Critical Analysis Of Euthyphro's The Maxims Of Good Discourse

To be a good speaker, one must master the skill of listening. The vizier Ptahhotep discloses in “The Maxims of Good Discourse” different advices on listening and speaking, reveling that the secret for becoming a great specker, the secret for people listing, is listening to others; to remain silent until the moment one has acquire enough knowledge from the elders. Meanwhile, Plato in “Euthyphro” shares the manuscript a dialogue between Euthyphro and Socrates where the later wishes to learn what is piety and how he can use in his defense in court; the manuscript shows how great listener Socrates was. He employs different techniques to convince Euthyphro to share with him the characteristics of piety and impiety. Whether Socrates was successful or not, the dialogue shows that techniques such as paraphrasing the other’s ideas before introducing yours is a great technique to make people listen. Therefore, both Ptahhotep and Plato argue that people will listen if what you say is meaningful, but the worry that

In his dialogue with Euthyphro, Socrates employs several techniques to make Euthyphro listen to his opinion on why Euthyphro definition was not complete and therefore, would not be enough for him to use in his defense in court. One of the techniques, for example, is the usage of rhetoric questions. Socrates use questions such as “is it not so?” (79) or “Shall I tell you why?” (78) Or even “Do you not think so?” (78). Questions such these, provide a feedback to the speaker on whether people are listing or not, or whether they indeed are following the speaker’s thought process. Unfortunately, because Euthyphro was so blinded by his own opinion that he would give Socrates . Moreover, Euthyphro’s blindness was so great that he attributed the lack of consistence of his definition to Socrates when he said: “was so blinded that