PHL 503 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Omnipotence, Divine Command Theory
18 Jan 2016
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Document Summary
Euthyphro is a philosophical dialogue written by the ancient greek philosopher. The dialogue is named after one of the characters, euthyphro; the other main character is socrates, the teacher of plato (who never wrote anything himself, as far as we know). Although the main subject of the dialogue seems to be religion, or religious piety, it has broader implications. One famous argument modelled on the dialogue concerns the relation of religion to morality. Some people think that god is the ultimate source or basis of morality. They may think that the moral status of an action is determined by god"s will (or command, or something like that). That is, they may think that an action is right because god commands the action or wrong because go d forbids the action. For example, god could command us to murder innocent people for fun. (surely he could command us to do that, given that he is omnipotent. )
