Euthyphro

The Euthyphro is the first of Plato's four-dialogue cycle on the death of Socrates and one of the supreme short texts in Western philosophy. The dialogue takes place on the steps of the Athenian court where Socrates has come to answer the charges of impiety that will soon cost him his life. While he waits to be summoned, he meets Euthyphro — a young man on his way to prosecute his own father for murder, and a self-described expert on the religious laws he is invoking.

Socrates, with characteristic mock-deference, asks Euthyphro to teach him what piety is. The dialogue works through five definitions, each of which collapses under questioning, and culminates in the famous Euthyphro dilemma: is what is pious pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is pious? The dilemma has shaped Western philosophy of religion for two and a half thousand years.