TOYING WITH IDEAS One of the charming thins about Plato is his combination of imagination, subtlety, humour and sympathy. So, in the Euthyphro, Socrates spins Euthyphro round like a top, and leaves him wobbling: Good gracious, Socrates! I cant begin to tell you what I am thinking, because every proposition I put forward seems to wander off and refuses to stay put! (Euth.11b). Socrates then compares Euthyphros ideas to the little robots designed by Daedalus, the master-engineer of myth, and designer of the labyrinth, which were like the automata described by Homer: (He was making twenty tripods... and he set wheels of gold under them all that they might go of their own selves to the assemblies o the Gods, and come back again, marvels for all to see -Iliad 18.373-377). But Euthyphro rejects the comparison: theres nothing wrong with his ideas, which would be nicely fixed, if Socrates didnt wind them up and send them round in little circles. Well, says Socrates, I must be cleverer than Daedalus, because he could only set in motion the things that he made himself, whereas I seem to be able to set in motion things that the other men have made! (Euth.11d). Ant beginner in philosophy will recognise and feel sympathy for Euthyphros predicament, and its difficult noir to love Plato for seeing it, and commenting on it. But nothing is ever wasted in Plato, and these playful exchanges are the scintillating surface of more serious currents running below the surface. Socrates has met Euthyphro outside the Kings Stoa where Socrates has been indicted for impieity, and Euthyphro has himself indicted his own father for alleged murder (which will seem to the reader both impious in itself, and which Plato suggests was unmeritorious on the facts (see Euth. 4b, 9a-b,15d). A brief discussion shows that Euthyphro regards Socrates as an essentially pious man, and implies that the prosecution against him is not brought in good faith. But the dialogue does reveal that Socrates was challenging contemporary orthodoxy. He refuses, for example, to accept the view that the Gods could behave badly - and says this is the reason why I am a defendant in this case (Euth.6a). Again, Euthyphro knows perfectly well about Socrates daimon (Euth.2b), and we know that the significance which Socrates attributed to truth, beauty and being might well be seen as transcending, and indeed, subordinating the conventional view of the divine. The small, humorous exchange gives an intimate, and aesthetic, endorsement to the idea that even in small and simple things, Socrates mind was fixed on the divine, and that he saw, in Daedalus toys - and perhaps in those of Hephaestus - miracles that were both divine, delightful and instructive as to the true nature both of God and the processes of the truly Godly Mind.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 10:04:47 +0000
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