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This chapter discusses Socrates' refutation of Euthyphro's definition of piety as what is all the gods love (Euthyphro 9e1-11b5), which begins with the famous question, ‘is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?’ It considers what light the argument sheds on Plato's conception of definition, and advances a new interpretation of the argument as a robust reductio of Euthyphro's definition. It argues that despite Plato's obvious commitment to the elaboration of very general structures in the refutation, these general structures do not provide all the resources needed to make the argument to go through, but that considerations specific to the subject matter of the argument (the gods' love of the pious) make the argument much more powerful than is generally thought.

In nearly every ethics text, the famous Euthyphro Dilemma—is something moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral?—is touted as the decisive defeater for theistic ethics. This chapter lays out the Dilemma and makes clear what the salient objections to theistic ethics are, objections that we will systematically address in later chapters on the basis of seven key distinctions that we identify at the end of this chapter. The objections include the normativity, no reasons, abhorrent commands, vacuity, epistemic, and autonomy objections, and the key distinctions include analysis versus definition, good versus right, epistemology versus ontology, difficult versus impossible, equivocation versus univocation, dependence versus control, and conceivability versus possibility.

This chapter argues for a reading of Schelling that is able to offer a satisfactory response to the Euthyphro Dilemma while also avoiding the pitfall of onto-theology, that is, grounding God’s existence in reason alone while grounding the being of reason in God. Eternal truths of reason exist only because God exists, but God only exists as God by means of this consequence. This does not, however, identify God and reason as onto-theology has done, as it is argued that all identification is only possible on the basis of a more radically conceived and more original process of differentiation. God only exists as God on the basis of a consequence that has acquired an independence and autonomy. There is thus not one God, but God only exists as One by means of that which results from him, hence theomonism rather than monotheism.

In this chapter, Brady argues in favour of a desire view of unpleasantness, which is the central element of suffering. He considers, and rejects, distinctive feeling theories of unpleasantness, and then proposes a novel desire view, according to which unpleasantness is a relational property, constituted by having a sensation that we desire to cease. In the chapter he defends this view against the most important objections, he then goes on to show how this view is preferable to rival views, and he ends by explaining how this view of unpleasantness, and the view of suffering given in Chapter 1, are mutually supporting.

A variation on Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma asks whether God loves right actions because they are right or whether right actions are right because God loves them. Theological objectivism chooses the first alternative; theological subjectivism chooses the second. There is a parallel dilemma concerning the status of necessary truths: does God affirm them because they are necessarily true, or are they necessarily true because God affirms them? Call the first alternative platonism and the second cartesianism. Norman Kretzmann argued that it follows from God’s simplicity that the difference between objectivism and subjectivism vanishes. This chapter examines the two dilemmas, arguing that Kretzmann has not dissolved the dispute between objectivism and subjectivism and that similar maneuvers applied to the platonism-cartesianism dispute will not dispel it. The chapter suggests that inasmuch as the doctrine of God’s simplicity identifies God’s knowledge with God’s will, it casts the dilemmas in a different light.

I understand moral goodness as overall goodness. Fundamental moral principles are logically necessary truths discoverable by reflective equilibrium, and do not depend on the will of God. God is perfectly good, since he knows all fundamental moral principles and is subject to no non-rational influences deterring him from conforming to them. One of those fundamental principles is that beneficiaries have obligations to fulfil any conditions under which they accepted a gift from a benefactor. In consequence God, who gave us life subject to the condition that we obey his commands, has the right to command us to do many actions; and his commands make those actions obligatory (and his commendations of actions make those actions supererogatorily good).