Is Pious pious cause God loves pious?

from Kanye West (Ft. Frank Ocean & Jay-Z) – No Church in the Wild Lyrics on Rap Genius

Probably a rap first: a reference to Plato’s Euthyphro

The Euthyphro dilemma arises when Socrates asks Euthyphro, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” In other words, (i) do the gods love something because it is pious or (ii) is something pious because the gods love it? Socrates and Euthyphro both agree that (i) is true, but Socrates argues that if (ii) is also true and something is pious because the gods love it then (i) and (ii) together would yield a self-perpetuating cycle in which the gods love the pious because it is the pious and the pious are only pious because the gods love it

The dialectic gets at some of the central questions of morality (sovereignty, omnipotence, freedom of the will, morality without God) and has implications not only for metaphysics and theology but also for epistemology

Jay also one-ups Plato, because there have been a bunch of popes named Pius, who may or may not have been pious

The book The Twelfth Insight gives further, well, insight into this, although the idea seems to be discovered by Immanuel Kant first.

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