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Why You Need This New Edition?
7 good reasons why you should buy this new edition of Thinking Socratically: Critical Thinking About Everyday
Issues
1. Nine new readings.
2. Applications of critical thinnking to such topics as 9/11, racial profiling, and a Yale campus murder.
3. New and expanded exercises, especially for deductive reasoning.
4. Eight new sections—more about consensus, belief, evidence and patterns.
5. Application of critical thinking to specific disciplines such as history and science.
6. An alternative to the current strident pattern of contemporary discourse.
7. Greater emphasis on the power of language to influence everyday thought and critical thinking.
Thinking Socratically
Critical Thinking About Everyday Issues

Third Edition
Sharon Schwarze
Harvey Lape
Cabrini College

Pearson
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Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall, 1 Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, NJ
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwarze, Sharon.
Thinking Socratically: critical thinking about everyday issues/Sharon Schwarze, Harvey Lape.—3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-205-09801-9
ISBN-10: 0-205-09801-0
1. Critical thinking. 2. Reasoning. 3. Socrates. I. Lape, Harvey. II. Title.
BC177.S36 2012
160—dc23
2011031596
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN-10: 0-205-09801-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-205-09801-9
Dedication

To our students, past, present, and future. We hope your critical thinking skills bring you productive,
happy, and pleasant lives.
Contents
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Part I Connections 1
Chapter 1 Why Be a Critical Thinker? 2
Critical Thinking and the Importance of Open Dialogue 2
What Is Critical Thinking? 3
Euthyphro Plato 6
Study Questions 21
Reason and Culture 21
Why the Geese Shrieked Isaac Bashevis Singer 23
The Shaman and the Dying Scientist: A Brazilian Tale Alan Riding 26
Study Questions 27
The Limits of Reason 28
Summary 30
Exercises 30
Chapter 2 Language 32
The Priority of Language 32
Language and the World 33
The Corner of the Eye Lewis Thomas 37
Eight Little Piggies Stephen Jay Gould 39
Study Questions 40
Words, Statements, and Beliefs 41
Warranted Statements 43
Making of Americans Gertrude Stein 46
Study Questions 48
Factual Statements 48
Web of Belief 49
9/11 Rumors that Harden Into Conventional Wisdom Michael Slackman 50
Cookies Douglas Adams 52
Study Questions 53
Summary 53
Exercises 55
Chapter 3 Knowledge and Certainty 57
Belief and Knowledge 57
Knowledge and Certainty 58
Meditations on First Philosophy in Which the Existence of God and the Distinction of the Soul from
the Body Are Demonstrated René Descartes 62
A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 66
Study Questions 66
Consensus and the Web of Belief 66
Ideas & Trends; For Air Crash Detectives, Seeing Isn’t Believing Matthew L. Wald 68
President Tom’s Cabin Jill Lepore 69
 Study Questions 72
Summary 72
Exercises 73
Chapter 4 Arguments and Explanations 74
Arguments: Premises and Conclusions 74
Implicit Premises and Conclusions 75
Arguments: Standard Form 76
Logical Warranting 78
Deductive Reasoning 78
Inductive Reasoning 79
Factual Warranting 80
The Decameron: Michele Scalza Giovanni Boccaccio 82
The Decameron: Melchizedek Giovanni Boccaccio 84
Study Questions 85
Explanations 86
The Day-Care Deaths: A Mystery Linda Herskowitz 88
Study Questions 96
Summary 96
Exercises 96
Part II Deductive Reasoning 99
Chapter 5 Deductive Links 100
Reasoning with Necessity 100
Dissenting Opinion in Gregg v. Georgia Thurgood Marshall 101
Study Questions 104
Analyzing a Deductive Argument 104
Validity and Logical Implication 105
Summary 109
Exercises 109
Chapter 6 Deductive Argument Forms 110
Logic 110
Some Common Valid Argument Forms 111
Anselm’s Ontological Argument Norman Malcolm 121
Study Questions 121
Anselm’s Ontological Argument 121
Summary 123
Exercises 125
Part III Inductive Reasoning 129
Chapter 7 Supporting Our Claims 130
Evidence: Traces and Patterns 130
Report on Yale Murder Outlines Suspicions James Barron and Alison Leigh Cowan 134
Trial By Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man? David Grann 136
Study Questions 154
Confirmation and Proof: Webs of Belief 154
 The William Bradfield Case: Murder on the Main Line Mike Mallowe 156
Coded Bradfield Note: ‘My Danger Conspiracy’ Emilie Lounsberry 171
The Jury: Convinced or Confused? Emilie Lounsberry and Henry Goldman 175
Bradfield, on Stand, Denies Any Role Emilie Lounsberry 177
Bradfield and Women Henry Goldman 179
Study Questions 181
Summary 181
Exercises 182
Chapter 8 Standards of Inductive Reasoning 184
Three Basic Forms 184
Generalizations 187
The Literary Digest Predicts Victory by Landon, 1936 “Digest” Poll Machinery Speeding Up 191
Landon 1,293,669; Roosevelt, 972,897 193
What Went Wrong with the Polls? 194
Study Questions 198
Analogies 198
Troublemakers: What Pitt Bulls Can Teach Us about Profiling Malcolm Gladwell 201
Study Questions 204
Causal Claims 205
So, Smoking Causes Cancer: This Is News? Denise Grady 212
Renewing Philosophy Hilary Putnam 213
Study Questions 215
Summary 215
Exercises 217
Chapter 9 Fallacies 218
The Nature of Fallacies 218
Fallacies of Irrelevance 220
Lost Genius Russell Baker 225
Study Questions 226
Fallacies of Faulty Generalization 226
Fallacies of Emotional Manipulation 229
Bachmann Finds an Issue With HPV Debate Trip Gabriel 230
Study Questions 231
Summary 231
Exercises 233
Chapter 10 Scientific Reasoning 236
Science and Good Reasoning 236
Copernicus and Kepler 237
The Sex Life of the Whiptail Lizard Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch 240
Study Questions 246
Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning 246
Summary 250
Exercises 251
 Chapter 11 Pseudoscience 252
Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience 252
Fliess, Freud, and Biorhythm Martin Gardner 255
Study Questions 261
Summary 262
Exercises 262
Part IV Reasoning About Values 263
Chapter 12 The Nature of Morality 264
Supporting Moral Claims 265
Chapter I: Of the Principle of Utility Jeremy Bentham 267
Study Questions 270
Objectivism and Subjectivism 270
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 273
Study Questions 274
Morality and Reasoning 274
Summary 279
Exercises 280
Chapter 13 Reasoning About Good and Bad 281
Making Moral Decisions 281
Reasonable Objectivism and Reasonable Subjectivism 284
Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals Immanuel Kant 285
Existentialism Is a Humanism Jean-Paul Sartre 288
Study Questions 290
Kant 291
Sartre 294
Summary 297
Exercises 298
Chapter 14 Moral Dialogue 300
Dogmatism and Relativism 300
Euthyphro as Dogmatist Plato 304
Classroom Scene 308
Study Questions 309
Moderation as Key 309
Summary 312
Exercises 313
Chapter 15 Reason and Commitment 314
Open Rational Dialogue 314
Keynote Speech May 18 at Simpson College’s 1996 Commencement Jane Smiley 314
Study Questions 315
Index 317
Preface
As this edition goes to press, the need for Thinking Socratically is clearer than ever. The model of critical thinking of
open rational dialogue with friends that this text proposes is sorely needed in the United States and the world. Open
rational dialogue stresses working together to overcome differences and come to agreement, whether those
differences are differences of political viewpoint, arguments about the historical record, the future direction of
scientific research, or the morally appropriate stance on a public or private issue. Americans are all too aware that
the public dialogue has been rather shrill of late with many people very entrenched in their beliefs, rather than
listening and talking with others who may disagree.
Thinking Socratically can help readers understand how each person’s web of belief functions and how it shapes his
or her acceptance and rejection of new ideas. It explains why it is hard to have open rational dialogue and how we
must work to be open like Socrates and less like dogmatic like Euthyphro. Our view of critical thinking emphasizes the
lack of certainty that characterizes our knowledge of the world and stresses the role that consensus plays in the
development of knowledge, thus leading away from dogmatism and toward the openness and listening which make
room for better critical thinking and resolution of differences.
In an age when almost everyone has access to the Internet and people can speak their minds on a blog whether they
have anything wise to say or not, it is important that people are good critical thinkers. There is an awful lot of
information out there available to those who want and need it, but there is also much noise. Critical thinking is needed
more than ever to guide students in this Internet age. We hope that Thinking Socratically, edition 3, can help students
sort the warranted claims from the unwarranted claims they will find and consequently help them lead happier and
more productive lives.
To this end, we have made the following improvements:
1. Eight new sections
2. Updated readings to reflect recent issues and events such as racial profiling and the 2010 Yale campus
murder
3. Longer readings trimmed
4. Outdated readings removed
5. New and additional Exercises, especially for deductive reasoning
6. Central concept of web of belief placed more prominently and connected to consensus and personal belief
7. Clearer explanation of traces and patterns in inductive reasoning
8. Greater emphasis on the power of language to influence everyday thought and critical thinking

We think these changes and new readings will help students grasp the important concepts of critical thinking we have
articulated. The emphasis on language and how it shapes our world and our belief systems, the discussion of how we
try to warrant our beliefs to other people, and how we then build consensus to arrive at claims we consider factual
make clear that critical thinking is a continual process and that we are always involved in warranting and rewarranting
—through language. Yelling, bumper stickers, and fighting are not forms of warranting nor are they forms of critical
thinking.
We have also added nine new readings while removing some that might appear dated to undergraduates. The new
readings bring up such contemporary issues as racial profiling, Thomas Jefferson’s illegitimate children, and a
murder on the Yale campus. Readers should find these entertaining as well as challenging to their critical thinking
skills. Many users asked for more Exercises, and we have added in this category as well. We think we have made our
user-friendly text still more user friendly.
In the end, we write for the same reason we teach: so our readers and students can live more productive, happier,
and more pleasant lives and so the world we live in will be a better world for all.
Acknowledgments
We wish to acknowledge all those thinkers, critical and non-critical, whose patterns of reasoning inspire us to try to
improve the thinking of future readers. We particularly want to thank those faculty who have used our text in the past
and have made specific suggestions for the current edition, especially Ben Gorman and Andrew Beckerman. We
have tried to incorporate their suggestions. Thanks also to those students who have called or e-mailed their questions
to us. Their queries have shown us where we needed to be clearer!
We would also like to thank the various editors who have contributed to putting this text together. For the current
edition: Maggie Barbieri, Nicole Conforti, Kate Fernandes, Ted Knight, and Marianne Peters-Riordan. Our greatest
debt we owe to our very first editor, Ted Bolen, who realized the potential of our unique approach to improve the
critical thinking of college students. His insight is responsible for this Third Edition.
Part I Connections
You might be surprised by the title of this section of a textbook on critical thinking. What does “Connections” have to
do with critical thinking? But that is the purpose of critical thinking—to help us connect. To help us connect our ideas
of the world and make sense out of them and to help us connect with other people!
Critical thinking, first and foremost, helps us organize our ideas about the world and connect them together in various
patterns such as the patterns of deductive and inductive reasoning (discussed in Parts II and III). These patterns help
us make sense out of the world, making our lives richer, fuller, and more comfortable. Otherwise the world is a jumble
of perceptions, and it would be very confusing. By applying critical thinking to our perceptions, we make connections
between our experiences, creating order. This helps us anticipate the future, explain the past, and understand, in part,
how the world works. We are all engaged in critical thinking all our lives. The point of this book is to help be better at it
so that we can live still better.
The second connection that critical thinking makes is between people. A good way to think of critical thinking is as an
open rational dialogue among friends. Our friends are important to us. They listen to us. They respond. They correct
our mistakes. Together, we arrive at conclusions that we think are justified. Our friends can be our classmates, our
family, our baseball team, or our fellow citizens. Our dialogues with our friends influence our beliefs and the way we
look at the world. And we influence their beliefs. We generally arrive at some consensus. If we do not, we continue
the dialogue. When the rational dialogue stops, the connection can turn unfriendly or worse—we could fight. That is
why rational dialogue/critical thinking is so important. It is the best way to connect with other people. Part I is about
this connection.
Chapter 1 Why Be a Critical Thinker?

