Theaetetus, asked what knowledge is, replies that geometry and the other mathematical disciplines are knowledge, and so are crafts like cobbling. Socrates points out that it does not help him to be told how many kinds of knowledge there are when his problem is to know what knowledge itself is, what it means to call geometry or a craft knowledge in the first place—he insists on the generality of his question in the way he often does when his interlocutor, asked (...) for a definition, cites instead cases of the concept to be defined. (shrink)

Plato’s Euthyphro, I argue, lays out a metaethics that responds to persistent and unresolved value disagreement. The dialogue’s analysis of disagreement leads to the distinction between three kinds of value, exemplified by the good, the god-loved, and the pious. With this proposal, I reject centuries of scholarship, which ascribe a realist metaethics to the Plato of the Euthyphro. But only the good and the just require a ‘realist’ analysis: we relate to them as features of the world to which we (...) have attitudes, not as features of the world that are conferred by our attitudes. The god-loved is overtly attitudinal, thus calling for an anti-realist account. A compelling account of the pious has both realist and anti-realist dimensions. All three kinds of value, I argue, are to be found in the domain of law. Here, too, the good and the just require a realist, the legal an anti-realist, and the lawful a realist and anti-realist analysis. As important as piety was for millennia, it is a non-issue in today’s metaethics. But its analogue in the domain of the law, the lawful, plays a crucial role in our lives today. While we recognize legality as potentially flawed, respect for the law is an indispensable attitude if we are to strive towards improved lives and improved societies. (shrink)

In Plato’s Euthyphro, Euthyphro proposes to analyse the pious as that which is beloved of the gods. In the most widely discussed argument of the dialogue, Socrates tries to show that Euthyphro’s analysis fails. The argument crucially involves an ingenious use of the explanatory connective ‘because’. This paper presents a detailed reconstruction and defence of the argument. It starts with a rigorous analysis of its logical form, explains and justifies its premises, and closes with a defence of the argument against (...) the strongest common objection. (shrink)