Liberal Democratic Constitutions & Euthypro's Dilemma

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Atomic Essay

Modern liberal democratic constitutions and Euthypro's Dilemma

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One of the chief duties of a citizen is to be a nuisance to the government of his state.

Thomas Jefferson

I remember that my first lesson in mathematics given to me by my brother was a disappointment because he said ‘Now we start with axioms.’ And I said, ‘What are they?’ And he said ‘They’re things we’ve got to admit although you can’t prove them.’ So I said, ‘Why should I admit them if you can’t prove them?’ And he said, ‘Well, if you won’t, we can’t go on.’ And I wanted to see how it went on, and so I admitted them.

Bertrand Russell

… And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and at all times…

Cicero

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Around 400 BC, Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher asked another philosopher Euthyphro*, (who was posing as his teacher despite being unqualified for the position), what is known as the famous Euthyphro’s dilemma: Was the good loved by the gods because it was good, or was it good because it was loved by the gods? This question left Euthyphro fumbling for an answer and since then, it has challenged thousands of philosophers and theologians who have struggled to resolve this dilemma satisfactorily.

One way forward, as Socrates and Euthyphro decided, was to agree that good things were good for intrinsic reasons, not necessarily because god said so. In other words, speaking the truth, if it was good, was good by itself, not just because god said so. Even if god someday decided that lying was good, that wouldn’t change things.

The problem was this view made god less than what many wanted him to be: a big, all powerful, unlimited… GOD.

The other philosophical view called ‘Voluntarism’ asserted that ‘good’ didn’t have an intrinsic existence; whatever god said was good. While comforting to many religious people, this view had its own bigger problem. As the devout Catholic novelist C S Lewis, the creator of Narnia, remarked: if good is to be defined as what god commands, then the goodness of god himself is emptied of meaning, and the commands of an all-powerful monster would have the same claim on us as those of the good god. And in the words of the philosopher and mathematician Leibniz: this opinion would hardly distinguish god from the devil.

Lewis and Leibniz were right as history shows; it’s very dangerous to leave the concept of good in god’s hands. The downfall of Arabic culture from being a beacon of arts and sciences in early medieval era to god knows what in these times, is a result of that abandonment* – definitely in part, if not in full.

For many enthusiastic believers of democracy living in a democratic country, their constitution occupies the position of a holy book, no less. Both America and India are good examples. In both countries, the constitution’s authors, when they wrote the document, were to many demi-gods if not gods, and still are to some.

Now imagine Socrates and Euthyphro descending on 21st century and raising another Euthyphro’s dilemma about the Indian or American Constitution (which in many ways influenced the Indian constitution). Socrates asks: “Are the principles of the constitution valid because gods thought of them or did gods think of them because they are valid?”

What will Euthyphro say? If Euthyphro sticks to his earlier stand, he would perhaps say that gods (like Jefferson and Washington in case of America, and Ambedkar and Nehru in case of India) put those principals in the constitution because they were valid in the first place; it’s not the other way round.

But what if Euthyphro were a modern democrat? Then he would likely contradict his earlier position and go the second way – that the principles of the constitution are valid not because of any intrinsic value, but because the gods thought of them; in short, they are gods’ axioms. And he will add a rider: but only because the gods were elected, had popular mandate, and therefore had the democratic approval to postulate those axioms.

Unfortunately for the modern democrat Euthyphro, that leads to a problem. Can you guess what it is?

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Topics
History, Philosophy, Economics, Ethics, Politics, Governance, Society