Critical Thinking and the Importance of Open Dialogue

This book is about becoming a better critical thinker. People who are good critical thinkers have the habit of good
reasoning and have well-developed reasoning skills. All of us use critical thinking at times, for instance when we are
trying to decide what kind of car to buy or how to win our next soccer game against the team that always beats us.
Some people are better critical thinkers than others, however. They have good critical thinking skills and have the
habit of using them. We hope that our leaders are such people: good critical thinkers who will use their thinking skills
to govern well. Employers, when asked what they would like to see in an employee, more often than not say the most
important skills an employee can have are good critical thinking skills. This is because critical thinking is needed for
every job or profession. The skills are the same no matter what your walk of life, from being a CEO of a company to
being a CEO of a room full of children.
While all people think, most people can become better thinkers by improving their skills of critical thinking. Becoming
a better critical thinker is a bit like being a player on the basketball team. Everyone on the team can play basketball,
usually quite well. But everyone on the team can benefit from having a coach who drills on the fundamentals, sets out
what to practice, and suggests ways to be successful in particular game situations. That is what this book does for
critical thinking. It takes the skills we all have and makes them better by drilling the fundamentals, setting up practices,
and showing how to analyze situations from our ordinary experience that can be enhanced by good critical thinking
skills.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is open rational dialogue among friends. It’s as simple as that. We all do it. But we could all do it a bit
better. Sometimes people think a critical thinker is a person who acts and responds like a computer or one who is so
cerebral (like Spock in “Star Trek”) that no ordinary person can talk with her. That is not our idea. We have a different
model in mind. We think a critical thinker is someone like the teacher Socrates, for whom this book is named and
about whom you will soon read. Socrates is known for asking so many questions that you may find Socrates’
repeated questioning somewhat tedious. What is important about his example, though, is that he is always willing to
discuss the matter further. The discussion is always open. We think that this willingness to keep the discussion
open is the hallmark of being a critical thinker. The person who thinks critically is not the person who is always
right or the person who never makes a mistake. Nor is the critical thinker that person who goes around being critical
of everyone else. (You know the type.) Rather, the person who is a critical thinker is always willing to examine her
own beliefs, to entertain alternate possibilities, and to talk with other people about those beliefs and possibilities. As we
see it, critical thinking is a form of reasoning and reasoning is a dialogue, so good critical thinking means having a
rational dialogue, both with yourself and with others, about an issue and keeping that dialogue open.
The best kind of critical thinking is an open dialogue with friends. Friends are people who are willing to listen and
respond. Someone is a friend because she is willing to stay and discuss, not vice versa. That is, the hallmark of a
friend is her willingness to engage in rational open dialogue and to keep this dialogue open as long as there is an
opportunity for rational resolution.
Sometimes, of course, no friend is available. Then we must carry on the open dialogue with ourselves—through
thinking. This is sometimes hard to do. We often fail to question our own beliefs the same way someone else might
question them, but it is a very important aspect of being a rational person and a critical thinker. Thinking is like talking,
a kind of talking to ourselves. When the “talking” stops, the thinking stops. Clearly, there are better and worse ways of
thinking. The better ways of thinking, of course, are the preferred ways. Good critical thinkers tend to be more
successful at meeting their goals and therefore live more productive and happier lives.
Much of the rest of this book is about learning the difference between the good critical thinking and thinking that isn’t
so good. But the most important aspect of being a good critical thinker is to do the thinking—to think! Just like the
basketball player who needs to play basketball to get better, the critical thinker must play the game. This means to
carry on the dialogue as far as possible and not to stop because one is too stubborn or too lazy or too tired to
continue. Socrates always said he was a seeker after wisdom, not a wise person and, as a seeker, he was always
willing to continue the discussion.
So, the goal we seek is open rational dialogue with friends, using the skills of critical thinking. This sounds simple.
Most people believe that they are open to other’s ideas and are good listeners, willing to consider alternative points of
view. Too often in a dialogue, however, the person who is “listening” is thinking about what she is going to say next,
not about what the other person is saying. The dialogue is complicated by the fact that we do not all experience the
world in the same way. We do not all share the same view of what is real and/or important in the world. It is hard to
carry on a dialogue with someone who does not share our view of the world. We usually think that our view is the right
one and the other person must be wrong. How can we settle this? We could settle this by going to war—and nations
often do! But there is a better way: open rational dialogue. Open rational dialogue cannot tell us this person is right
and that person is wrong. What it can tell us is that some ways of looking at the world work better than others,
thereby enabling us to live happier and healthier lives. Since most of us would like to live happy and healthy lives, we
want to know more about those ways of looking at the world. The purpose of this book is to provide you with the tools
of critical thinking that can guide you in your use of rational dialogue and how to get the most out of it.
While many people agree that critical thinking and rational dialogue generally “work better” than nonrational thought
and dialogue, explanations as to why this is the case vary. Philosophers of many different schools have offered a
wide variety of answers to this question, which we will not recount here.1 We think the best way to support this claim
is to warrant it with statements that most people would accept and which do not require any appeal to controversial
assumptions that many people might question.
1 Two popular views are those of Plato and Thomas Aquinas. Plato claimed that there was a logos or natural logical order in the
world that matched the logical order of human reason or critical thinking. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, claimed that the world
was created by a first cause or first mover that itself was rational, namely, God. So, according to both of these views, rational
thought and critical thinking work better than irrational thought because they match the world better. Our Socratic approach tries to
avoid claims about the nature of the world and to suggest that the likeliest explanation for the success of reason and critical thinking
is its insistence on giving a hearing to all sides of an issue and to keeping the dialogue going. At the end of the Euthyphro, when
Euthyphro has tired of trying to give a rationally adequate account of piety, Socrates almost begs him not to abandon the task. We
agree with Socrates more than with Plato and Aquinas. Rationality, whatever its shortcomings, is the best game in town.

We see three reasons why rational approaches work better in our lives than nonrational approaches. First, rational
approaches work better because human beings are animals with purposes and plans. They may live in the present,
but they have intentions and plans for the future. For these plans to be successful, their expectations about what will
happen must be accurate. So, they use reason and past experience to form their expectations about the future. This
kind of critical thinking enables them to anticipate what is likely to happen and, consequently, to be successful in
fulfilling their intentions.
In his account of the investigations of the Challenger shuttle disaster, Richard Feynman, physicist and Nobel Prize
recipient, presents a clear example of the need to use reason and critical thinking to anticipate what will happen and
to plan accordingly.2 As a member of the disaster investigation team, Feynman refused to accept NASA safety
estimates without also being shown the evidence and the reasoning necessary to support them. NASA estimated the
chance of engine failure at 1 in 100,000, which would lead to the expectation that a shuttle could fly every day for 300
years without failure. Feynman’s reexamination of the data revealed the actual probability to be 1 in 200, which would
not make the Challenger’s failure a surprise.
2 Richard Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think? (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988).

A second reason why we claim that rational approaches work better than nonrational ones is that when other people
figure in our plans and purposes, the best way to include them or bring them along is by giving them reasons. Of
course, other people are not always persuaded by reason or by the reasons we give. This does not mean that there
are not some reasons that might be persuasive that we have not given—either because we choose not to give them or
because we do not think of them at the time. Even Socrates, facing a death sentence when he was on trial for impiety,
was not able to persuade the Athenian jury of his innocence despite his considerable powers of reason.3 There are
times, unfortunately, when we are convinced the other side will not listen to reason, as when dealing with a political or
religious fanatic or a thug in the street. Then it might be reasonable to become unreasonable, at least for the moment!
Anger and other emotional responses can be successful, if used carefully, with reason. In general, however,
unreasonableness begets further unreasonableness and violence begets violence. Since the collective experience of
the human race testifies to this pattern, lapses into unreason should be infrequent.
3 Plato’s account suggests, however, that part of Socrates’ failure was due to his unwillingness to offer the kind of “reasons” which
were usually persuasive with Athenian juries, namely, to parade his wife and children before them and to do other things that would
appeal to their sympathies.

Keeping the dialogue open not only keeps us from using force but it has the added benefit of keeping us engaged. It
means that we must make an effort. To continue the dialogue, we must make an effort to find reasons that are
persuasive, to understand the other person’s point of view, and to rethink our own point of view. A problem with
“agreeing to disagree” is that it makes us powerless with regard to the future. It cuts off our opportunity of persuading
others to join us in our plans. It leaves us standing alone.
Finally, we would like to have pleasant experiences, not unpleasant ones. Having pleasant experiences is connected to
being able to anticipate future events, making plans, and having friends to share our plans. It is also about being able
to remember and recreate the pleasant experiences through dialogue with friends. Enjoying and savoring life
necessitates being open to new possibilities and avoiding potential unpleasant experiences.
Becoming a critical thinker is a dynamic process, one that takes time and effort on your part, just as becoming a
better basketball player takes time and effort no matter how good a player you might already be. During this process
you will be questioning some of your firmly held assumptions, improving your reasoning skills, and learning some new
concepts that will help you think critically. You will have to practice the skills you are learning and to be open to some
different ways of thinking about the world. An open rational dialogue takes work. It is actually hard to be open to new
ways of thinking, but critical thinking skills will help you anticipate and have the pleasant experiences you seek.
Throughout this text, we will present readings from everyday life, from popular publications, from newspapers, and
from the history of philosophy, to illustrate the concepts and skills of critical thinking we expect you to acquire. You
will see how the concepts of critical thinking and good reasoning work in our everyday lives, and you will learn how to
apply them in familiar contexts. The first reading is a very famous dialogue called Euthyphro, written by the
philosopher Plato in the fourth century b.c.e. Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing what they think piety is and who
is a pious person. This is a very important question because Socrates is on his way into court where he has been
accused of impiety, a charge which will eventually lead to his death. If you think the word piety sounds too old-
fashioned, substitute the word good in its place. As you read this dialogue, think about the characters in the dialogue,
not just the words. Think about how they exemplify or fail to exemplify what you think is open rational dialogue. Also
consider the kind of person Socrates is. And the kind of person Euthyphro is. Do you know people like Euthyphro?
How would you describe them?

