked in defining a moral decision.
Jean-Paul Sartre states that “If a still, small voice speaks to you in the dead of the night, it is You who still decides if it is God, the Devil or just indigestion.” This statement applies to the Euthyphro problem because it states that individuals cannot conclude subjects like morality and holiness because they appeal to authority. An outside force cannot determine the morality of an act or decision because it will be subject to everyone’s interpretation. For instance, if some gods consider act X as being holy and others do not, it is the individual who decides which gods to follow. The freedom to determine which authorities to follow when deriving a moral decision is similar to making the decisions independently. This is because in the end, it is the individual who’ll decide what a moral decision is and then choose an authority to justify their morality claim on the decision.
To sum up, Euthyphro raises important questions on how to justify decisions or acts as being holly or moral. Socrates reveals loopholes in all the justification made by Euthyphro because he bases them on the appeal from authorities such as gods. The dialogue reveals that an action or decision is not made moral or holly by external factors but because it is holy or moral inherently. The appeal from authority comes after identifying the moral or holy nature of a deed.
