Disagreement, Value, Measure

Abstract

Chapter 3 reconstructs the largely under-appreciated analysis of value disagreement in Plato’s Euthyphro. The chapter rejects a long-standing agreement among interpreters, namely, that in the Euthyphro Plato takes the pious to be a basic value property. Instead, the chapter argues, the pious is a relational value that presupposes a more fundamental assessment of actions, people, and so on, as good. On the proposed reading, the Euthyphro identifies the good as basic, and it emphasizes that the good is the kind of value people disagree about. The dialogue lays out a research project, one that is to be undertaken rather than already accomplished: how to account for the nature of the good, given pervasive and persistent disagreement and the lack of an established standard to resolve it.