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Theistic Activism and the Euthyphro Dilemma

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Theistic Activism and the Euthyphro Dilemma THEISTIC ACTIVISM AND THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA by DAVID BAGGEn DISSERTATION Submltbtd to the Gradua.. School of Wayne Stat. University Detroit, Michigan In partlill fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2002 MAJOR: PHILOSOPHY ,.Cbr. ~ 3/;;/02- Advisor Date o COPYRIGHT BY DAVID BAGGETT 2002 All Rights Re.. rved DEDICATION To my parents, Leonard and Evelyn Baggett, for their years of support and encouragement, whose lives provided for me a model of practical theistic ethics. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sincere thanks to numerous friends for putting up with my insufferable e­ mails about my dissertation and for often responding with far more illuminating e­ mails of their own. Notably Jim Brent, Ron Butzu, Sloan Lee, and especially Steve Patterson. Deepest thanks go to my dearest friend, Ginger Asel, for all her encouragement, and special thanks to Brian MacPherson for the numerous ways in which he helped me prepare for my final defense. Many thanks to my dissertation committee: First and foremost, Bruce Russell, my practically Anselmian advisor, for his consistent toughness and faimess; Herb Granger, for his knowledge of the history of philosophy and model of philosophical collaboration; William Stine, for conSistently spurring me to do my best; and Elton Higgs, a dear friend and long-time mentor who has taught me what it means to be a Christian scholar. Special thanks to Mike McKinsey too, who, though not an official member of my committee (Since he was out of the country when I had to select it), is nonetheless an invaluable part of it. His incredible generosity of time and philosophical expertise strengthened my work considerably. I would be remiss if I were not to thank Jerry Walls, whose influence over the last dozen years has been tremendously formative in my personal and professional development. He models what it takes and means to be a premier Christian philosopher. iii Dedication ii Acknowtedgments iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Euthyphro Dilemma 6 Chapter 2: The God of Anselm 46 Chapter 3: A Theory of the Good 97 Chapter 4: A Theory of the Right 137 Chapter 5: Why a Good God Issues Bad Commands 189 Conclusion 222 Bibliography 225 Abstract 239 Autobiographical Statement 241 iv 1 Introduction The horrific images of September 11, 2001 remain vividly bumed in the minds of everyone witness to the day's tragic events. Four airplanes hijacked, two of which were within minutes buried in the heart of New York's Wortd Trade Center and a third into the United States Pentagon. Over three thousand innocents extinguished in a single day. Pascal's waming that evil is never done so zealously than when it is performed out of religious conviction struck a poignantly prophetic note, as investigations would soon reveal that the perpetrators of this terrorist plot on American soil were profoundly religious persons. Incensed at America's support of Israel in its conflict with Palestinians, at America's sanctions against Iraq that have contributed to dismal living conditions within that country, and at America's occupation of lands perceived as the sacred ground of Islam, rigidly fundamentalist Muslims trained by a terrorist network loosely run by Osama bin Laden had perpetrated this violence as part of jihad. A holy war against Israel and the United States was touted by bin Laden, dissident Saudi Arabian son of a billionaire, as Allah's sovereign plan to purify Islam, rectify injustices, and defeat evil. Such is only the latest spectre raised in the minds of many listeners when they hear talk of religious ethics. Inquisitions and holy wars, crusades and witch bumings, violent acts of terror and inhumane acts of cruelty, all justified in the name of God. So to affirm an intimate connection between God and morality is to tear open a monstrous can of worms, entailing the loss of moral autonomy and objectivity in the face of divine fiat, or at least faith in divine fiat. Little wonder that numerous contemporary secular and religious thinkers alike would prefer to put 2 ethics on a more solid footing not so susceptible to subjective visions and unverifiable claims of revelation. Not everyone, however, who is sickened and appalled at (what has simply come to be known as) "9/11- shares such skepticism toward religious ethics. A radically different sort of vision of God and religious ethics is possible, bearing as little relation to Osama bin Laden as a loving father does to a pedophile. Rather than making the content of ethics wildly malleable for being a function of divine whim, it is a view of ethics according to which God exists as a plausible candidate, if not the best explanation, for morality's reality. prescriptive power, and stable objectivity. It is a view according to which God, if he exists, is not irrelevant to ethics. neither to moral rightness nor to moral goodness. Admittedly, this is close to the heart of the way in which