Euthyphro: A Model of Socratic Wisdom and the Weaknesses Therein

In the nearly two and a half millennia since Socrates death, scientific and technological
advances have brought humanity to a level of collective knowledge seemingly unimaginable to
the Greeks of antiquity. However, our proficiency in the classification and manipulation of our
world would still seemingly be without the wisdom that Socrates alone possessed and Plato
describes in The Apology. The Euthyphro illustrates this lack of human wisdom by those thought
to be wise, yet ultimately fails to provide a method for determining how much wisdom someone
possesses.
In The Apology, Socrates describes a series of interrogations of supposedly wise people
that has led him to believe the Oracle at Delphis proclamation that he is the wisest man in the
world. The wise man thus becomes he who has recognized that hes truly worthless where
wisdoms concerned (Apology, 35). His questioning (elenchus) of Euthyphro thereby serves as
an example of his examinations of politicians, poets, and tradesmen that merely provided
contradictory beliefs in the areas of their self-professed wisdom. Euthyphro describes himself as
having exact knowledge about the position the gods take and about the pious and the impious
(Euthyphro, 7-8). However, Socrates uses an elenchus to demonstrate that Euthyphros definition
of piety contradicts his basic theological beliefs about the gods (8) and that his subsequent
characterization of piety as being loved by the gods because its pious (15) is simply a circular
argument that defines piety as piety. Thus, Socrates proves that those who profess knowledge
have no knowledge; and by declaring his own ignorance, directly models the ideal of human
wisdom that he defined in The Apology.
While the Socratic method (in the form of an extended elenchus of an interlocutor) may
serve well in labeling between wise and non-wise in Platos dialogues, it is not in itself a good
way of determining the amount of wisdom or knowledge a person possesses. In practice, the
Socratic method as presented by Plato merely outlines a basic dichotomy between a lack of
knowledge and a perfect possession of it. Any amount of wisdom located between absolute
ignorance and unimpeachable knowledge is simply included as unwise. So when a talented
craftsman has all knowledge about his craft and performs his own craft well but mistakenly
professes knowledge in other areas, he is labeled unwise just as the poets who know nothing of
what they speak about (Apology, 34-35). This lack of gradation in the hierarchy of wisdom
becomes the primary flaw of the Socratic method.
Socrates neglects to take his method a step further and actually determine levels of
wisdom. For example, lets use the Socratic method to compare a person who is one chapter shy
of completing Calculus II at Wake Forest and a kindergartener who struggles to perform simple
subtraction on his fingers. Socrates would examine each about their knowledge of Calculus II
and presumably, the Calculus II student would declare knowledge in that subject area, while the
kindergartener would confirm an ignorance of it. And since the university student hasnt fully
completed all his lessons in calculus, Socrates would find him to be lacking knowledge in the
area in which he professes knowledge, making him unwise. Yet the kindergartner, on the other
hand, would be labeled wise because of his conscious ignorance of calculus. In reality, Socrates
should compare levels of knowledge between people, rather than against some ideal absolute
within each person that doesnt contradict any other beliefs held by the interlocutor. Socrates
would thereby use a comparative process to create an accurate hierarchy of wisdom in a certain
subject among a group of people.
The multitude of other beliefs left unexamined by Socrates also provides another critique
of the Socratic method. Socrates only uses an elenchus to explore the validity of one definition
or belief, and uses every other belief that person possesses to create the boundaries of a
theoretical field upon which the elenchus will play out. Whenever another belief contradicts the
idea in question, the original idea is simply abandoned or re-explained differently (see
Euthyphros series of three definitions of piety, p. 11-17). Socrates assumes the validity of the
unexamined beliefs of the interlocutor, when in fact they might be incorrect themselves. In this
way, the Socratic method pursues a single truth at the expense of possibly a multitude of agreed
upon falsities, allowing any knowledge found to be questionable at best.
While useful in illustrating the pinnacle of human wisdom that Socrates explains in The
Apology, Euthyphros examination on piety also illuminates the shortfalls of the Socratic method.
By dividing wisdom into simply a presence of it or an absence of it and basing this judgment on
other, unexamined beliefs, Socrates has constructed a method that is ineffective in determining
how much knowledge or wisdom a person has.







Works Cited
Plato. Apology. In The Trials of Socrates: Six Classic Texts. Ed. C. D. C. Reeve. Hackett.
2002.
Plato. Euthyphro. In The Trials of Socrates: Six Classic Texts. Ed. C. D. C. Reeve. Hackett.
2002.