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PREVIEW-Episode 46: Plato on Ethics & Religion

November 16, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 25 Comments

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/partiallyexaminedlife/PREVIEW-PEL_ep_046_10-23-11.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:33 — 27.1MB)

This is a 30-minute preview of a 1 hr, 52-minute episode.

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Discussing Plato's "Euthyphro."

Does morality have to be based on religion? Are good things good just because God says so, or (if there is a God) does God choose to approve of the things He does because he recognizes those things to be already good? Plato thinks the latter: if morality is to be truly non-arbitrary, then, like the laws of logic, it can't just be a contingent matter of what the gods happen to approve of (i.e. what some particular religious text happens to say).

We're joined by Matt Evans, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan to discuss the text, which seems to be not as directly related to modern debates regarding the Divine Command Theory as we thought going into this. Ah, well. We cover all the angles and Seth spends the last bit going on about Judaism. Oy!

Buy the book or read it online. Read more about the topic.

End song: "False Morality" by The MayTricks, from the album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994) Read about it.

Looking for the full Citizen version?

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Filed Under: Podcast Episodes Tagged With: Judaism, Matt Evans, meta-ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy podcast, Plato

Comments

  1. wr says

    November 17, 2011 at 8:35 pm

    One of the best ever. Dylan’s use of car overhang on his driveway as a legitimate though hilarious philosophical example stood out to me as a high point for the show and everything it stands for. Matt was a great guest and I hope you guys can lure him back at some point. Thanks guys.

    Reply
    • Seth Paskin says

      November 17, 2011 at 9:49 pm

      Thanks wr! It was a fun read and conversation. We really appreciated Matt joining us.
      –seth

      Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      November 18, 2011 at 11:35 am

      I’m happy to say that Matt is interested in returning… he suggested we do a David Lewis episode. I was surprised by his interest/expertise in the analytic philosophy approach to metaphysics, and Lewis on modality is a great (and weird) example of that. We’ll need to get there through Kripke, though… which we incidentally also have a repeat guest (Matt Teichman from our Frege episode) tenatively lined up for. I doubt these will happen before late spring, though.

      Reply
      • Derick Varn a.k.a. Skepoet says

        November 20, 2011 at 11:12 am

        Mark do you ever think you guys will touch Kripke on Wittgenstein or is that too meta?

        Reply
        • Mark Linsenmayer says

          November 20, 2011 at 12:40 pm

          We’re planning on Investigations then Kripke. I don’t recall how much of Naming & Necc commented on Witt.

          Reply
          • Derick Varn a.k.a. Skepoet says

            November 20, 2011 at 7:17 pm

            I was more of sections of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language-Kripke which mine and I suspect a lot of people’s introduction to Kripke.

          • Tom McDonald says

            November 29, 2011 at 12:11 am

            Roger Scruton reads Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument from the PI as the death-blow to the last vestiges of Cartesian skepticism hanging on in analytical philosophy. That is, he thinks it achieves what Hegel wanted to do but did not do clearly enough, which is to demonstrate the intrinsically social character of reason and the absurdity of most modern skeptical dilemmas:

            http://philpapers.org/rec/SCRCNW

            -tom

          • Tom McDonald says

            November 29, 2011 at 12:17 am

            This is actually a review of Kripke’s book “W on Rules and Private Language” where Scruton argues Kripke’s interpretation is wrong:

            http://www.jstor.org/pss/2254269

            #

  2. Charles Blackmar says

    November 20, 2011 at 8:17 pm

    Can God make a sandwich bigger than he can eat? Classic- I laughed for 10 minutes after that. I wish that people would divorce the Divine Command theory from such an argument of Plato. Today’s God is not the same as Zeus and his bunch. I can understand talking morality as from God and if it is, is it moral because He spoke such or is it moral on its own? These are great question to wrestle with. Even as a Theist I hate talk of taking a 21st century Abrahamic notion of God and placing it in Plato’s context. Ah, Augustine what have you done?

