Divine Might Makes Right?

1
Divine Command Theory

• Divine Might Makes Right?

2
Divine Command Theory

• As a Metaethical theory, DCT states that
• Good df approved of by God.
• Right df commanded by God.
• As a Normative theory, DCT states that actions
  are right when they conform to Gods will or
  respond to his commands.

3
Divine Command Theory

• The first critical examination of the theory is
  found in Platos Euthyphro.
• Euthyphro is a young lawyer prosecuting his own
  father for murder Socrates concludes Euthyphro
  must know right from wrong to be so bold, and
  positions himself as Euthyphros student. When
  Euthyphro says right and wrong are determined by
  what the gods love, Socrates asks the crucial
  question

4
Divine Command Theory

• Socrates Is something good because the gods
  love it, or do the gods love it because it is
  good?
• Platos ultimate answer to this question, this
  dilemma, is to reject the first horn.
• On the second horn, good is mysterious, but the
  statements form is intelligible.
• On the first horn, good is naturalized (loved
  by God is a natural property), but the statement
  no longer makes sense because Gods love is
  arbitrary.

See final slide for explanation
5
Arbitrariness

• Why is Gods love arbitrary on the 1st horn?
• Because we have to take seriously the claim that
  nothing about the thing in question makes God
  approve or disapprove of it.
• If something about pain, for instance, makes God
  disapprove of it, then that thing, rather than
  Gods disapproval, would make pain bad.
• The theory, however, asserts that it is Gods
  disapproval that makes a thing good or bad, not
  some property it has.
• Therefore, God has no reason for saying this or
  that is good or bad, and so his approval or
  disapproval is arbitrary.
• Platos objection to the view is, it makes the
  gods capricious, and that is blasphemous or
  impious to suppose.

6
Final Word?

• There are defenders of the Divine Command theory,
  and as you might guess, they rely on very
  sophisticated views of Gods nature. They all,
  nevertheless, appreciate the difficulty Platos
  ancient argument presents.
• See, for example, Steve Lovells piece, C.S.
  Lewis and the Euthyphro Dilemma, online.

7
Naturalization

• What is naturalization in Ethics?
• Well, we dont know very clearly what the word
  good means in Ethics. If we become convinced it
  means causes pleasure, we then know clearly
  what it means and an issue in Metaethics is
  solved! Causes pleasure is a natural property
  because it occurs in space and time (according to
  GE Moore, the philosopher who coined the term).
  In the divine command theory, good means loved
  by the gods or commanded by God. Again, good
  is naturalized because commanded by God is a
  property something has due to an event (God
  commanding something) in time.
• GE Moore believed good referred to a
  non-natural, simple, indefinable property. In
  saying it is non-natural, Moore perhaps meant
  that the property was a classificatory concept
  such as colored (the red or blue or yellow of a
  thing exists in space and time, but the things
  status of being colored does not). Likewise, an
  action might be pleasant, and the pleasure exists
  in space and time, but the goodness of the
  pleasure does not.