Frank Kogan

Euthyphro starts with Euthyphro giving a specific instance of what is holy (he's prosecuting his own father for murder, and it is holy for him to do this, to not give his father special treatment but make him subject to the same laws as everyone else), but Socrates says that this instance doesn't tell us what the essence of holiness is. But being a modern, I don't see an either/or between instances and essences.

Another thing about the dialogue, though, is that underneath what I'm calling the issue of authority (on whose authority is something holy, the gods or the essence of holiness itself?) there's another, implied, issue of authority: what right does Socrates have to incite us to think about such things?

The dialogue continues with holiness then being seen as a kind of service to the gods, and I think Socrates and Plato would assent to this being holiness, but they demand that we recognize that "what gratifies the gods" is not a good answer to what constitutes service to the gods. Are we being holy because we serve them or are we serving them by being holy? Plato would insist on the latter, but then, what is holiness? The question remains and the dialogue doesn't pretend to an answer.

A reason to study Plato, beyond the obvious (that he's historically important and that it's always good to confront oneself with a different mode of thought, and also that he's a good read), is that he can provoke one into being more self-conscious about the question of authority: on whose or what authority is something valuable, or holy, etc.? You can ask this in a number of circumstances. The problem with Plato though is that he can also give people a good model for faking themselves out of answering their own questions by turning the questions into philosophical rather than social questions. The modern-day philosophical "answer" that I've implied above - "in most instances the question is somewhat open" - is at best a platitude and is at worst a filibuster. E.g., "On whose or what authority do traffic laws have value?" simply is not an interesting question. Even if there can be real conflicts about particular laws (the relation between speed limits and fuel conservation, for instance, or the question as to whether adding a left-turn-only lane will help or hurt a set of nearby stores etc.), no one's making an interesting argument against the existence of traffic laws. The laws' existence is an issue that isn't open, until someone opens it, and if it does somehow get opened, it won't be philosophy that creates the opening. And where the question already is open, "On whose or what authority does arts education have value?" or something like that, philosophy seems to have nothing to add. Simply ask "How much money shall we allot to arts education?" and the question of authority (valuable in what way? to whom?) will arise without prompting.