Piety And Virtue In Plato, Euthyphro And Meno

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When discussing specific knowledge, it is often hard to pin down an exact definition of what it is you are discussing. Often a concept or word will get thrown around so often that it will begin to be taken for granted and when pressed, a person may struggle to pin down specifically what it is they mean. Realizing this, Socrates often went out and attempted to fix these kinds of problems and find out what people actually knew, compared to what they just thought they knew. In the dialogues Euthyphro and Meno, Socrates attempts to pin down definitions for piety and virtue, respectively. In doing so, we are shown that the thinkers in question struggle to define these terms, and attempt to do so in vague terms that may vary heavily under different circumstances. What Socrates is attempting to find is one definitive definition of piety and virtue, what is called his One Form Requirement. Rather than defining something by classifying different parts that make it up, Socrates maintains the belief that piety and virtue both can be simplified into one specific form that describes exactly what makes all F actions F. Socrate’s first expresses his belief that piety is able to be expressed in simple terms towards the beginning of Euthyphro. He asks the question (to which Euthyphro agrees), “is the pious not the same and alike in every action…and …show more content…

What it did succeed in was claiming that piety affects things to have “the quality of being loved by all the gods” (Euth. 11a). While this does help paint a picture of piety, describing one aspect or consequence that piety has on things, it does not accomplish the task of actually showing us how or why the thing became pious in the first place. This affect comes after the formation of piety, and for the One Form Requirement to be fulfilled it is required to find something that comes prior to

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