Platonic Piety: ‘Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again’1

Frisbee Sheffield

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov ∵

Thinking about piety in the dialogues of Plato has become a divided affair. On the one hand there are those who use the so-called ‘positive turn’ at the end of the Euthyphro to develop a ‘Socratic’ account of piety, where this is supposed to bear some relationship to the historical Socrates. As a result, supporting evidence is restricted to the Apology, a work whose views are held to bear greater resemblance to the views of the historical Socrates. In that work, the philosophical practice of ‘care for the soul’, particularly Socrates’ characteris- tic occupation with uncovering ignorance, is described as a service to the god Apollo (23b, c1, 28e–29a, 29d–30b, 30c7, 30e–31b, 37e–38a), and so it has been thought to provide a specification of that service to the gods, which eluded the interlocutors of the Euthyphro. The result of this practice is (ideally) the possession of a specifically human wisdom, which reflects one’s proper place in relation to the superior wisdom of the gods.2 On the other hand, the work

1 This paper was delivered at a conference on Ancient Philosophy and Religion in 2014, and the 2014 meeting of the SAAP in Cambridge, and the Ancient Philosophy workshop in Oxford in 2015. I wish to thank the audiences there for comments; in particular, Gabor Betegh, Sarah Broadie, Gail Fine, Christopher Gill (who suggested the title), Terence Irwin, Lindsay Judson, David Lee, Anthony Long, Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, and James Warren. I would also like to thank Radcliffe Edmonds, James Lesher, Mark McPherran, Suzanne Ozbrdralek, Christopher Rowe, and Shaul Tor for comments. 2 See M. McPherran, “Socratic Piety in the Euthyphro,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985): 283–309; G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991); and C. Taylor, “The End of the Euthyphro,” Phronesis 27 (1982): 109–18; who use the Apology to interpret the Euthyphro and provide a ‘Socratic’ account of piety, where this, it is often suggested, has some connection to the historical Socrates. See also S. Calef, “Piety and the Unity of Virtue in Euthyphro 11e–14c,” OSAP 13 (1995): 1–26.

© KoninklijkeBrillNV,Leiden,2017 | DOI10.1163/9789004323131_004 38 Sheffield of Sedley3 and Annas4 has promoted the ethical ideal of god-likeness in the Theaetetus and the Timaeus, which suggests an alternative account of piety. In this view, our relationship with the gods resides in our becoming like them with respect to contemplative wisdom.5 Though this shows the gods due rev- erence, it is not clear whether this is also some kind of service to them and, if so, in what way. These two strands of thinking about human relationships with the divine often fail to intersect (something that works well for those who see a divide between the authentically ‘Socratic’ and the ‘Platonic’ in the works of Plato). There are also significant differences between these views on the exercise of piety as a virtue. For example, Vlastos has argued, with respect to the Apology, that piety is or involves moral virtue insofar as it involves care and concern for others: “doing on the god’s behalf, in assistance to him, work the god wants done and would be doing himself if he could” and that is specifically work for the benefit of one’s fellow men.6 Annas, by contrast, has argued that the ideal of becoming like god is rather a spiritual ideal of disengagement from the world.7 In a recent paper Rowe8 has provided a bridge between these two views of piety, arguing that intellectual activity in a broad sense, rather than acts of moral virtue, was always central to the accounts of piety in the Euthyphro and the Apology. He argues for an account of Socratic piety that does not take this to refer in the main to any ‘Socrates’ that is distinct from ‘Plato’ and does not take Plato to be committed to the idea – even in these texts – that piety consists in living a moral life;9 he argues that even in the Apology it is not

3 “The Ideal of God-likeness,” in Plato: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the Soul (ed. Gail Fine; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 309–29. 4 Platonic Ethics, Old and New (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999). 5 For various formulations of this idea, see: Alcibiades 1 133c1–6; Phaedo 80e2–1a10, 82b10–c1; Phaedrus 248a1–c5, 249c4–d3, 252d1–3c2; Republic 500c9–d1, 501b1–7, 613a4–b1; Sympo- sium 207c9–8b4; Theaetetus 176a8–b3; Timaeus 47b5–c4, 90b1–d7; Laws 716b8–d4, 792c8–d5, 906a7–b3. 6 G. Vlastos, “Socratic Piety” in Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (ed. G. Vlastos; Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 157–79 at 175. 7 See Annas, Platonic Ethics. Those texts highlighted by Sedley and Annas discuss our relation- ship to the divine in terms of contemplation, and not acts of moral virtue; for such actions are not those in which the gods engage, and the ethical ideal is to become like god; cf. Sedley, “The Ideal of God-likeness,” 324. J. Armstrong (“Becoming like God: After the Ascent,” OSAP [2004]) has questioned the emphasis on disengagement in the ‘becoming like god’ ideal, however. 8 C.J. Rowe, “Socrates and His Gods” in Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy (ed. V. Harte and M. Lane; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 313–29, esp. 313. 9 Rowe, “Socrates and His Gods,” 321.