Find and read “Plato’s Rebuttal” under this week’s modules. Summarize to the best of your ability, and in your own words, the core of Plato’s argument against Divine Command Theory. Do NOT use a website here, or any other source.
Outline what YOU think of Divine Command Theory. Explain your answer as fully as possible.
The platos Rebuttual
Some claim that an understanding of right and wrong depends upon the will of God. What makes
something morally right? God promotes it. And what makes something morally wrong? God forbids it.
This is called Divine Command Theory.
This position was challenged by Plato almost five hundred years before Christ. His most well-known
refutation of this theory is found in the Euthyphro. The following is a recreation of the substance of his
argument.
Take some actions we ordinarily consider good: Bringing murderers to justice, feeding the poor…etc. A
Divine Command Theorist claims that these are good because God wills or commands them. Now, some
clarification is required: Are these actions good because God wills them? Or does God will them
because they are good? Let’s take one at a time.
1) Something is good because God wills it.
If God’s will is what makes something good, then the content of goodness must be entirely arbitrary. In
a possible world, God could have willed the rape and torture of infants, and the Divine Command
Theorist would have to accept them as good.
“Now wait a minute!” screams the Divine Command Theorist, “God would never will the rape and
torture of infants!” “But why not?” we may ask. The answer is that the rape and torture of infants is so
inherently horrible that we cannot even imagine God willing them. And right here is where Divine
Command Theory fails. For in stating that some actions are so terrible that God would never will them,
we are admitting a standard of morality independent of God!
This is a very subtle point, and the reader might benefit from considering it from another angle. So,
here it is again: The Divine Command Theorist states that God’s will is what makes something good.
Now, to refer to an action’s inherent rightness or wrongness (that saving innocent lives is always good,
or beating helpless animals is always evil) is to no longer rely upon God for our understanding of right
and wrong. This is the point.
2) God wills it because it is good.
If God wills something because it is good, then we are already conceding the goodness of something
prior to God______________