Euthyphro

Plato

Characters

Socrates

Euthyphro
Scene The Hall of the King
Euthyphro.
What in the world are you doing here in the king’s hall,1 Socrates? Why have you left your haunts in the Lyceum?
You surely cannot have a suit before him, as I have.
1 The anachronistic title “king” was retained by the magistrate who had jurisdiction over crimes affecting the state religion.-Ed.
Socrates.
The Athenians, Euthyphro, call it an indictment, not a suit.
Euth.
What? Do you mean that someone is prosecuting you? I cannot believe that you are prosecuting anyone yourself.
Socr.
Certainly I am not.
Euth.
Then is someone prosecuting you?
Socr.
Yes.
Euth.
Who is he?
Socr.
I scarcely know him myself, Euthyphro; I think he must be some unknown young man. His name, however, is Meletus,
and his district Pitthis, if you can call to mind any Meletus of that district—a hook-nosed man with lanky hair and
rather a scanty beard.
Euth.
I don’t know him, Socrates. But tell me, what is he prosecuting you for?
Socr.
What for? Not on trivial grounds, I think. It is no small thing for so young a man to have formed an opinion on such an
important matter. For he, he says, knows how the young are corrupted, and who are their corrupters. He must be a
wise man who, observing my ignorance, is going to accuse me to the state, as his mother, of corrupting his friends. I
think that he is the only one who begins at the right point in his political reforms; for his first care
Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, translated by F. J. Church. © 1957. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
is to make the young men as good as possible, just as a good farmer will take care of his young plants first, and, after
he has done that, of the others. And so Meletus, I suppose, is first clearing us away who, as he says, corrupt the
young men growing up; and then, when he has done that, of course he will turn his attention to the older men, and so
become a very great public benefactor. Indeed, that is only what you would expect when he goes to work in this way.
Euth.
I hope it may be so, Socrates, but I fear the opposite. It seems to me that in trying to injure you, he is really setting to
work by striking a blow at the foundation of the state. But how, tell me, does he say that you corrupt the youth?
Socr.
In a way which sounds absurd at first, my friend. He says that I am a maker of gods; and so he is prosecuting me, he
says, for inventing new gods and for not believing in the old ones.
Euth.
I understand, Socrates. It is because you say that you always have a divine guide. So he is prosecuting you for
introducing religious reforms; and he is going into court to arouse prejudice against you, knowing that the multitude
are easily prejudiced about such matters. Why, they laugh even at me, as if I were out of my mind, when I talk about
divine things in the assembly and tell them what is going to happen; and yet I have never foretold anything which has
not come true. But they are resentful of all people like us. We must not worry about them; we must meet them boldly.
Socr.
My dear Euthyphro, their ridicule is not a very serious matter. The Athenians, it seems to me, may think a man to be
clever without paying him much attention, so long as they do not think that he teaches his wisdom to others. But as
soon as they think that he makes other people clever, they get angry, whether it be from resentment, as you say, or
for some other reason.
Euth.
I am not very anxious to test their attitude toward me in this matter.
Socr.
No, perhaps they think that you are reserved, and that you are not anxious to teach your wisdom to others. But I fear
that they may think that I am; for my love of men makes me talk to everyone whom I meet quite freely and
unreservedly, and without payment. Indeed, if I could I would gladly pay people myself to listen to me. If then, as I
said just now, they were only going to laugh at me, as you say they do at you, it would not be at all an unpleasant way
of spending the day—to spend it in court, joking and laughing. But if they are going to be in earnest, then only
prophets like you can tell where the matter will end.
Euth.
Well, Socrates, I dare say that nothing will come of it. Very likely you will be successful in your trial, and I think that I
shall be in mine.
Socr.
And what is this suit of yours, Euthyphro? Are you suing, or being sued?
Euth.
I am suing.
Socr.
Whom?
Euth.
A man whom people think I must be mad to prosecute.
Socr.
What? Has he wings to fly away with?
Euth.
He is far enough from flying; he is a very old man.
Socr.
Who is he?
Euth.
He is my father.
Socr.
Your father, my good man?
Euth.
He is indeed.
Socr.
What are you prosecuting him for? What is the accusation?
Euth.
Murder, Socrates.
Socr.
Good heavens, Euthyphro! Surely the multitude are ignorant of what is right. I take it that it is not everyone who could
rightly do what you are doing; only a man who was already well advanced in wisdom.
Euth.
That is quite true, Socrates.
Socr.
Was the man whom your father killed a relative of yours? But, of course, he was. You would never have prosecuted
your father for the murder of a stranger?
Euth.
You amuse me, Socrates. What difference does it make whether the murdered man were a relative or a stranger?
The only question that you have to ask is, did the murderer kill justly or not? If justly, you must let him alone; if
unjustly, you must indict him for murder, even though he share your hearth and sit at your table. The pollution is the
same if you associate with such a man, knowing what he has done, without purifying yourself, and him too, by
bringing him to justice. In the present case the murdered man was a poor laborer of mine, who worked for us on our
farm in Naxos. While drunk he got angry with one of our slaves and killed him. My father therefore bound the man
hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, while he sent to Athens to ask the priest what he should do. While the
messenger was gone, he entirely neglected the man, thinking that he was a murderer, and that it would be no great
matter, even if he were to die. And that was exactly what happened; hunger and cold and his bonds killed him before
the messenger returned. And now my father and the rest of my family are indignant with me because I am
prosecuting my father for the murder of this murderer. They assert that he did not kill the man at all; and they say that,
even if he had killed him over and over again, the man himself was a murderer, and that I ought not to concern myself
about such a person because it is impious for a son to prosecute his father for murder. So little, Socrates, do they
know the divine law of piety and impiety.
Socr.
And do you mean to say, Euthyphro, that you think that you understand divine things and piety and impiety so
accurately that, in such a case as you have stated, you can bring your father to justice without fear that you yourself
may be doing something impious?
Euth.
If I did not understand all these matters accurately, Socrates, I should not be worth much—Euthyphro would not be
any better than other men.
Socr.
Then, my dear Euthyphro, I cannot do better than become your pupil and challenge Meletus on this very point before
the trial begins. I should say that I had always thought it very important to have knowledge about divine things; and that
now, when he says that I offend by speaking carelessly about them, and by introducing reforms, I have become your
pupil. And I should say, “Meletus, if you acknowledge Euthyphro to be wise in these matters and to hold the correct
belief, then think the same of me and do not put me on trial; but if you do not, then bring a suit, not against me, but
against my master, for corrupting his elders—namely, myself whom he corrupts by his teaching, and his own father
whom he corrupts by admonishing and punishing him.” And if I did not succeed in persuading him to release me from
the suit or to indict you in my place, then I could repeat my challenge in court.
Euth.
Yes, by Zeus! Socrates, I think I should find out his weak points if he were to try to indict me. I should have a good
deal to say about him in court long before I spoke about myself.
Socr.
Yes, my dear friend, and knowing this I am anxious to become your pupil. I see that Meletus here, and others too,
seem not to notice you at all, but he sees through me without difficulty and at once prosecutes me for impiety. Now,
therefore, please explain to me what you were so confident just now that you knew. Tell me what are righteousness
and sacrilege with respect to murder and everything else. I suppose that piety is the same in all actions, and that
impiety is always the opposite of piety, and retains its identity, and that, as impiety, it always has the same character,
which will be found in whatever is impious.
Euth.
Certainly, Socrates, I suppose so.
Socr.
Tell me, then, what is piety and what is impiety?
Euth.
Well, then, I say that piety means prosecuting the unjust individual who has committed murder or sacrilege, or any
other such crime, as I am doing now, whether he is your father or your mother or whoever he is; and I say that
impiety means not prosecuting him. And observe, Socrates, I will give you a clear proof, which I have already given to
others, that it is so, and that doing right means not letting off unpunished the sacrilegious man, whosoever he may be.
Men hold Zeus to be the best and the most just of the gods; and they admit that Zeus bound his own father, Cronos,
for wrongfully devouring his children; and that Cronos, in his turn, castrated his father for similar reasons. And yet
these same men are incensed with me because I proceed against my father for doing wrong. So, you see, they say
one thing in the case of the gods and quite another in mine.
Socr.
Is not that why I am being prosecuted, Euthyphro? I mean, because I find it hard to accept such stories people tell
about the gods? I expect that I shall be found at fault because I doubt those stories. Now if you who understand all
these matters so well agree in holding all those tales true, then I suppose that I must yield to your authority. What
could I say when I admit myself that I know nothing about them? but tell me, in the name of friendship, do you really
believe that these things have actually happened?
Euth.
Yes, and more amazing things, too, Socrates, which the multitude do not know of.
Socr.
Then you really believe that there is war among the gods, and bitter hatreds, and battles, such as the poets tell of, and
which the great painters have depicted in our temples, notably in the pictures which cover the robe that is carried up
to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaic festival? Are we to say that these things are true, Euthyphro?
Euth.
Yes, Socrates, and more besides. As I was saying, I will report to you many other stories about divine matters, if you
like, which I am sure will astonish you when you hear them.
Socr.
I dare say. You shall report them to me at your leisure another time. At present please try to give a more definite
answer to the question which I asked you just now. What I asked you, my friend, was, What is piety? and you have
not explained it to me to my satisfaction. You only tell me that what you are doing now, namely, prosecuting your
father for murder, is a pious act.
Euth.
Well, that is true, Socrates.
Socr.
Very likely. But many other actions are pious, are they not, Euthyphro?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Remember, then, I did not ask you to tell me one or two of all the many pious actions that there are; I want to know
what is characteristic of piety which makes all pious actions pious. You said, I think, that there is one characteristic
which makes all pious actions pious, and another characteristic which makes all impious actions impious. Do you not
remember?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
Well, then, explain to me what is this characteristic, that I may have it to turn to, and to use as a standard whereby to
judge your actions and those of other men, and be able to say that whatever action resembles it is pious, and
whatever does not, is not pious.
Euth.
Yes, I will tell you that if you wish, Socrates.
Socr.
Certainly I do.
Euth.
Well, then, what is pleasing to the gods is pious, and what is not pleasing to them is impious.
Socr.
Fine, Euthyphro. Now you have given me the answer that I wanted. Whether what you say is true, I do not know yet.
But, of course, you will go on to prove that it is true.
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Come, then, let us examine our statement. The things and the men that are pleasing to the gods are pious, and the
things and the men that are displeasing to the gods are impious. But piety and impiety are not the same; they are as
opposite as possible—was not that what we said?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
And it seems the appropriate statement?
Euth.
Yes, Socrates, certainly.
Socr.
Have we not also said, Euthyphro, that there are quarrels and disagreements and hatreds among the gods?
Euth.
We have.
Socr.
But what kind of disagreement, my friend, causes hatred and anger? Let us look at the matter thus. If you and I were
to disagree as to whether one number were more than another, would that make us angry and enemies? Should we
not settle such a dispute at once by counting?
Euth.
Of course.
Socr.
And if we were to disagree as to the relative size of two things, we should measure them and put an end to the
disagreement at once, should we not?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
And should we not settle a question about the relative weight of two things by weighing them?
Euth.
Of course.
Socr.
Then what is the question which would make us angry and enemies if we disagreed about it, and could not come to a
settlement? Perhaps you have not an answer ready; but listen to mine. Is it not the question of the just and unjust, of
the honorable and the dishonorable, of the good and the bad? Is it not questions about these matters which make you
and me and everyone else quarrel, when we do quarrel, if we differ about them and can reach no satisfactory
agreement?
Euth.
Yes, Socrates, it is disagreements about these matters.
Socr.
Well, Euthyphro, the gods will quarrel over these things if they quarrel at all, will they not?
Euth.
Necessarily.
Socr.
Then, my good Euthyphro, you say that some of the gods think one thing just, the others another; and that what some
of them hold to be honorable or good, others hold to be dishonorable or evil. For there would not have been quarrels
among them if they had not disagreed on these points, would there?
Euth.
You are right.
Socr.
And each of them loves what he thinks honorable, and good, and just; and hates the opposite, does he not?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
But you say that the same action is held by some of them to be just, and by others to be unjust; and that then they
dispute about it, and so quarrel and fight among themselves. Is it not so?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
Then the same thing is hated by the gods and loved by them; and the same thing will be displeasing and pleasing to
them.
Euth.
Apparently.
Socr.
Then, according to your account, the same thing will be pious and impious.
Euth.
So it seems.
Socr.
Then, my good friend, you have not answered my question. I did not ask you to tell me what action is both pious and
impious; but it seems that whatever is pleasing to the gods is also displeasing to them. And so, Euthyphro, I should not
be surprised if what you are doing now in punishing your father is an action well pleasing to Zeus, but hateful to
Cronos and Uranus, and acceptable to Hephaestus, but hateful to Hera; and if any of the other gods disagree about it,
pleasing to some of them and displeasing to others.
Euth.
But on this point, Socrates, I think that there is no difference of opinion among the gods: they all hold that if one man
kills another unjustly, he must be punished.
Socr.
What, Euthyphro? Among mankind, have you never heard disputes whether a man ought to be punished for killing
another man unjustly, or for doing some other unjust deed?
Euth.
Indeed, they never cease from these disputes, especially in courts of justice. They do all manner of unjust things; and
then there is nothing which they will not do and say to avoid punishment.
Socr.
Do they admit that they have done something unjust, and at the same time deny that they ought to be punished,
Euthyphro?
Euth.
No, indeed, that they do not.
Socr.
Then it is not the case that there is nothing which they will not do and say. I take it, they do not dare to say or argue
that they must not be punished if they have done something unjust. What they say is that they have not done anything
unjust, is it not so?
Euth.
That is true.
Socr.
Then they do not disagree over the question that the unjust individual must be punished. They disagree over the
question, who is unjust, and what was done and when, do they not?
Euth.
That is true.
Socr.
Well, is not exactly the same thing true of the gods if they quarrel about justice and injustice, as you say they do? Do
not some of them say that the others are doing something unjust, while the others deny it? No one, I suppose, my
dear friend, whether god or man, dares to say that a person who has done something unjust must not be punished.
Euth.
No, Socrates, that is true, by and large.
Socr.
I take it, Euthyphro, that the disputants, whether men or gods, if the gods do disagree, disagree over each separate
act. When they quarrel about any act, some of them say that it was just, and others that it was unjust. Is it not so?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
Come, then, my dear Euthyphro, please enlighten me on this point. What proof have you that all the gods think that a
laborer who has been imprisoned for murder by the master of the man whom he has murdered, and who dies from his
imprisonment before the master has had time to learn from the religious authorities what he should do, dies unjustly?
How do you know that it is just for a son to indict his father and to prosecute him for the murder of such a man?
Come, see if you can make it clear to me that the gods necessarily agree in thinking that this action of yours is just;
and if you satisfy me, I will never cease singing your praises for wisdom.
Euth.
I could make that clear enough to you, Socrates; but I am afraid that it would be a long business.
Socr.
I see you think that I am duller than the judges. To them, of course, you will make it clear that your father has
committed an unjust action, and that all the gods agree in hating such actions.
Euth.
I will indeed, Socrates, if they will only listen to me.
Socr.
They will listen if they think that you are a good speaker. But while you were talking, it occurred to me to ask myself
this question: suppose that Euthyphro were to prove to me as clearly as possible that all the gods think such a death
unjust, how has he brought me any nearer to understanding what piety and impiety are? This particular act, perhaps,
may be displeasing to the gods, but then we have just seen that piety and impiety cannot be defined in that way; for
we have seen that what is displeasing to the gods is also pleasing to them. So I will let you off on this point, Euthyphro;
and all the gods shall agree in thinking your father’s action wrong and in hating it, if you like. But shall we correct our
definition and say that whatever all the gods hate is impious, and whatever they all love is pious; while whatever some
of them love, and others hate, is either both or neither? Do you wish us now to define piety and impiety in this
manner?
Euth.
Why not, Socrates?
Socr.
There is no reason why I should not, Euthyphro. It is for you to consider whether that definition will help you to teach
me what you promised.
Euth.
Well, I should say that piety is what all the gods love, and that impiety is what they all hate.
Socr.
Are we to examine this definition, Euthyphro, and see if it is a good one? Or are we to be content to accept the bare
statements of other men or of ourselves without asking any questions? Or must we examine the statements?
Euth.
We must examine them. But for my part I think that the definition is right this time.
Socr.
We shall know that better in a little while, my good friend. Now consider this question. Do the gods love piety because
it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?
Euth.
I do not understand you, Socrates.
Socr.
I will try to explain myself: we speak of a thing being carried and carrying, and being led and leading, and being seen
and seeing; and you understand that all such expressions mean different things, and what the difference is.
Euth.
Yes, I think I understand.
Socr.
And we talk of a thing being loved, of a thing loving, and the two are different?
Euth.
Of course.
Socr.
Now tell me, is a thing which is being carried in a state of being carried because it is carried, or for some other
reason?
Euth.
No, because it is carried.
Socr.
And a thing is in a state of being led because it is led, and of being seen because it is seen?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Then a thing is not seen because it is in a state of being seen: it is in a state of being seen because it is seen; and a
thing is not led because it is in a state of being led: it is in a state of being led because it is led; and a thing is not
carried because it is in a state of being carried: it is in a state of being carried because it is carried. Is my meaning
clear now, Euthyphro? I mean this: if anything becomes or is affected, it does not become because it is in a state of
becoming: it is in a state of becoming because it becomes; and it is not affected because it is in a state of being
affected: it in a state of being affected because it is affected. Do you not agree?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
Is not that which is being loved in a state either of becoming or of being affected in some way by something?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Then the same is true here as in the former cases. A thing is not loved by those who love it because it is in a state of
being loved; it is in a state of being loved because they love it.
Euth.
Necessarily.
Socr.
Well, then, Euthyphro, what do we say about piety? Is it not loved by all the gods, according to your definition?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
Because it is pious, or for some other reason?
Euth.
No, because it is pious.
Socr.
Then it is loved by the gods because it is pious; it is not pious because it is loved by them?
Euth.
It seems so.
Socr.
But, then, what is pleasing to the gods is pleasing to them, and is in a state of being loved by them, because they love
it?
Euth.
Of course.
Socr.
Then piety is not what is pleasing to the gods, and what is pleasing to the gods is not pious, as you say, Euthyphro.
They are different things.
Euth.
And why, Socrates?
Socr.
Because we are agreed that the gods love piety because it is pious, and that it is not pious because they love it. Is not
this so?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
And that what is pleasing to the gods because they love it, is pleasing to them by reason of this same love, and that
they do not love it because it is pleasing to them.
Euth.
True.
Socr.
Then, my dear Euthyphro, piety and what is pleasing to the gods are different things. If the gods had loved piety
because it is pious, they would also have loved what is pleasing to them because it is pleasing to them; but if what is
pleasing to them had been pleasing to them because they loved it, then piety, too, would have been piety because
they loved it. But now you see that they are opposite things, and wholly different from each other. For the one is of a
sort to be loved because it is loved, while the other is loved because it is of a sort to be loved. My question, Euthyphro,
was, What is piety? But it turns out that you have not explained to me the essential character of piety; you have been
content to mention an effect which belongs to it—namely, that all the gods love it. You have not yet told me what its
essential character is. Do not, if you please, keep from me what piety is; begin again and tell me that. Never mind
whether the gods love it, or whether it has other effects: we shall not differ on that point. Do your best to make clear to
me what is piety and what is impiety.
Euth.
But, Socrates, I really don’t know how to explain to you what is in my mind. Whatever statement we put forward
always somehow moves round in a circle, and will not stay where we put it.
Socr.
I think that your statements, Euthyphro, are worthy of my ancestor Daedalus.2 If they had been mine and I had set
them down, I dare say you would have made fun of me, and said that it was the consequence of my descent from
Daedalus that the statements which I construct run away, as his statues used to, and will not stay where they are put.
But, as it is, the statements are yours, and the joke would have no point. You yourself see that they will not stay still.
2 Daedalus’ statues were reputed to have been so lifelike that they came alive.-Ed.

