Euthyphro says that his family is angry with him. They claim that charging your own father with murder is not just, and moreover the man who died was a murderer anyway. Euthyphro claims that he knows much about piety and is certain that charging his father is the pious thing to do. In response, Socrates questions Euthyphro about what piety is, on the grounds that he can use that knowledge to convince the court that he is a pious man. This begins a series of questions and answers whereby Euthyphro attempts to give various definitions of piety, only to have Socrates reject each one.
Euthyphro's first definition of piety is that prosecuting wrongdoers is pious. Socrates counters that this is an example of piety, but not a definition of piety. Socrates gets Euthyphro to agree that there are many pious actions, and he wants to know what is the "form itself that makes all pious actions pious"? In other words, what are the characteristics of piety that are common to all pious actions, so that one can look at any given action and judge whether or not it is pious. I suspect that the word "form" is important here as it probably relates to the idea of Platonic Forms, but I am as of yet ignorant of that concept.
Euthyphro's grants Socrates's request for a more general definition of piety by stating "what is dear to the gods is pious, and what is not is impious". Socrates counters that this definition doesn't help since (as they established earlier in the conversation) the gods disagree over certain subjects such as justice and beauty. Thus, some actions are loved by some gods and hated by other gods.
Through further discussion a third definition of piety arises: that which all the gods love is pious, and that which all the gods hate is impious. Socrates's response to this is quite interesting. He asks Euthyphro if the gods love something because it is pious, or if it is pious because the gods love it? Euthyphro does not quite understand the question at first, so Socrates clarifies it by analogy by asking whether or not a thing being carried is a carried thing because it is carried, or is it being carried because it is a carried thing? He then states the more general principle that
if anything is being changed or is being affected in any way, it is not being changed because it is something changed, but rather it is something changed because it is being changed; nor is it being affected because it is something affected, but it is something affected because it is being affected.
Euthyphro agrees with this principle, and then agrees that this principle also applies to something loved by the gods. That is, something loved is not being loved by those who love it because it is something loved, but rather it is something loved because it is loved by them. However, Euthyphro does not apply this principle to pious things, agreeing that pious things are loved by the gods because they are pious - and not the other way around.
Socrates then points out that "pious" and "god-loved" cannot be the same thing because there would be a contradiction: If something loved by the gods is god-loved because it is loved by them, then that would mean that it would have to be pious because it is loved by them. On the other hand, if something is loved by the gods because it is pious, then that would mean that it is also loved by the gods because it is god-loved.
Apparently this problem is known as Euthyphro's Dilemma and has implications for modern religions. For now I will have to be content with Plato's formulation and lack of resolution, but I anticipate this question arising again in the future.
Socrates then asks Euthyphro how piety relates to justice. That is, he wishes to know whether everything that is pious is also just, and whether or not everything that is just is also pious. For clarity, he uses a mathematical analogy: All odd numbers are numbers, but not all numbers are odd numbers. Euthyphro indicates that all that is pious is also just, but not all that is just is necessarily pious. Socrates then asks what part of justice makes a thing also pious?
Thus Euthyphro arrives at yet another definition of piety: Piety is the care of the gods. After further questioning by Socrates we find that by "care" here Euthyphro means "service to the Gods" that involves prayer and sacrifice, whereby humans give gifts to the gods and ask favors from them. Socrates asks what gifts are given to the gods, and Euthyphro says that the gifts are "honor" and "reverence" and other such things that please the gods. Socrates then points out that Euthyphro's argument has circled back to "pious things are those things that are dear to the gods" - or in other words, things that the gods love. However, earlier they established that piety and god-loved were not the same thing.
Finally, Euthyphro gives up and indicates that he needs to go, and the dialogue ends without a resolution.
One subtext of this dialogue seems to be "Does religion bring knowledge?" Since priests or seers are presumably some of the most strict adherents of particular faiths - even going so far as to claim direct inspiration from the gods - then it would seem to follow that these men would be among the wisest people. Indeed, Euthyphro claims that he can "foretell the future" and that he has "foretold nothing that did not happen". Euthyphro also suggests that he is "superior to the majority of men" because he has "accurate knowledge" of "the divine, and of piety and impiety". However, since Euthyphro fails to provide Socrates with a satisfactory definition of piety by the end of the dialogue, this suggests that Euthyphro is not as knowledgeable as he claims to be.
Furthermore, the servant who died at the hands of Euthyphro's father in part died because Euthyphro's father was seeking advice from seers and was unable to obtain that advice in a timely manner. One wonders if there would have been a more just outcome if Euthyphro's father had acquired knowledge about justice and piety himself, rather than rely on priests.
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