After my meeting with Socrates, I was introduced to a friend of his named Euthyphro. Euthyphro, also involved in a court case, is bringing suit against his own father, claiming that he murdered one of the family's workers. Euthyphro claims that he is prosecuting his father to bring justice to the person he killed, and because righteousness should not stop just because the accused is family.
It is clear that this is not the true reasoning for Euthyphro's sudden burst of humanity. Euthyphro has lived with his father's crime for all these years, and now feels that a wrongful act has been committed and needs to come forward with the information? Unlikely. So, what is the true reason, you ask? It can all be explained with my Oedipus Complex. Young children have a fixation with parents of the opposite sex, and therefore see the parent of the same sex as their rival. Euthyphro feels the need to compete with his father for the love of his mother, and as a result is seeking to get rid of his father, in this case by accusing him of murder and having him sent to jail. But, whether his conscious mind knows of these ulterior motives is a different story.
No comments:
Post a Comment