What is truly pious and what is impious (devout and irreverent)? What is justice? Is everything that is pious also just? Who or what imposes these concepts on people and under what jurisdiction? Is the one who decides to impose them on someone more just than the other? These and many more questions arise in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro.
The dialogue Euthyphro or On the Pious is considered a genuine Platonic dialogue and is placed around 399 BC, when Socrates goes to the "King's portico" in Athens where the seat of the highest judicial authority is located, to learn about the charges that have been brought against him by Meletus. Its theme is the pious and the attempt to render the correct, if not the most suitable, definition of piety (the devout, the pious), that is, the appropriate behavior towards the divine.
The attempt to articulate a complete and unique definition is carried out by two conversing characters: Socrates and Euthyphro, in a way that will allow the former to exemplarily apply the scrutinizing method of dialectics. It is brief and belongs to the Socratic dialogues, that is, those which, according to all evolutionary scholars, are considered to have been written during Plato's early writing period, which is justified among other things by the typical structure of the work.
This early dialogue may proceed relatively quickly compared to others, but it contains a discussion that moves circumferentially around the examined concept and is abundant in intellectual formulations and arguments for a universal content. The issues raised in the work mostly dwell in the realm of the philosophical anthropology of religion.
Moreover, Socrates' well-substantiated arguments arise one after another, showcasing both their high logical art and a rhetorical skill capable of forcing the proud seer to change his mind five times. Although in the end, no definite answer is given about what piety really is, the continuous questioning that arises and is essentially responsible for the deconstruction of any definition is extremely fertile and confirms a dominant view of Socrates, that in the end "what we know about the world is that we know nothing." [From the introduction of the book]
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