Euth.
Nay, Socrates, I think that the joke is very much in point. It is not my fault that the statement moves round in a circle
and will not stay still. But you are the Daedalus, I think; as far as I am concerned, my statements would have stayed
put.
Socr.
Then, my friend, I must be a more skillful artist than Daedalus; he only used to make his own works move, while I, you
see, can make other people’s works move, too. And the beauty of it is that I am wise against my will. I would rather
that our statements had remained firm and immovable than have all the wisdom of Daedalus and all the riches of
Tantalus to boot. But enough of this. I will do my best to help you to explain to me what piety is, for I think that you are
lazy. Don’t give in yet. Tell me, do you not think that all piety must be just?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
Well, then, is all justice pious, too? Or, while all piety is just, is a part only of justice pious, and the rest of it something
else?
Euth.
I do not follow you, Socrates.
Socr.
Yet you have the advantage over me in your youth no less than your wisdom. But, as I say, the wealth of your wisdom
makes you complacent. Exert yourself, my good friend: I am not asking you a difficult question. I mean the opposite
of what the poet3 said, when he wrote:
3 Stasinus
“You shall not name Zeus the creator, who made all things: for where there is fear there also is reverence.”
Now I disagree with the poet. Shall I tell you why?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
I do not think it true to say that where there is fear, there also is reverence. Many people who fear sickness and
poverty and other such evils seem to me to have fear, but no reverence for what they fear. Do you not think so?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
But I think that where there is reverence there also is fear. Does any man feel reverence and a sense of shame about
anything, without at the same time dreading and fearing the reputation of wickedness?
Euth.
No, certainly not.
Socr.
Then, though there is fear wherever there is reverence, it is not correct to say that where there is fear there also is
reverence. Reverence does not always accompany fear; for fear, I take it, is wider than reverence. It is a part of fear,
just as the odd is a part of number, so that where you have the odd you must also have number, though where you
have number you do not necessarily have the odd. Now I think you follow me?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
Well, then, this is what I meant by the question which I asked you. Is there always piety where there is justice? Or,
though there is always justice where there is piety, yet there is not always piety where there is justice, because piety
is only a part of justice? Shall we say this, or do you differ?
Euth.
No, I agree. I think that you are right.
Socr.
Now observe the next point. If piety is a part of justice, we must find out, I suppose, what part of justice it is? Now, if
you had asked me just now, for instance, what part of number is the odd, and what number is an odd number, I
should have said that whatever number is not even is an odd number. Is it not so?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
Then see if you can explain to me what part of justice is piety, that I may tell Meletus that now that I have been
adequately instructed by you as to what actions are righteous and pious, and what are not, he must give up
prosecuting me unjustly for impiety.
Euth.
Well, then, Socrates, I should say that righteousness and piety are that part of justice which has to do with the careful
attention which ought to be paid to the gods; and that what has to do with the careful attention which ought to be paid
to men is the remaining part of justice.
Socr.
And I think that your answer is a good one, Euthyphro. But there is one little point about which I still want to hear
more. I do not yet understand what the careful attention is to which you refer. I suppose you do not mean that the
attention which we pay to the gods is like the attention which we pay to other things. We say, for instance, do we not,
that not everyone knows how to take care of horses, but only the trainer of horses?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
For I suppose that the skill that is concerned with horses is the art of taking care of horses.
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
And not everyone understands the care of dogs, but only the huntsman.
Euth.
True.
Socr.
For I suppose that the huntsman’s skill is in the art of taking care of dogs.
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
And the herdsman’s skill is the art of taking care of cattle.
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
And you say that piety and righteousness are taking care of the gods, Euthyphro?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
Well, then, has not all care the same object? Is it not for the good and benefit of that on which it is bestowed? For
instance, you see that horses are benefited and improved when they are cared for by the art which is concerned with
them. Is it not so?
Euth.
Yes, I think so.
Socr.
And dogs are benefited and improved by the huntsman’s art, and cattle by the herdsman’s, are they not? And the
same is always true. Or do you think care is ever meant to harm that which is cared for?
Euth.
No, indeed; certainly not.
Socr.
But to benefit it?
Euth.
Of course.
Socr.
Then is piety, which is our care for the gods, intended to benefit the gods, or to improve them? Should you allow that
you make any of the gods better when you do a pious action?
Euth.
No indeed; certainly not.
Socr.
No, I am quite sure that this is not your meaning, Euthyphro. It was for that reason that I asked you what you meant
by the careful attention which ought to be paid to the gods. I thought that you did not mean that.
Euth.
You were right, Socrates. I do not mean that.
Socr.
Good. Then what sort of attention to the gods will piety be?
Euth.
The sort of attention, Socrates, slaves pay to their masters.
Socr.
I understand; then it is a kind of service to the gods?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Can you tell me what result the art which serves a doctor serves to produce? Is it not health?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
And what result does the art which serves a shipwright serve to produce?
Euth.
A ship, of course, Socrates.
Socr.
The result of the art which serves a builder is a house, is it not?
Euth.
Yes.
Socr.
Then tell me, my good friend: What result will the art which serves the gods serve to produce? You must know, seeing
that you say that you know more about divine things than any other man.
Euth.
Well, that is true, Socrates.
Socr.
Then tell me, I beg you, what is that grand result which the gods use our services to produce?
Euth.
There are many notable results, Socrates.
Socr.
So are those, my friend, which a general produces. Yet it is easy to see that the crowning result of them all is victory
in war, is it not?
Euth.
Of course.
Socr.
And, I take it, the farmer produces many notable results; yet the principal result of them all is that he makes the earth
produce food.
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Well, then, what is the principal result of the many notable results which the gods produce?
Euth.
I told you just now, Socrates, that accurate knowledge of all these matters is not easily obtained. However, broadly I
say this: if any man knows that his words and actions in prayer and sacrifice are acceptable to the gods, that is what
is pious; and it preserves the state, as it does private families. But the opposite of what is acceptable to the gods is
sacrilegious, and this it is that undermines and destroys everything.
Socr.
Certainly, Euthyphro, if you had wished, you could have answered my main question in far fewer words. But you are
evidently not anxious to teach me. Just now, when you were on the very point of telling me what I want to know, you
stopped short. If you had gone on then, I should have learned from you clearly enough by this time what piety is. But
now I am asking you questions, and must follow wherever you lead me; so tell me, what is it that you mean by piety
and impiety? Do you not mean a science of prayer and sacrifice?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
To sacrifice is to give to the gods, and to pray is to ask of them, is it not?
Euth.
It is, Socrates.
Socr.
Then you say that piety is the science of asking of the gods and giving to them?
Euth.
You understand my meaning exactly, Socrates.
Socr.
Yes, for I am eager to share your wisdom, Euthyphro, and so I am all attention; nothing that you say will fall to the
ground. But tell me, what is this service of the gods? You say it is to ask of them, and to give to them?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
Then, to ask rightly will be to ask of them what we stand in need of from them, will it not?
Euth.
Naturally.
Socr.
And to give rightly will be to give back to them what they stand in need of from us? It would not be very skillful to make
a present to a man of something that he has no need of.
Euth.
True, Socrates.
Socr.
Then piety, Euthyphro, will be the art of carrying on business between gods and men?
Euth.
Yes, if you like to call it so.
Socr.
But I like nothing except what is true. But tell me, how are the gods benefited by the.pngts which they receive from
us? What they give is plain enough. Every good thing that we have is their.pngt. But how are they benefited by what
we give them? Have we the advantage over them in these business transactions to such an extent that we receive from
them all the good things we possess, and give them nothing in return?
Euth.
But do you suppose, Socrates, that the gods are benefited by the.pngts which they receive from us?
Socr.
But what are these.pngts, Euthyphro, that we give the gods?
Euth.
What do you think but honor and praise, and, as I have said, what is acceptable to them.
Socr.
Then piety, Euthyphro, is acceptable to the gods, but it is not profitable to them nor loved by them?
Euth.
I think that nothing is more loved by them.
Socr.
Then I see that piety means that which is loved by the gods.
Euth.
Most certainly.
Socr.
After that, shall you be surprised to find that your statements move about instead of staying where you put them? Shall
you accuse me of being the Daedalus that makes them move, when you yourself are far more skillful than Daedalus
was, and make them go round in a circle? Do you not see that our statement has come round to where it was before?
Surely you remember that we have already seen that piety and what is pleasing to the gods are quite different things.
Do you not remember?
Euth.
I do.
Socr.
And now do you not see that you say that what the gods love is pious? But does not what the gods love come to the
same thing as what is pleasing to the gods?
Euth.
Certainly.
Socr.
Then either our former conclusion was wrong or, if it was right, we are wrong now.
Euth.
So it seems.
Socr.
Then we must begin again and inquire what piety is. I do not mean to give in until I have found out. Do not regard me
as unworthy; give your whole mind to the question, and this time tell me the truth. For if anyone knows it, it is you; and
you are a Proteus whom I must not let go until you have told me. It cannot be that you would ever have undertaken to
prosecute your aged father for the murder of a laboring man unless you had known exactly what piety and impiety
are. You would have feared to risk the anger of the gods, in case you should be doing wrong, and you would have
been afraid of what men would say. But now I am sure that you think that you know exactly what is pious and what is
not; so tell me, my good Euthyphro, and do not conceal from me what you think.
Euth.
Another time, then, Socrates. I am in a hurry now, and it is time for me to be off.
Socr.
What are you doing, my friend! Will you go away and destroy all my hopes of learning from you what is pious and
what is not, and so of escaping Meletus? I meant to explain to him that now Euthyphro has made me wise about divine
things, and that I no longer in my ignorance speak carelessly about them or introduce reforms. And then I was going
to promise him to live a better life for the future.

