What do Traditionalists and other schools of perennial philosophy have to say about Plato's Euthyphro?
Guenon especially comes to mind, given that his conversion to Islam and his subsequent religious devotion seems to be a blatant means towards an end (acquiring esoteric wisdom that exists beyond Islam) rather than a sincere acceptance of revelation. At the end of the day, you're either a believer or you're a heathen. And once you enter the spiritual framework, isn't it impossible to claim to know better than "the best prophet" unless you experienced some revelation yourself? Traditionalism seems like another secular attempt to bypass religion by tapping into its aesthetics, extracting it of all its value, and throwing the essence away.
Also, Euthyphro thread in general. Ultimately, I don't think piety and "the good"/"the wise"/etc. are separate. And I read Euthyphro as a hilariously petty, deluded, and profane man. I don't think the dialogue undermines religion as the Straussians try to convey it but rather illustrate the importance of religion "making sense" on a cosmic scale and the dangers of believing any random claim to revelation for its own sake.
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Most Abrahamic monotheistic religions would fall under Divine command theory and would be considered unacceptable as moral basis to Socrates.
Judaism and Islam, sure. But Christianity has an out, given the Gospel of John.
>in the beginning was the Logos
>and the Logos was with God
>and the Logos was God
>he used le Greek word
>that means Christianity is different
lmao
>Euthyphro
Never heard of it.
Thanks
Guenongays must be sleeping rn
The point of Euthyphro is that God and the Good are identical.
Numenius, a 2nd century Neo-Pythagorean who helped kick start the revival of the Academy into a dogmatic school, says of Euthypho:
>"If Plato, having set out to write about the theology of the Athenians, had felt disgusted at it and started to criticize it for containing internal dissent and parents having sex with their children or eating them, and for praising the punishments in revenge for these acts, exercised on their parents by children and by brothers on brothers and other such things; if Plato thus, having taken on such stories, had criticized them in public, he would, it seems to me, have given the Athenians a reason to show themselves evil again and kill him too as they did Socrates. Because he would not have chosen to live rather than to speak the truth, and because he saw that he could safely reconcile living and speaking the truth, he putEuthyphroforward as the personification of the Athenians, a pretentious man and an idiot, who thinks wrongly about the gods as nobody else, and confronted him with Socrates himself in his usual way of acting in which he used to question everybody with whom he was discussing."--Numenius,On the Secret Doctrines of Plato
The gods are dependent on the forms in order to "be just" etc. in this dialogue.
ah yeah I guess I got the gods mixed up with God while reading it
>Numenius,On the Secret Doctrines of Plato
Link to PDF?
Beyond moronic view of Guenon but as to your question, yeah Euthyphro is a cuck
what is Tradition except divine wisdom? and how would one know what divine wisdom is except through divine revelation? that's the problem with Guenon and his ilk. perennialists might be willing to begin with a certain prophet, but they're unwilling to end with any particular one of them. this implies that they can somehow rise above the divine, but it ultimately ends up trivializing each and every one of them. all religions may imperfectly participate in revelation to various degrees, but one has to triumph over the others. otherwise it becomes a form of relativism.
Your stance contradicts itself, if divine wisdom can only be known through divine revelation (correct), then it can't be learned rationally simply by trusting in the words of someone who its been revealed to. You have to actually experience that revelation yourself. There are certainly plenty of reasons to prefer this or that religion, but the truth does not rest in the religions themselves, the religions offer the way to the truth.
> but it ultimately ends up trivializing each and every one of them
On the contrary it is your stance that does so by reducing them to profane knowledge that is believed based on sentiment.
>You have to actually experience that revelation yourself.
But whose path are you following? The Prophet Muhammad? Buddha? Christ? Or your own?
>the religions offer the way to the truth.
They can't all be equal in truth. That would undercut the gravity of religious meaning. You don't get to pick and choose in accordance to your whims.
>But whose path are you following? The Prophet Muhammad? Buddha? Christ? Or your own?
Who is this question directed at? No logical connection to the point at all, what an odd thing to say.
>They can't all be equal in truth. That would undercut the gravity of religious meaning. You don't get to pick and choose in accordance to your whims.
Who said they were? The religions/traditions serve to orient one to the truth, which was to be walked into oneself, again your stance is self-contradictory (and therefore demonstrated as an absurdity) because we can find statements in all the traditions you've named that affirm this. Sorry, "believing" is not enough.
>Who is this question directed at? No logical connection to the point at all, what an odd thing to say.
What is the best path to revelation?
>Who said they were?
Okay, then which religion gets it best and why?
>What is the best path to revelation?
That depends on many relative factors - what the time period and cultural context is, what a person's individual ability and characteristics are, plainly what they have access to, etc.
>Okay, then which religion gets it best and why?
As above. For most Westerners, you should probably be either Catholic or Orthodox I'd say.
Why would revelation be culturally contingent during a globalized age?
Its not "revelation" that is culturally contingent, as has been clarified multiple times already, its the path to it. As to why that's contingent at all, its because you yourself are contingent. I reject the premise implied in your question on globalism specifically that there's effectively one world culture.
Okay, if you live in a one world culture (which we are increasingly heading towards whether we care for it or not), then what would be the best path?
Again I reject the premise that for the individual person this can ever be true, but again in that situation it would depend on your individual characteristics. There are multiple points of view within orthodox Hinduism for the same reason, people are different and will be more suited for different paths. There is no "best path" for everyone, that implies some moronic anti-metaphysical assumptions already, like the assumption that everyone is equal.
How am I supposed to know which is the best path for me? Give some basic heuristics.
I mean as I said, if you live in the West its almost certainly going to be either Catholicism or Orthodoxy. I wouldn't recommend Protestantism. I'd probably recommend Orthodoxy, but realization is possible through Catholicism.
If you have an ancestral connection to something else, like say for example Islam, that might also be viable. But Westerners really should be looking to Christianity, only they need to practice it in a legitimate way.
Not him, but how is realization possible through Catholicism? Doesn't it have the problem of no initiatory path?
Don't they have monastic orders? Aquinas for example clearly realized to some degree at least
Well, should've clarified I meant for laypersons.
> but they're unwilling to end with any particular one of them
Guenon and Schuon typically base their explication of metaphysics heavily in Advaita, and say that Advaita comes closest to explaining the perennial truth
The idea that esotericism is superior to exotericism and that the latter is just a means to the former is a very early idea in Islam. Look up the Batini Shi'a.
Imo, everyone who thinks that Euthyphro is about why atheism is based has completely missed the subtext.
It's more fundamentally about two things: how it it is not valid to define things by nominalistic democratic consensus, and how it is not valid to define things as pious(or, in modern atheist language, "useful/practical/pragmatic") without an ontological account of goodness, which is the aim of piety. Since he was questioning the validity of the category of "piety" if piety is "what the Gods command" *if what the Gods command contradict each other*, since the Gods have different wills, and consider different things good and pious.
There is no problem with divine command theory, *if* the Divine doing the commanding is also inherently ontological goodness in and of itself. Doing what the personal goodness of the cosmos actually commands would be not a problem at all - and the Holy Trinity, being one in essence, one in energy, one in will, cannot contradict each other.