foundation for the objectively good life for human beings which would be able to
defend itself and withstand all attack by argument. There were accordingly some
things Plato could not rely on, including traditional, unreasoned notions of justice,
piety, and decency. He could neither rely on the goodness of these characteristics and
ways of the soul, nor could he rely on a common understanding of the terms in
the first place. In his dialogues, he therefore steps back and looks for what is good in
the first place.
This search for the good underlies the questioning of inherited values and inherited
morality,nomos. Part and parcel ofnomos, however, was inherited religion with its
traditional gods. Indeed, one Greek word for ‘‘believing’’ isnomizein, i.e. ‘‘to go
with what is handed down bynomos, custom.’’ In the normal course of events, what is
handed down by custom need not be analyzed or questioned. But in the climate of
late fifth-century Sophistic debates,nomoswas one of the most thoroughly ques-
tioned concepts. The opposition set up by the Sophists was that between custom and
nature,nomosandphysis. Socrates’ questioning of common concepts portrayed in
Plato’s dialogues thus forms part of a wider trend which had called traditional beliefs
and traditional belief into question. In particular, the anthropomorphic nature and
the human behavior of the gods had already been criticized by the Presocratic
philosophers, be it in jocular fashion, as in Xenophanes’ humorous reductio ad
absurdumof the belief in gods that look like men which culminates in his peculiar
henotheism (D-K 21 B 11, 12, 14, 15, 23–6, 34), or be it in the serious abstract
considerations of Heraclitus, who concludes that ‘‘the wise which is one thing alone
does not want and does want the name of Zeus’’ (D-K 22 B 32).
Constructing Plato’s Theology
While Socrates could draw on and is part of this critical tradition in Greek thought,
the Socrates of Plato’s dialogue is at the same time portrayed as religiously pious. But
in assessing Socratic and Platonic piety, it should be taken into account that Plato not
only had the pious task of defending the memory of his master: although trials for
impiety were a sign of the unstable times of the Peloponnesian War rather than of the
first half of the fourth century, Plato will have wanted to avoid all possibility of
suffering the same fate as Socrates. The fact, therefore, that the Socrates of the
Platonic dialogue is pious does not, as such, mean anything for an interpretation of
Plato’s theology. To learn about his theology, one must rather start from those
arguments in the dialogues which do not form part of the dramatic setting or the
portrayal of character.
One series of such arguments can be found in theEuthyphro, a threshold dialogue
between theMenoand thePhaedo, in which Socrates, who has been accused by
Meletus of introducing new gods and corrupting the young, a charge which will
result in Socrates’ condemnation, is in conversation with a man of religion, Euthy-
phro. Socrates poses the Greek question ‘‘What is the pious and what is the impious?’’
(5). In this question, the definite article ‘‘the’’ in front of the neuter singular adjective
‘‘pious’’ indicates and sums up what Euthyphro and Socrates both believe and had
previously agreed on, that what is pious itself underlies all actions that can be called
pious, and that it does not change over time or according to circumstances. Socrates’
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