Study Questions
1. Who is more pious, Euthyphro or Socrates? Why?
2. Some people believe that an act is good because God wills it. From your reading of Euthyphro, what is
problematic about this claim?
3. What characteristics of friendship are displayed in the dialogue?
4. Why is the definition of piety important? In the dialogue? In life in general?

Reason And Culture

All this talk about being reasonable seems to ignore a very important aspect of what it means to be a human being,
namely, having feelings or emotions. Emotion, not reason, seems to be responsible for most of the excitement of life,
the highs and lows that make our lives richer and more fun. What would life be like without falling in love, without
shedding tears watching a sentimental movie, without cheering passionately for your favorite sports team? People who
are incapable of having such feelings seem to be missing something in their lives. Mystery, not reason, is exciting.
We wait with bated breath while the magician saws into two the box with the lady in it. And most cultures have their
“Halloweens” when people pay tribute to spooks and goblins.
Some people have argued that favoring reason over mystery is simply a result of our “overly rational” Western
heritage and that in trying to promote the use of reason we are just promoting Western culture at the expense of
cultures that favor mystery. According to this view, we “Westerners” do not accept emotion and mystery because
they do not fit in with our beliefs, and our beliefs are, in part, the product of our culture. People born into another
culture may be more comfortable with mystery and find reliance on reason narrow and hard to accept.
Clearly there are differences among cultures, and it may be that people reared in one culture sometimes do not
understand another culture or are prejudiced against it only because it is “different.” However, it does not follow that
our preference for reason over emotion, feeling, and mystery is a merely prejudice and without justification. It may be
that our partiality toward rational judgment is a cultural bias, but this bias is warranted by the fact that rational inquiry
works for us. Reason, not mystery, is much better at helping us fulfill our purposes and achieve our goals. One must
remember that rational dialogue means keeping the dialogue open. That includes keeping the dialogue open to other
cultures, open to other ideas, and even open to mysteries. It does not mean imposing one culture’s values on another.
There is room for reason and mystery in the world. But keeping the dialogue open does not mean that we must
convert to or accept the offerings of every cultural alternative. And, indeed, when that alternative dismisses open
dialogue, we must resist. The problem with a cultural view that puts a high value on mystery is that often it itself is not
sufficiently open to difference and consequently to rationality. Simply to accept something as a mystery is not to know
what will happen in the future or why. One cannot know what to expect. We are then at the mercy of whatever
happens. We cannot avoid events we would prefer to avoid nor bring about events that make us happy or satisfied.
The openness of the dialogue is the critical factor here. Because the dialogue is continuous and never closed, it is
always open to revision. If we do not get the results we anticipate, then we revise our reasoning or our expectations.
We continue our dialogue with each other and with the world until our results match up with our expectations and we
are able to fulfill our purposes. As human beings we are continuously revising our expectations on the basis of the
evidence we gather. The believer in mystery is generally not open to revising her beliefs. Since the result is a product
of mystery, there are no guidelines for revision. In the “mystery” view, when one’s beliefs fail to work or they lead to
inaccurate predictions, one can only say that the times were not right or that the gods were unwilling. And one can
only hope to get the desired result the next time, since it is entirely a mystery as to what will happen. This view clearly,
then, makes us powerless with regard to the future.
Obviously we are not going to be able to anticipate everything that is going to happen. Sometimes, in fact, we would
rather not know. Life would be deadly dull if we knew exactly what was about to happen to us. We like the idea of
some mystery in the world. On the other hand, we like to avoid pain and suffering when we can. Some people have
the attitude that reason can resolve every problem. This is not the case. Sometimes there is no right answer, and we
must make a forced choice between unattractive alternatives. Examples like this are common, for instance, in the
practice of medicine. But the mode of rational inquiry and of open dialogue has a very good track record in helping
humans fulfill their plans and goals.
The following two stories present the contrast between reason and mystery. The first is a short story written by the
famous Yiddish storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer. As you read it, notice how Singer captures this complex issue
about reason and mystery in a very simple autobiographical tale about a boy, his parents, and some shrieking geese.
The boy is obviously in awe of the apparent mystery advocated by his father, but at the same time he finds comfort in
his mother’s reasonable reassurance that “Dead geese don’t shriek.” The second story is about a naturalist, Mr.
Ruschi, and the efforts of two Brazilian shamans to save his life. Mr. Ruschi’s purpose is to live, and modern medicine
does not seem able to help him. He may fulfill his purpose by taking the shamans’ cure even though he does not
understand it. It is a mystery both to him and to modern science.

