I had a lot of time to think, which is a nice benefit for me. I think I understand Euthyphro (the Platonic dialogue) a little better now. Every Platonic interlocutor seems to have a particular passion that identifies them as who they are and which makes them worthy of being in a dialogue in the first place. Euthyphro's passion, in a dialogue about piety, is to always be in possession of righteousness. He's so enamored with being "righteous" (as he understands it), that he's willing to prosecute his own father in a situation that is extremly murky and not clear morally. Part of the problem is that Euthyphro is unable to see that any moral dilemma can be murky in the first place. In his desire to be "right", Euthyphro probably just sees all difficult moral situations as easily decided.
But it's worse: he's so possessed with this need, that he's separated himself unecessarily from his family and his community. He's ostracized himself, and done so for all the wrong reasons.
The irony of this is that many uninformed readers of the Platonic dialogues would think this is exactly what Socrates is often guilty of. But not being possessed by this desire would appear to be a fundamental requirement of being a philosopher (since these early dialogues reason for being generally seem to be to educate those regular citizens not well initiated into Socrates' ways what it takes to be more philosophic).
