Plato -Euthyphro

I have decided to read plato, partly as I think that the neo-platonists from the seventeenth century were fascinating and I think that in order to understand them that I need to be able to know a little about what plato said initially to see ho wthey reinterpreted him in their time. Euthyphro also interests me theologically, however much i may disagree due to the metaphysical background that informs plato’s, or Socrates thought, as represented by Plato. The core of this text is the question of holiness. What is the standard by which one can determine if one is being Holy. It starts of with a mythcal exlaination, whereby Euthyphro uses Zeus to show how what he is doing is holy as it is what the Gods have done, but the Gods have contradicted each other, this is where I lose a bit of PLato. as he is working from a polytheiestic context rather then a montheism such as Christianity, this makes his points not so pertinant to a western christian reader, such as myself, as they would have in Greece in his time. For instance his point about the agreement of the Gods, doesn’t really work outside of the greek deities. However this is not to say the work is not without merit due to its context, as it brings the problems of finding the essence of holiness to the mind of the reader, and fails to come to a satisfactory conclusion, leaving the reader to decide and make their own decision over what holiness is comprised of, wether it is what God says is holy, whether it is a form of justice or if it is what brings divine approval. Plato at points says that things are both holy and unholy depending upon the God, I would say that this point could be applied to context and circumstance, what was right once, is not right always, and what is right most of the time may be wrong in others. This makes holiness and piety a complicated and difficult problem.

Other ways of solving it are holiness as a form of knowledge, or a science of prayer and sacrifice, the ability to understand and know how to communicate with the gods. The issues seem to revolve around where holiness originates and for what purpose does it serve. Does it benefit the gods, and if so how, and if not then why do we have it? Further, hoe can we be sure that what we decide is holy, is in fact holy? These questions which the work provokes is far more powerfull then the unsatisfactory conclusion that it arrives at, with Euthyphro walking away without satisfying Socrates initial question to provide the standard whereby we can know what is holy and unholy.