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Euthyphro in Hell

945 views · Published 11 March 2008 · 9:45 · Indexed 11 October 2026

Channel: Mavaddat Javid · 2008 · Education

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An analysis of ProfMTH's objections to LifeOfApollos.

Plus, bonus objections of my own!

Replying to ProfMTH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LskX6wwOrs

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I realized the specific objection I raised about the arbitrary nature of God's command as making things good is only implicit in the Euthyphro. This objection is made explicit by Leibniz in his "Discourse on Metaphysics". In part II, entitled "Against those who hold that there is in the works of God no goodness, or that the principles of goodness and beauty are arbitrary", he writes:

Therefore I am far removed from the opinion of those who maintain that there are no principles of goodness or perfection in the nature of things, or in the ideas which God has about them, and who say that the works of God are good only through the formal reason that God has made them. If this position were true, God, knowing that he is the author of things, would not have to regard them afterwards and find them good, as the Holy Scripture witnesses. Such anthropological expressions are used only to let us know that excellence is recognized in regarding the works themselves, even if we do not consider their evident dependence on their author. This is confirmed by the fact that it is in reflecting upon the works that we are able to discover the one who wrought. They must therefore bear in themselves his character. I confess that the contrary opinion seems to me extremely dangerous and closely approaches that of recent innovators who hold that the beauty of the universe and the goodness which we attribute to the works of God are chimeras of human beings who think of God in human terms. In saying, therefore, that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary? Where will be his justice and his wisdom if he has only a certain despotic power, if arbitrary will takes the place of reasonableness, and if in accord with the definition of tyrants, justice consists in that which is pleasing to the most powerful? Besides it seems that every act of willing supposes some reason for the willing and this reason, of course, must precede the act. This is why, accordingly, I find so strange those expressions of certain philosophers who say that the eternal truths of metaphysics and Geometry, and consequently the principles of goodness, of justice, and of perfection, are effects only of the will of God. To me it seems that all these follow from his understanding, which does not depend upon his will any more than does his essence.

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