Plato’s Euthyphro: The Trial of Meletus

Mr. Kalb’s commentary on Plato’s Euthyphro aims to simultaneously correct philosophical misapprehensions about the dialogue and establish its literary place and value. In addition to the active and passive voices of English and other Western languages, Ancient Greek possessed a middle voice. The famous Euthyphro Dilemma, so called, is really based upon an equivocation between the passive and middle voice, one that cannot be rendered in English. Plato, in this supposedly early dialogue, solves metaphysically a key difficulty in the theory of Ideas presented in Parmenides, a supposedly late dialogue. This shows the division of Plato’s dialogues into early, middle, and late periods to be based upon a simple misunderstanding of his doctrine. Moreover, it sheds great light upon Plato’s doctrine of the soul. Euthyphro draws upon Greek epic and tragedy, especially Oedipus the King. However, the full meaning and value of Euthyphro only becomes apparent in the context of his whole corpus of dialogues. As always, Plato makes serious demands upon his reader.