Why the Geese Shrieked

Isaac Bashevis Singer

In our home there was always talk about spirits of the dead that possess the bodies of the living, souls reincarnated as
animals, houses inhabited by hobgoblins, cellars haunted by demons. My father spoke of these things, first of all
because he was interested in them, and second because in a big city children so easily go astray. They go
everywhere, see everything, read nonreligious books. It is necessary to remind them from time to time that there are
still mysterious forces at work in the world.
One day, when I was about eight, he told us a story found in one of the holy books. If I am not mistaken, the author of
that book is Rabbi Eliyahu Graidiker, or one of the other Graidiker sages. The story was about a girl possessed by
four demons. It was said that they could actually be seen crawling around in her intestines, blowing up her belly,
wandering from one part of her body to another, slithering into her legs. The Rabbi of Graidik had exorcised the evil
spirits with the blowing of the ram’s horn, with incantations, and the incense of magic herbs.
When my brother Joshua questioned these things, my father became very excited. He argued: “Was then the great
Rabbi of Graidik, God forbid, a liar? Are all the rabbis, saints, and sages deceivers, while only atheists speak the
truth? Woe is us! How can one be so blind?”
Suddenly the door opened, and a woman entered. She was carrying a basket with two geese in it. The woman looked
frightened. Her matron’s wig was tilted to one side. She smiled nervously.
Father never looked at strange women, because it is forbidden by Jewish law, but Mother and we children saw
immediately that something had greatly upset our unexpected visitor.
“What is it?” Father asked, at the same time turning his back so as not to look upon her.
“Rabbi, I have a very unusual problem.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about these geese.”
“What’s the matter with them?”
“Dear Rabbi, the geese were slaughtered properly. Then I cut off their heads. I took out the intestines, the livers, all
the other organs, but the geese keep shrieking in such a sorrowful voice. . .”
Upon hearing these words, my father turned pale. A dreadful fear befell me, too. But my mother came from a family of
rationalists and was by nature a skeptic.
“Slaughtered geese don’t shriek,” she said.
“You will hear for yourself,” replied the woman.
She took one of the geese and placed it on the table. Then she took out the second goose. The geese were headless,
disemboweled—in short, ordinary dead geese.
“Why the Geese Shrieked” from Day of Pleasure by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Copyright © 1969 by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
LLC.
A smile appeared on my mother’s lips. “And these geese shriek?”
“You will soon hear.”
The woman took one goose and hurled it against the other. At once a shriek was heard. It is not easy to describe that
sound. It was like the cackling of a goose, but in such a high, eerie pitch, with such groaning and quaking, that my
limbs grew cold. I could actually feel the hairs of my earlocks pricking me. I wanted to run from the room. But where
would I run? My throat constricted with fear. Then I, too, shrieked and clung to my mother’s skirt, like a child of three.
Father forgot that one must avert one’s eyes from a woman. He ran to the table. He was no less frightened than I was.
His red beard trembled. In his blue eyes could be seen a mixture of fear and vindication. For my father this was a
sign that not only to the Rabbi of Graidik, but to him too, omens were sent from heaven. But perhaps this was a sign
from the Evil One, from Satan himself?
“What do you say now?” asked the woman.
My mother was no longer smiling. In her eyes there was something like sadness, and also anger.
“I cannot understand what is going on here,” she said, with a certain resentment.
“Do you want to hear it again?”
Again the woman threw one goose against the other. And again the dead geese gave forth an uncanny shriek—the
shriek of dumb creatures slain by the slaughterer’s knife who yet retain a living force; who still have a reckoning to
make with the living, an injustice to avenge. A chill crept over me. I felt as though someone had struck me with all his
might.
My father’s voice became hoarse. It was broken as though by sobs. “Well, can anyone still doubt that there is a
Creator?” he asked.
“Rabbi, what shall I do and where shall I go?” The woman began to croon in a mournful singsong. “What has befallen
me? Woe is me! What shall I do with them? Perhaps I should run to one of the Wonder Rabbis? Perhaps they were
not slaughtered properly? I am afraid to take them home. I wanted to prepare them for the Sabbath meal, and now,
such a calamity! Holy Rabbi, what shall I do? Must I throw them out? Someone said they must be wrapped in shrouds
and buried in a grave. I am a poor woman. Two geese! They cost me a fortune!”
Father did not know what to answer. He glanced at his bookcase. If there was an answer anywhere, it must be there.
Suddenly he looked angrily at my mother. “And what do you say now, eh?”
Mother’s face was growing sullen, smaller, sharper. In her eyes could be seen indignation and also something like
shame.
“I want to hear it again.” Her words were half pleading, half commanding.
The woman hurled the geese against each other for the third time, and for the third time the shrieks were heard. It
occurred to me that such must have been the voice of the sacrificial heifer.
“Woe, woe, and still they blaspheme. . . . It is written that the wicked do not repent even at the very gates of hell.”
Father had again begun to speak. “They behold the truth with their own eyes, and they continue to deny their Maker.
They are dragged into the bottomless pit and they maintain that all is nature, or accident . . .”
He looked at Mother as if to say: You take after them.
For a long time there was silence. Then the woman asked, “Well, did I just imagine it?”
Suddenly my mother laughed. There was something in her laughter that made us all tremble. I knew, by some sixth
sense, that Mother was preparing to end the mighty drama being enacted before our eyes.
“Did you remove the windpipes?” my mother asked.
“The windpipes? No . . .”
“Take them out,” said my mother, “and the geese will stop shrieking.”
My father became angry. “What are you babbling? What has this got to do with windpipes?”
Mother took hold of one of the geese, pushed her slender finger inside the body, and with all her might pulled out the
thin tube that led from the neck to the lungs. Then she took the other goose and removed its windpipe also. I stood
trembling, aghast at my mother’s courage. Her hands had become bloodied. On her face could be seen the wrath of
the rationalist whom someone has tried to frighten in broad daylight.
Father’s face turned white, calm, a little disappointed. He knew what had happened here: logic, cold logic, was again
tearing down faith, mocking it, holding it up to ridicule and scorn.
“Now, if you please, take one goose and hurl it against the other!” commanded my mother.
Everything hung in the balance. If the geese shrieked, Mother would have lost all: her rationalist’s daring, her
skepticism, which she had inherited from her intellectual father. And I? Although I was afraid, I prayed inwardly that
the geese would shriek, shriek so loud that people in the street would hear and come running.
But, alas, the geese were silent, silent as only two dead geese without windpipes can be.
“Bring me a towel!” Mother turned to me.
I ran to get the towel. There were tears in my eyes. Mother wiped her hands on the towel like a surgeon after a
difficult operation.
“That’s all it was!” she announced victoriously.
“Rabbi, what do you say?” asked the woman.
Father began to cough, to mumble. He fanned himself with his skullcap.
“I have never before heard of such a thing,” he said at last.
“Nor have I,” echoed the woman.
“Nor have I,” said my mother. “But there is always an explanation. Dead geese don’t shriek.”
“Can I go home now and cook them?” asked the woman.
“Go home and cook them for the Sabbath.” Mother pronounced the decision. “Don’t be afraid. They won’t make a
sound in your pot.”
“What do you say, Rabbi?”
“Hmm . . . they are kosher,” murmured Father. “They can be eaten.” He was not really convinced, but now he could
not pronounce the geese unclean.
Mother went back to the kitchen. I remained with my father. Suddenly he began to speak to me as though I were an
adult. “Your mother takes after your grandfather, the Rabbi of Bilgoray. He is a great scholar, but a cold-blooded
rationalist. People warned me before our betrothal. . .”
And then Father threw up his hands, as if to say: It is too late now to call off the wedding.

The Shaman and the Dying Scientist

A Brazilian Tale

Alan Riding
The story began with a front-page report Jan. 12 in the Rio de Janeiro daily Jornal do Brasil that carried the
headline, “Nature condemns a man who protected her.” It recounted how Mr. Ruschi was dying as a result of having
touched poisonous Dendrobates toads while carrying out research in the Amapá region of the Amazon in 1975.

The Power of a Poet

Other papers immediately caught onto the story, but it was three days later that President José Sarney was reportedly
moved by a newspaper column written by a prominent Brazilian poet, Alfonso Romano de Sant’Anna. The column took
its title from a novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold by the Colombian Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez.
In it, the poet appealed to the president to order a search for an antidote not only in the United States and the Soviet
Union but also among the Indian tribes of the Xingu National Park. “Brazil cannot afford to lose a man of Ruschi’s
stature just because some shameless toads declared him to be their enemy,” Mr. Sant’Anna wrote.
Mr. Sarney immediately told his Interior Minister, Ronaldo Costa Couto, to contact Raoni, the middle-aged cacique, or
chief, of the 4,000-strong Txucarramae tribe, who is also recognized as a spokesman for Brazil’s 180,000 surviving
Indians. And a few days later, an unusual sight in his feathered headdress and with the huge protruding lower lip that
members of his tribe develop through wearing a disk, Raoni was received by the President in his office in Brasilia.
Raoni told Mr. Sarney that he had dreamed of Mr. Ruschi struggling with toads and, after looking at photographs of
the naturalist, he proclaimed: “He already has the face of a toad. He has become a toad. We have to take the toad
from inside or he will soon die.”

The Treatment Begins

A Brazilian Air Force plane flew to the Xingu, 500 miles northwest of Brasilia, to collect herbs as well as Sapaim, a
shaman from the nearby Caimura tribe. And, in the middle of last week, in the presence of newspaper reporters and
television crews, Raoni and Sapaim met Mr. Ruschi in Rio de Janeiro.
The naturalist recounted that for more than a year he had suffered intense pain, nausea, fevers and nose bleeding
and could rarely sleep for more than two or three
Alan riding, “Shaman and the Dying Scientist: A Brazilian Tale” New York Times, February 4, 1986, Foreign Section. Copyright © 1986 New York Times Company. Reprinted
by permission. All rights reserved.
hours at a stretch. Further, reporters noted, he was barely able to climb a short stairway and his eyes and mouth
looked swollen and red.
The treatment, which was witnessed by a reporter from Jornal do Brasil and by Mr. Ruschi’s wife, Marilande, first
involved Raoni and Sapaim smoking 10-inch hallucinogenic herbal “cigars” and exhaling over the patient while
chanting.
Raoni then massaged Mr. Ruschi’s body and appeared to extract a green strong-smelling pasty substance that he
identified as the toad poison. While blowing smoke, the Indian chief rubbed it between his palms and it disappeared,
the reporter said. Finally, the naturalist took a herbal bath.

He Is Pronounced Cured
For three days, with the entire nation’s attention focused on the house where the treatment was taking place, the ritual
was repeated, with Mr. Ruschi claiming that he was feeling steadily better. By last Saturday, Raoni said all the poison
had been removed and Mr. Ruschi was pronounced cured.
Before completing the ritual, though, Raoni indicated that tradition required he be given a present by the person who
had called on him—in this case, President Sarney. The present could be a clay pot or, he added more pointedly, land
for the Indians. Raoni and Sapaim then went on a shopping spree in Rio de Janeiro and, with Interior Ministry
officials paying the bills, acquired $800 worth of beads and trinkets.
The final act will take place in Brasilia when President Sarney presents his.pngt to Raoni in the presence of Mr.
Ruschi, with all three expected to use the occasion to appeal for greater preservation of the natural and native
patrimony of this vast land. Then only an epilogue will still have to be written, describing whether Mr. Ruschi was
indeed permanently cured.
Not surprisingly, some skepticism has already been heard from physicians. Wallace Magalhães, who treated Mr.
Ruschi last year, said his liver was poisoned from excessive self-medication taken to combat chronic malaria. Haity
Moustatche, a scientist at the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz medical research center, said, “We have to determine
whether, in all the ritual, there was also some treatment.”
But, for the moment at least, with patient and shaman as well as public and press delighted with the present happy
ending, Mr. Ruschi seemed to offer the best closing words for the fairy tale. He said that, when he died, he wished to
be buried in the rain forest near his home. “And I have the hope,” he added, “that the hummingbirds will lead me to
the Kingdom of God.”

Study Questions
1. Put yourself in the place of the child narrator of Singer’s story. With which parent do you identify? Why?
2. What can we learn from the shamans? The article says that after treatment by the shamans Mr. Ruschi felt
better. What are some possible reasons for why Mr. Ruschi was feeling better after the treatment?
3. How would you respond to someone who asked you, “Why be reasonable?”