    Reply
  3. Anonymous says

    November 23, 2011 at 10:35 am

    How about an interview with Alex Rosenberg on his new ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO REALITY? He develops a piquant alternative to both Plato and theists: “nice nihilism.”

    Reply
  4. Kevin says

    February 10, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    Philosoraptor listens to this podcast…

    http://h.images.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/14391767.jpg

    Reply
    • Seth Paskin says

      February 10, 2012 at 12:49 pm

      Love it!

      Reply
  5. Doug Pinkard says

    January 3, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    This preview could have been edited such that a third of it is not banter.

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      January 3, 2016 at 7:14 pm

      And in only slightly longer than the time it took you to complain, you could’ve become a member and downloaded every single behind-the-firewall episode and not had to worry about the quality of these previews. Hmmmm. 🙂

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Discussing: Plato’s Euthyphro. Next: Sartre. | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 16, 2011 at 9:09 pm

    […] Listen to the current episode. Read what we’ll discuss next. New to the podcast? Listen to our intro. Read the FAQ. See recent episodes. Jump to the earliest ones. […]

    Reply
  2. Skepoet Responds to PEL on Euthyphro | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 21, 2011 at 12:37 pm

    […] a response to our recent episode from C Derick Varn, aka Skepoet: Read his “partially informed […]

    Reply
  3. Kenan Malik (via The Browser) on Morality without God (and the Euthyphro) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 22, 2011 at 10:03 am

    […] Malik makes the same jump from the metaphysical to the epistemological that Matt criticized me for in our discussion (the bolding is mine): Or, as Leibniz asked at the beginning of the 18th century, if it is the case […]

    Reply
  4. Philosophy and Religion: What I’ve Learned Through Our Episodes | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 26, 2011 at 5:08 am

    […] Nor, then, do we need such a book or religious authority to tell us what to do (Episode 46). If religion has something to teach us about ethics, it’s because wise people in multiple […]

    Reply
  5. Topic for #58: Is vs. Ought in 20th Century Ethics | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    May 17, 2012 at 12:04 pm

    […] or people’s actual desires. This error, says Moore, also extends to equating good with what God wants or what we would choose upon calm reflection on social norms and our own innermost desires. It may […]

    Reply
  6. Topic for #87: Sartre on Human Nature and Freedom | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    January 2, 2014 at 4:48 pm

    […] Himself came up and told you to do something, that would not define “good” for you (see our discussion of Plato’s “Euthyphro” for a lot more on this); there would still be that free act of interpretation on your part to […]

    Reply
  7. Freedom and Taste | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    February 10, 2014 at 11:01 am

    […] individual valuers (and not, for instance, irreducible moral qualities in things as Moore thinks or commands of God) that create values. Likewise, Sartre certainly doesn’t have to be interpreted to mean that […]

    Reply
  8. Moby-Dick as Philosophy: Plato – Melville – Nietzsche | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 17, 2015 at 7:00 am

    […] return to an image that I think more nearly resembles the original—by superimposing portraits of Plato, Melville, and Nietzsche—the thinkers themselves, their ideas and their lives—to produce a […]

    Reply
  9. Diving with Melville | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    December 1, 2015 at 7:00 am

    […] in which case it will live forever after as a disembodied being among the gods. In his other works Plato consistently ranks the soul above the body, but in no other dialogue does he demean the body so […]

    Reply
  10. Topic for #129: Is Religious Faith Rational? | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    December 13, 2015 at 9:25 pm

    […] of God because they afford no means of distinguishing good from evil, i.e. God's Will (see our episode on the Euthyphro for a variation on this: IS does not imply OUGHT). Believers either have a "self-validating" […]

    Reply
  11. Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XII: Michael Allen Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    October 26, 2017 at 7:00 am

    […] the previous two articles, we saw how two competing, perhaps contradictory, inheritances from Plato were absorbed into Christian theology. There was, on the one hand, the conception of God as […]

    Reply

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