Complete Works

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Author: D. S. Hutchinson John M. Cooper Plato
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but different from each other. Or do you not remember?
    E UTHYPHRO : I do.
    S OCRATES : Do you then not realize now that you are saying that what is dear to the gods is the pious? Is this not the same as the god-loved? Or is it not?
    E UTHYPHRO : It certainly is.
    S OCRATES : Either we were wrong when we agreed before, or, if we were right then, we are wrong now.
    E UTHYPHRO : That seems to be so.
    S OCRATES : So we must investigate again from the beginning what piety is, as I shall not willingly give up before I learn this. Do not think me unworthy, but concentrate your attention and tell the truth. For you know [d] it, if any man does, and I must not let you go, like Proteus, 4 before you tell me. If you had no clear knowledge of piety and impiety you would never have ventured to prosecute your old father for murder on behalf of a servant. For fear of the gods you would have been afraid to take the risk lest you should not be acting rightly, and would have been ashamed before men, but now I know well that you believe you have clear knowledge [e] of piety and impiety. So tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not hide what you think it is.
    E UTHYPHRO : Some other time, Socrates, for I am in a hurry now, and it is time for me to go.
    S OCRATES : What a thing to do, my friend! By going you have cast me [16] down from a great hope I had, that I would learn from you the nature of the pious and the impious and so escape Meletus’ indictment by showing him that I had acquired wisdom in divine matters from Euthyphro, and my ignorance would no longer cause me to be careless and inventive about such things, and that I would be better for the rest of my life.
    1 . See Apology 31d.
    2 . Here Socrates gives the general principle under which, he says, the specific cases already examined—those of leading, carrying, and seeing—all fall. It is by being changed by something that changes it (e.g. by carrying it somewhere) that anything is a changed thing—not vice versa: it is not by something’s being a changed thing that something else then changes it so that it comes to be being changed (e.g. by carrying it somewhere). Likewise for “affections” such as being seen by someone: it is by being “affected” by something that “affects” it that anything is an “affected” thing, not vice versa. It is not by being an “affected” thing (e.g., a thing seen) that something else then “affects” it.
    3 . Author unknown.
    4 . See Odyssey iv.382 ff.

APOLOGY
    Translated by G.M.A. Grube.
    This work is universally known as Plato’s ‘ Apology ’ of Socrates, in deference to the word apologia that stands in its Greek title. Actually, the word means not an apology but a defense speech in a legal proceeding, and that is what we get—certainly, Socrates does not apologize for anything! This is not really a dialogue. Except for an interlude when he engages one of his accusers in the sort of question-and-answer discussion characteristic of Plato’s ‘Socratic’ dialogues, we see Socrates delivering a speech before his jury of 501 fellow male Athenians. At the age of seventy he had been indicted for breaking the law against ‘impiety’—for offending the Olympian gods (Zeus, Apollo, and the rest) recognized in the city’s festivals and other official activities. The basis of the charge, such as it was, lay in the way that, for many years, Socrates had been carrying on his philosophical work in Athens. It has often been thought that the real basis for it lay in ‘guilt by association’: several of Socrates’ known associates had been prominent malfeasants in Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War only a few years earlier and the oligarchic reign of terror that followed; but an amnesty had forbidden suits based on political offenses during that time. However much those associations may have been in the minds of his accusers—and his jurors, too—Plato makes him respond sincerely to the charges as lodged. After all, these
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