The Limits of Reason

We have argued that using reason and the skills of critical thinking can make our lives more pleasant and happy. It
helps us know what to expect and make plans and to have friends to share them with. But reason does have its limits.
We can only reason from one thing to another. So our reasoning must begin by assuming something. This might be
the axioms of mathematics, a set of scientific laws in physics or chemistry, or the Constitution in United States law.
Usually we agree on some set of fundamental assumptions. That is what enables us to talk to each other and that is
what enables mathematicians to talk to each other, or scientists, or Americans. Americans, for example, believe that
“all . . . (people) are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, namely, life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.” This assumption then guides further agreements or disagreements they might have.
Sometimes, however, our disagreements are rooted in different ideas about where to start. Two scientists who agree
on the “laws of nature” might disagree about the existence of God. While one may believe that the world would not
exist at all if there was no God to create it, the other may think the assumption of God’s existence unnecessary to
explain anything in science. What they both, probably, will admit is that the principles of physics (which they both
consider to be fundamental to good scientific reasoning) will not settle their disagreement.
The short story of the shrieking geese illustrates the power of reason to solve problems and make lives happier. The
woman who owns the geese is very upset because her expectation is that properly slaughtered geese do not shriek
and she wants to eat the geese. She is a poor woman and does not want to have to throw out the geese (or bury them
in a grave). Since her expectations are reasonable based on previous experience, it is also reasonable to assume that
there is an explanation for the fact that the geese are now shrieking. Taking the approach of reason advocated by the
mother, and not the approach of awe at the apparent mystery taken by the father, enables her to confirm that her
expectations were reasonable and to fulfill her intention to eat the geese.
The inability of medicine to cure Mr. Ruschi and Socrates’ failure to convince Euthyphro to continue the dialogue
about the nature of piety, on the other hand, indicate the limits of reason and of “thinking Socratically.” The
application of reason does not always solve our problems. Even when we make our best effort, the open dialogue,
which is the hallmark of rationality, is not always successful. It does not always lead to agreement. Even friends may
not agree, not even in the long run! They may begin from different assumptions or fail to have the same goals. The
greater the difference in initial assumptions or in goals, the greater the difficulty of coming to agreement. Intercultural
dialogues often display this difficulty.
Another limitation on the open dialogue is that we do not always have enough time to resolve differences and find
agreement, or solve the puzzle or problem. Circumstances may be overwhelming, demanding immediate action. For
instance, the immanence of death in Mr. Ruschi’s case rules out waiting for medicine to discover a cure for his
diseased body. Ruschi must act, not talk. There are certainly situations in life where we cannot delay and still achieve
the goals we seek. We must act on the best information available and hope to continue the open dialogue at a later
time.
Finally, the open rational dialogue is limited by the values we hold. While we believe that all human beings share the
general goals of being able to anticipate and plan for the future and of having friends and pleasant experiences, they
do not always place the same value on the same specific experiences as ways of meeting these general goals. Our
values act as a constraint on our exercise of reason, directing it to the ends we set. Reason both helps us decide what
ends we should value and achieve those we value while avoiding the ones we do not.
Our claim, then, in behalf of reason and open rational dialogue is warranted but limited. Reason cannot answer all our
questions or fulfill all our purposes. Sometimes the answers defy human reason, and sometimes reason is not
persuasive of others. Sometimes our purposes even lie outside the realm of reason as when we choose the sloppy
sentimentality of a romantic movie or give ourselves goose bumps by reading a horror story. In general, however,
rational thinking and rational behavior is what enables us to meet our goals and expectations. It helps us to have
friends who share our outlook on the world. Trying to be rational and to make rational decisions helps us enjoy the
pleasant and avoid the unpleasant.
Because the rational dialogue is open, it means that we can learn from our experience and from the experience of
others. If we reason well, we get better at fulfilling our goals and purposes. In the following chapters, we will give you
some concepts and skills that will improve your reasoning skills. But in a very important sense, we have already given
you the most important tip we can give you, which is always to be open to further discussion and to make the effort
that the open dialogue demands.
The problem with shamans, witch doctors, and others who work in mysterious ways is that the end of the explanation
comes too soon. We are stopped by “mystery” from asking precisely the questions that might be helpful in the future.
We are forced to discontinue the dialogue before we begin to understand how we might affect that future.
Despite the limitations of reason, we find the advantages of being reasonable persuasive. It is difficult to argue
otherwise. Indeed, you might notice something rather peculiar going on here. It is hard to make a case for being
nonrational without seeming to contradict yourself. Making a case for a position means giving arguments or reasons
in support of it. The person arguing against the use of reason is placed in the awkward position of giving reasons for
not giving reasons, or of making an argument for not making arguments. Although not contradictory, it is clearly self-
defeating behavior. That is, the harder you try to convince someone with reasons that she should not pay attention to
reasons, the more successful you are, the more you will fail. It’s like a child’s trying to convince her parent that she is
sufficiently mature to stay up to watch a late night television show while crying like a baby because the parent is
saying no. Usually when a person asks a question, she wants a reasonable answer, not a shower of tears or a punch
on the jaw. Although we may be coerced by power, we prefer to be persuaded by argument and evidence. It seems a
much better fit with our sense of what it means to be a person and a human being.

Summary
To begin our open rational dialogue, we must begin somewhere. The alternative would be to reason “backward”
forever and never come to an end/beginning. We must choose between reasoning on and on, never coming to a
conclusion or we must begin to reason from some claim for which we give no reasons. Neither alternative is very
satisfactory. One is endless and the other is arbitrary. The “Big Bang” theory about the origins of the universe
discussed by Lewis Thomas, which you will read about in Chapter 2 , exemplifies this age-old problem. If you want
to know what there was in the universe before the big bang, physicists cannot tell you. The laws of physics as we
know them began with the big bang. One is left to wonder: If reason is so limited, then why try so hard to be rational?
This philosophical puzzle led the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Kierkegaard to claim that all choices rest
ultimately on “a leap of faith.” What Kierkegaard meant by this is that if all reasoning begins from some initial claim,
then it would seem that no choice is wholly rational for each choice rests on an initial assumption that is not itself
justified. Each choice is, therefore, taken on “faith.” Kierkegaard concluded from this that people should choose a life
of faith, not reason. We disagree. While Kierkegaard’s point about the limits of reason is well taken, it does not follow
from these limitations that people should choose a life of faith and mystery, not reason. People are still usually better
off trying to be reasonable. Open rational dialogue and critical thinking lead to more successful anticipation of future
events and happier outcomes than does assuming that the world is a mystery and unknowable.
The rational open dialogue also has the advantage of being a good way of persuading others to join us in our plans. It
is less likely to have the unpleasant consequences attendant on the use of force, or threats of force, which historically
have often been used to persuade others to accept or believe mystery. These uses of force include excommunication
from the “tribe,” burning at the stake, threats of death by lightning, etc. and so on. The rational dialogue invites, but
does not force, agreement. It relies solely on the power of evidence. It allows—and even encourages—the other party
to think critically and to respond critically to that evidence.
To put the matter another way, the way Socrates would put it: Rational dialogue is the essence of friendship. The
people we talk to and who talk with us are our friends. When we are friends, we are willing to listen; we are willing to
change our minds when persuaded; we are willing to go an extra mile to find a common ground. Most people would
agree that being a friend means sharing. And what could be more important to share than our thoughts and beliefs?
To do this we must talk—together. There is more than irony in Socrates’ words when he refers to Euthyphro as his
friend each time Euthyphro wants to go away and end the dialogue.

Exercises

1–I
1. What is the hallmark of the rational person?
2. What are the five limitations of human reason?
3. Give three reasons why rational approaches generally work better than nonrational approaches.
4. How would your explanation differ if:
a. you were explaining to your best friend why your computer was not performing as you expected?
b. you were explaining to your best friend why you just bought a new Corvette?

1–II
1. Find an example in a recent newspaper of an event attributed to mystery, that is, something that cannot be
known. Give an explanation of why it is considered a mystery.
2. Bring in two different accounts of the same event, which are told from very different cultural perspectives. You
could use the Internet for this.
3. Why do you love your girlfriend/boyfriend? Is this an example of reasonable behavior or an affair of the heart?
Explain.
4. Mr. Ruschi died soon after his session with the shamans. Does that information change your earlier
interpretation of that event? If so, how?
5. Do you think there are events for which there are no rational explanations? Why or why not?
Chapter 2 Language

The Priority of Language

We all know how to use language. Otherwise we couldn’t have written this, and you couldn’t be reading it. We simply
use language without thinking about how important language is to us. It is important to recognize that critical thinking
could not take place without language. When we reason, make decisions, offer an explanation, or describe our moods
and feelings, we use language. It’s our main mode of communication with others. It can be used to convey
information, to express feelings, to give orders, to ask questions, or to entertain. It’s also how we think and
communicate with ourselves. Language has its limitations, as we will see, but it is our basic tool when it comes to
critical thinking. So, our investigation of the skills and concepts of critical thinking must begin with a discussion of
language.
We generally use language to accomplish some purpose. For example, we may use it to order a salad or discuss
politics or sing a song. Our uses of language may be successful or not. Success is usually judged by how clearly we
communicate our thoughts to someone else, or how much closer we have moved to our goals. With some
oversimplification, the goals when we use language usually fall into one of the three following categories:
to understand, predict, and control the world around us so that we can survive and prosper,
to maintain and improve our relationships with those around us so that we have more friends and fewer enemies
and can love and be loved,
to have pleasant rather than unpleasant experiences and to enjoy as much of our lives as we possibly can.1
1 These divisions of human concern have a long and honorable history from Plato to Freud.

Language which is successful at prediction and control is often considered the most powerful use of language and
therefore taken as a model for other language uses. If we stop to think about it, however, it is much easier to predict
and control the objects and other non-human aspects of our lives than it is to control our human relationships. Just
consider how difficult it has proven to be to negotiate a peace treaty or to make a plan to control global warming or to
convince a friend that the music you like is better than the music he likes. Clearly language which is successful in
maintaining and improving our relationships with other people is more sophisticated and more complicated than the
language of prediction and control of physical things. We will consider the uses of language with all three of these
goals in mind; however, the language of human relationships is the most important understanding we could have for
getting along in the world.

Language and the World

Do you ever think about how language relates to the world? To put the matter another way, why do you hold the
beliefs about the world that you hold? For instance, why do you believe that Chicago is located in Illinois or that an
electric current makes the lights work? Probably the most common answer to this question is “Because that’s the way
the world is,” implying that it would be foolish to believe otherwise. Of course, we are not so sure of all our beliefs, and
sometimes we choose other responses like “My mother told me that when I was ten” or “I just can’t help being afraid
of dogs; I was bitten by a dog when I was six” or “I’ve never liked the taste of lima beans.” That is, we generally think
that we have two kinds of beliefs: (1) beliefs which we hold because we think they are accurate pictures of the world
and (2) beliefs which are particular to us as individuals, to our upbringing, and to our tastes and preferences. We
often refer to the first kind of belief as objective and the second as subjective.
Consider the following two descriptions of the houses of nineteenth-century New York City:

I was much pleased with New York. The new houses are palaces. They are very large and built in a rich . . . ornate
style of architecture. The material is brown sandstone which has a fine effect.

(Letter quoted by John Maass in The Victorian Home in America)

 . . . the intolerable ugliness of New York … the narrow houses so lacking in dignity. . . . This little low-studded. . . .
New York, cursed with its universal chocolate-colored coating of the most hideous stone ever quarried. . . .

(Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance)

How could they differ so much? After all, there could be only one “objective reality” which is New York. But, there are
two different authors or subjects. Perhaps each author has created his or her own “subjective reality.” So, just what is
the connection between language and the world?
At this point we might take either of two tacks, and both philosophers and non-philosophers have a long history of
having done this. We could say that one of the two descriptions is better than the other because it comes closer to
describing the objective reality which is New York City. That is, the language of the better description “mirrors” or
“corresponds” to the world in ways that the lesser one does not. We might even go so far as to call the better
description “right” or “true” or “objective.” Or rather than saying that one of the descriptions is better than the other,
we could say that the two passages describe two different realities, realities which are created by the two different
narrators. On this view, reality or the world is simply a product of our individual subjective experience. No wonder we
disagree so often.
There is a third alternative that we—the authors—think is preferable to the objectivist or subjectivist accounts of the
relationship between language and the world, and this is the “Socratic” account. There are many good reasons for
adopting what we have called the Socratic point of view, but we will not review all of them here. What you should know
is that this Socratic viewpoint enables us to clarify some cloudy issues and to avoid getting bogged down by
unsolvable puzzles about the relationship between language and the world.
What is this Socratic account? According to the Socratic account, no belief about the world should be evaluated
solely by itself. Rather beliefs should be evaluated as parts of larger sets or systems of beliefs. For example, the two
descriptions of New York City are both part of larger systems of belief—beliefs about size and scale in architecture,
about the attractiveness of brown sandstone exteriors, and so on. Some systems of beliefs work well; some don’t work
or work very poorly in terms of helping us reach the general goals of human beings mentioned above. To put it
another way, some systems work up to our expectations for them, and others do not. When a set or system of beliefs
fails to work up to expectation, we begin to replace it with a set that works better. For example, if you have always
been afraid of dogs (having been bitten in the past), but recently you have become friends with the cutest little beagle,
you will probably replace your original set of beliefs about all dogs being mean with one that includes cute friendly little
beagles. Our systems of beliefs can be about anything in the world—the architecture of New York City, the parts of
the atom, the nature of dogs, or the taste of lima beans.
Our sets of beliefs are evaluated by how well they work for us as individuals and by how well they work for us as
members of the larger community. This means that our belief systems are continuously open because they are
continuously being tested by our experience of the world and in our dialogues with our friends and others. For
example, suppose you believe you see a spider on the wall. You get closer to the wall and find a smudge of dirt. Then
you will revise your set of beliefs, throw out the spider, and put in dirt on the wall, or dirty wall. Or suppose you think
you see a spider and all the rest of the people around you insist that it’s a fly, not a spider. Your belief about a spider
has not “worked very well,” and since everyone else sees a fly, you are likely to change your set of beliefs.
Sometimes, we have to discard whole sets of beliefs. For instance, when the Iron Curtain crumbled across Eastern
Europe and the Cold War came to an end, the United States’ beliefs about its role in the world had to change. Or in
the sixteenth century when astronomers began to doubt that the earth was the center of the universe, they began to
create new a completely new set of beliefs about a sun-centered universe.
One young man finds a need to revise his set of beliefs.
Used by permission of Atlantic Feature Syndicate.