I have for nearly a" my life thought of ethics, as intimately tied to the existence, nature, and commands of a loving God. The years I have spent studying philosophy have not lessened my confidence in the veridicality of this vision. On entering graduate school, I knew from day one that this would be the topic of my dissertation. I knew that it was a topic on which important work needs to be done. For religious ethics has been confronted since nearly the inception of westem philosophy with what many perceive to be an almost intractable objection. The Euthyphro Dilemma is often touted as posing an in-principle objection to religious ethics. It offers seemingly but two altematives to religious ethicists, one of which entailing religion's irrelevance to morality, the other landing them in the thick of the worst sort of arbitrariness. For quite some time. I have struggled with this challenge to theistic ethics and divine command theory. I was convinced that there was an answer to it, but unsure of what it was. This dissertation is my provisional attempt to answer this 3 challenge. To the extent it is successful, it will not have shown theistic ethics to be true, but simply that the Euthyphro Dilemma does not pose the in-principle objection to it that it is often thought to. Theistic ethics will have survived as at least a living possibility, at most as a compelling and philosophically plausible vision to which those thinking about ethics ought to seriously consider giving their allegiance. But pushing the latter case with any effectiveness requires more constructive work than what I do in this predominantly defensive dissertation. Relative to my specific objectives, allow me to provide a cursory overview of the chapters to follow. Chapter 1 features a general introduction to the Euthyphro dialogue itself. An effort is made to underscore some of the interesting philosophical features of this dialogue leading up to the crucial passage and the Dilemma itself: Is something good or right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good or right? Both homs of the Dilemma are then discussed, particularty that hom of the Dilemma not favored by the divine command theorist. Chapter 2 spells out the specific theological commitments operative here that serve as constraints on the particular divine command theory defended. It is heavy on biblical and philosophical theology for the purpose of clarifying exactly what operative conception of deity is assumed and what conception of ethics dominates the discussion. Chapter 3 spells out this dissertation's theory of the good and highlights the severe limitations of a definist analysis of theistic ethics. Chapter 4 explicates a divine command theory of the right, while delineating the range of questions that every version of OCT needs to answer. Chapter 5 deploys my analysis in answering arbitrariness and vacuity objections to divine command theory and theistic ethics. In his 1983 inaugural address as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, Alvin Plantinga delivered an address 4 entitled -Advice to Christian Philosophers,- in which he encouraged them to allow their religious convictions to shape the work they do in philosophy. He counseled them to be unafraid to articulate and explore distinctively religious or even Christian conceptions in their work. Recognizing the vital role played by certain of those most deeply ingrained and cherished aspects of one's social context to the way one orders experience and perceives the world, Plantinga writes Christian philosophers are the philosophers of the Christian community; and it is part of their task as Christian philosophers to seNe the Christian community. But the Christian community has its own questions, its own concems, its own topics for investigation, its own agenda and its own research program. Christian philosophers ought not merely take their inspiration from whafs going on at Princeton or Berkeley or HaNard, attractive and scintillating as that may be; for perhaps those questions and topiCS are not the ones, or the only ones, they should be thinking about as the philosophers of the Christian community. There are other philosophical topics the Christian community must work at, and other topics the Christian community must work at philosophically. And obviously, Christian philosophers are the ones who must do the philosophical work involved. If they devote their best efforts to the topics fashionable to the non-Christian philosophical world, they will neglect a crucial and central part of their task as Christian philosophers. What is needed here is more independence, more autonomy with respect to the projects and concems of the non-theistic philosophical world .... In ethics, for 5 example: perhaps the chief theoretical concem, from the theistic perspective, is the question of how are right and wrong, good and bad, duty, pennission and obligation related to God and to his will and to his creative activity? This question doesn't arise, naturally enough, from a non-theistic perspective; and so, naturally enough, non-theist ethicists do not address it.
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