Analysis Of Euthyphro And Apology

Something which many thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to Nietzsche and Freud, have all contended with is the problem of living rationally. Where earlier Greek philosophers might have espoused a rational program for living, whether to build the just city of the Republic, or to lead the good life (as promised by Aristotle, who saw reason as a means of discerning virtue), it seems that this pursuit of living a life in pursuit, or even with the attainment of these higher truths for living becomes suspect in time of Nietzsche and Freud.

Whereas Nietzsche might view such attempts as horrifically one-sided, ignorant of the influences of power and socially accepted values upon the employment of reason, and the ‘truths’ it discovers, Freud might

In Euthyphro, Socrates engages a young lawyer named Euthyphro on the steps of an Athenian courthouse. Socrates offers assistance in strengthening Euthyphro’s legal argument, while graciously accepting the opportunity to gain legal advice from Euthyphro, and find out what he knows of justice, or what is morally ‘good,’ to help Socrates face his own prosecutor. But the whole process of dialogue in Euthyphro, perhaps like the whole process of coming out of Plato’s cave, discerning more between reality (i.e. the light beyond the cave) and appearance (i.e. the cast shadows on the cave walls), has the standard model of Plato’s dialogical

Where Euthyphro is convinced that what appears to him to be the morally, as well as legally ‘correct’ way of living, is as such; Socrates, in leading Euthyphro (and us) out of the cave, challenges Euthyphro to discern between the appearance of right, good, just, etc. (e.g. as shadowy appearances on a cave wall), and to discover what these actually are in a more absolute sense (e.g. seen from a position of freedom, beyond the cave). In Apology, we are presented with a different scenario. Of course it still begs questions of right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust, so on and so forth. But in Plato’s account of Socrates last defense against punishment by the state, we see this revelatory quality of philosophical inquiry being held on trial, so to speak. In other words, it is the capacity of Socrates to reveal the inherent limits—or just plain myths—of knowledge people have about their existence “in the cave” (as it were) that comes into question, namely in its ability to corrupt the youth of