Now, if you think you see a connection between this Socratic account of language and our earlier account (in
Chapter 1 ) of critical thinking as open rational dialogue, you are correct. It is our belief that a good critical thinker
or a rational person is someone who is open to this continuous “dialogue” between beliefs and the world, who
understands why this openness is important, and who is continually testing his systems of beliefs against experience.
As you seek to improve your reasoning skills, you need to keep in mind the two dialogues that shape our beliefs: the
dialogue between ourselves and the world and the dialogue between ourselves and our friends.
To illustrate how our descriptions of the world are embedded in systems of belief about the world, we have provided
two readings from two twentieth-century authors, both of whom are generally credited with being “Renaissance men,”
individuals who are proficient in a wide variety of areas. Both are open to dialogue—with others and with the world.
The first piece is by Lewis Thomas. Thomas was a medical doctor, a biologist, a writer, and an administrator. For
many years, he was the chief executive officer of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, one of the best
specialized hospitals in the United States. As you will see in this reading, he had the ability to use his detailed
knowledge of science to muse about the human condition and our place in the cosmos. The second author is Stephen
Jay Gould, who was a paleontologist, Harvard professor, and prolific author. Gould was well known for his expertise
on the fossils of snails. Here, he describes his experiences looking for the bones of prehistoric hominids.
Both readings also show something very important about experience, namely, that our experience is not neutral but
rather is influenced by the systems of beliefs we hold. To a larger extent than we usually appreciate, what we perceive
is dependent on what we are prepared to perceive or what we expect we are going to perceive. If we have been
seeing spiders on the wall, then the next black spot that moves on the wall we are likely to take to be a spider.
Whereas if there have been lots of flies buzzing about the room, then we are more likely to take the black spot on the
wall to be a fly. We actually see spiders or we see flies. Our minds organize the experience according to a pattern,
one that is familiar or one that we may be expecting. (This is why witnesses at the scene of a crime are not always
accurate reporters of what happened.)
We have all had that happen to us. Perhaps you have been waiting on the street corner for a friend, when you
suddenly see him coming around the corner. When the person you see gets closer, you realize it is not your friend
but someone who looks like your friend—or maybe even someone who does not look like your friend at all. We tend to
find what we are looking for! As a consequence, says Thomas in the piece below, we fail to recognize something very
important, namely, that the most surprising thing about the universe is the earth. We are just so used to its being here
and our being a part of it. And Gould is very frank about his inability to see the bones he is looking for but has not
been trained to see. What he does see are snails because he has been trained to see snails! These are two very
good examples of how Our belief systems influence what we see and what we see influences our belief systems.
Experience can even vary not just from person to person, but for the same person, from moment to moment. To see
this, consider the following well-known example:

You probably see a cube protruding either down toward the right or up toward the left. Of course, the figure is not
really a cube. It is just 12 lines on a flat surface. But you see it as a cube. Now look at it again. If you saw it as
protruding down toward the right, look at how it now protrudes up toward the left. Or vice versa. The figure hasn’t
changed—but your perception has. Seeing, when we think about it, turns out to be a complex process, greatly
influenced by our previous experience (e.g., Gould’s training in snail fossils) and our systems of beliefs. Lewis
Thomas urges us to get beyond the somewhat limiting effects of previous experience and look to the periphery of our
sight—to see what we can see with “the corner of the eye.”

The Corner of the Eye

Lewis Thomas
There are some things that human beings can see only out of the corner of the eye. The niftiest examples of this.pngt,
familiar to all children, are small, faint stars. When you look straight at one such star, it vanishes; when you move
your eyes to stare into the space nearby, it reappears. If you pick two faint stars, side by side, and focus on one of
the pair, it disappears and now you can see the other in the corner of your eye, and you can move your eyes back
and forth, turning off the star in the center of your retina and switching the other one on. There is a physiological
explanation for the phenomenon: we have more rods, the cells we use for light perception, at the periphery of our
retinas, more cones, for perceiving color, at the center.
Something like this happens in music. You cannot really hear certain sequences of notes in a Bach fugue unless at
the same time there are other notes being sounded, dominating the field. The real meaning in music comes from
tones only audible in the corner of the mind.
I used to worry that computers would become so powerful and sophisticated as to take the place of human minds. The
notion of Artificial Intelligence used to scare me half to death. Already, a large enough machine can do all sorts of
intelligent things beyond our capacities: calculate in a split second the answers to mathematical problems requiring
years for a human brain, draw accurate pictures from memory, even manufacture successions of sounds with a
disarming resemblance to real music. Computers can translate textbooks, write dissertations of their own for
doctorates, even speak in machine-tooled, inhuman phonemes any words read off from a printed page. They can
communicate with one another, holding consultations and committee meetings of their own in networks around the
earth.
Computers can make errors, of course, and do so all the time in small, irritating ways, but the mistakes can be fixed
and nearly always are. In this respect they are fundamentally inhuman, and here is the relaxing thought: computers
will not take over the world, they cannot replace us, because they are not designed, as we are, for ambiguity.
Imagine the predicament faced by a computer programmed to make language, not the interesting communication in
sounds made by vervets or in symbols by brilliant chimpanzee prodigies, but real human talk. The grammar would not
be too difficult, and there would be no problem in constructing a vocabulary of etymons, the original, pure,
unambiguous words used to name real things. The impossibility would come in making the necessary mistakes we
humans make with words instinctively, intuitively, as we build our kinds of language, changing the meanings to imply
quite
“The Corner of the Eye,” copyright © 1981 by Lewis Thomas, from LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS ON LISTENING TO MAHLER’S NINTH by Lewis Thomas. Used by permission of
Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
different things, constructing and elaborating the varieties of ambiguity without which speech can never become
human speech.
Look at the record of language if you want to glimpse the special qualities of the human mind that lie beyond the
reach of any machine. Take, for example, the metaphors we use in everyday speech to tell ourselves who we are,
where we live, and where we come from.
The earth is a good place to begin. The word “earth” is used to name the ground we walk on, the soil in which we
grow plants or dig clams, and the planet itself; we also use it to describe all of humanity (“the whole earth responds to
the beauty of a child,” we say to each other).
The earliest word for earth in our language was the Indo-European root dhghem, and look what we did with it. We
turned it, by adding suffixes, into humus in Latin; today we call the complex polymers that hold fertile soil together
“humic” acids, and somehow or other the same root became “humility.” With another suffix the word became
“human.” Did the earth become human, or did the human emerge from the earth? One answer may lie in that nice
cognate word “humble.” “Humane” was built on, extending the meaning of both the earth and ourselves. In ancient
Hebrew, adamha was the word for earth, adam for man. What computer could run itself through such manipulations
as those?
We came at the same system of defining ourselves from the other direction. The word wiros was the first root for
man; it took us in our vanity on to “virile” and “virtue,” but also turned itself into the Germanic word weraldh, meaning
the life of man, and thence in English to our word “world.”
There is a deep hunch in this kind of etymology. The world of man derives from this planet, shares origin with the life
of the soil, lives in humility with all the rest of life. I cannot imagine programming a computer to think up an idea like
that, not a twentieth-century computer, anyway.
The world began with what it is now the fashion to call the “Big Bang.” Characteristically, we have assigned the wrong
words for the very beginning of the earth and ourselves, in order to evade another term that would cause this century
embarrassment. It could not, of course, have been a bang of any sort, with no atmosphere to conduct the waves of
sound, and no ears. It was something else, occurring in the most absolute silence we can imagine. It was the Great
Light.
We say it had been chaos before, but it was not the kind of place we use the word “chaos” for today, things tumbling
over each other and bumping around. Chaos did not have that meaning in Greek; it simply meant empty.
We took it, in our words, from chaos to cosmos, a word that simply meant order, cosmetic. We perceived the order in
surprise, and our cosmologists and physicists continue to find new and astonishing aspects of the order. We made
up the word “universe” from the whole affair, meaning literally turning everything into one thing. We used to say it was
a miracle, and we still permit ourselves to refer to the whole universe as a marvel, holding in our unconscious minds
the original root meaning of these two words, miracle and marvel—from the ancient root word smei, signifying a
smile. It immensely pleases a human being to see something never seen before, even more to learn something never
known before, most of all to think something never thought before. The rings of Saturn are the latest surprise. All my
physicist friends are enchanted by this phenomenon, marveling at the small violations of the laws of planetary
mechanics, shocked by the unaccountable braids and spokes stuck there among the rings like graffiti. It is nice for
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 DEAN'S

Illustrated Farthing Books.

TRUST IN GOD.

LONDON: DEAN & SON,

11, Ludgate Hill.

41
 "IN GOD DO I PUT MY TRUST."

"Mother, what did the psalmist mean when he said, 'Preserve

me, O God! for in Thee do I put my trust?'"
"Do you remember the little girl we saw walking with her father in
the woods last week?"
"Oh, yes, mother; was she not beautiful?"
"She was a gentle, loving little thing, and her father was very kind
to her. Do you remember what she said, when they came to the
narrow bridge over the brook?"
"I do not like to talk about the bridge, mother, it makes me giddy.
Do you believe it is safe--just those two planks laid across, and no
railing? If she had stepped a little to one side, she would have fallen
into the water."
"Do you remember what she said?"
"Yes. She stopped a minute, as if she did not like to go over, and
then looked up in her father's face, and asked him to take hold of
her hand, and said, 'You will take care of me, father dear; I don't
feel afraid when you take hold of my hand,' And her father looked so
lovingly upon her, and took tight hold of her hand, as if she were
very precious to him."

"I think David felt like that little girl when he wrote the words
which you have just read."
"Was David going over a bridge, mother?"
"Not such a bridge as the one in the woods; but he had come to
some place of difficulty in his life, and whenever he was in any way
troubled, he looked up to God, just as the little girl did to her father,
and said, 'Preserve me, O God!' It is the same as if he had said,
'Please take care of me, my kind Heavenly Father; I do not feel
afraid, if you take hold of my hand.'"
"Oh, mother, how beautiful! But God did not really take hold of
David's hand, and lead him through the trouble!"
"No; but God loves His children who trust in Him--who feel safe in
his care--just as the father did his little daughter; and though He
does not take hold of their hands, He knows how to make them feel
as peaceful and easy as if He did."
"Mother, can I be one of God's children?"
 "Yes, my dear; if you love Him, and trust Him, and try to please
Him, He will call you His own, and lead you all your life, and make
you very happy."

"Will there be any bridges in my life? I mean, shall I have

troubles? Now, I have not any, have I? I have not to look up to God,
and ask Him to take care of me?"
"You must not think great troubles are the only ones we have to
meet with. You will have many small troubles, and will need to look
to your Heavenly Father to take care of you through them."
"What troubles do you think I shall have, mother?"
"You had one this morning. Sarah was unkind to you, and you
were sadly grieved."
"Could I go to God with such troubles?"
"Yes, my dear; you can tell Him, just as you would me, all your
unhappiness, and ask Him to comfort you."
"Mother, I am very glad we read that Psalm this morning. I think I
love God better already, and I hope I shall always trust Him."
"I hope you will; and if you begin when you are a little girl, you
will learn better and better about Him, and be far happier than those
who have no such friend to go to in trouble."
"Why, cannot everybody go to God with their wants?"
 "Certainly, if they will; but a great many people never tell Him
their troubles--never ask Him to forgive them, nor to take care of
them. They did not begin in their childhood, and it is difficult to learn
these trusts when we are old."
"Oh! I hope I shall learn it now, while you can help me, mother."
"God alone can help you, my child; ask Him to teach you to trust
Him."
 Transcriber's Notes:
Missing or obscured punctuation was silently
corrected.
Typographical errors were silently corrected.
Spelling was corrected in these 2 words:
npon - upon
rather - father

The cover has been created by the transcriber and

placed in the public domain.
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