Categories/Metaphysics - Aristotle

If there are no objections, I'm going to combine these two works from Aristotle.  All of my standard objections to Aristotle apply here, maybe more than usual.  I felt that much of it went over my head.  Aristotle is probably best worked through with other people.

'Categories' is Aristotle's opening to the study of logic.  The basic theme is that things can be put into different categories and better understood that way.  Categories can have sub-categories, as in cats > tabbies > female tabbies.  He recognizes several various ways that things can be categorized:

Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being-affected. To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is-sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned.

 Got all that?  Good.  I'm sure that this is ground that needed to be broken at some point, but it is so well lived at this point, that it didn't feel like anything new was being added to my life.

'Metaphysics' is an effort to understand the 'substance' of things.  I must admit that I understood little of this.  I talked with my dad and he said that one of the obstacles might be in the translation from ancient Greek to English.  Things like 'form' and 'substance' are virtually synonyms in English but they may have meant very different things back then.
This could be.  And it could also be that my mind has very little attention for discussions of 'the whichness of what'.  It's easier for me to work with problems of ethics and the like.  Your mileage may vary, but I found the Aristotle this month to be quite a struggle for very little reward.

On the Soul - Aristotle

(As usual, with Aristotle, I feel like I would have understood this much more in a group.  Or with a qualified professor.  Or both.  So bear with me!)


This covers only part of this work.  The list 'assigned' the first three chapters of Book II and all of Book III. 


In Book II, Aristotle defines what he is talking about when he talks about a 'soul'. 

We have now given an answer to the question, What is soul? - an answer which applies to it in its full extent. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence. That means that it is 'the essential whatness' of a body of the character just assigned.

I find this interesting in part because of how broadly it applies.  If, say, an organization were to lose its prime mission, we could say that it has lost its soul and we would be completely in line with what Aristotle is talking about.  Or if a musician loses that special something, we may say that he has lost the 'soul' of his music.
And this works when talking about souls, in the sense that Socrates was talking about them, too.  If every person has a unique 'it' that makes them who they are, then surely that is their soul.  When they die, that part is gone.  Or, on a lesser but more tragic note, if that 'it' gets taken away through accident or incident, then their soul also goes away.


In Book III, Aristotle gets into territory that is frankly harder for me to really understand.  He makes a distinction between thinking, perceiving and imagining.  These distinctions are based on whether or not each area can be false or not.  Perceiving cannot be false, while thinking can.  Therefore, thinking is different.  Meanwhile, imagining has to do with the ability to recall past things.
The soul "is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things".  In other words, the soul is the tool that bridges the other distinct areas of thinking, perceiving and imagining. 
I think.  I'll confess, that I felt out of depth with most of Book III. 


I don't think either Aristotle or Socrates did much toward proving what a soul is, or what it does.  Most importantly, I don't think either one made much headway in proving what happens to it after death.

Upcoming Reads, Plato and Aristotle

So I go and make a big deal about how I'm going off list and what do I start with?  Some of the first selections that I would have started with even if I'd stayed with the list.  Maybe this is my way of disproving free will...
Anyway, it feels right to start off with the big guys, so that's what I'm doing.

I think I'm starting with:
Plato - Phaedo
Plato - Symposium
Aristotle - On the Soul
Aristotle - Categories
Aristotle - Metaphysics (Book VII)

Any advice on these works is appreciated.

Last week I reread the last 100 pages of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.  (I recommend the whole book.)  In this portion of the book, the protagonist goes on a search for Quality and tangles with members of the University of Chicago in this search.  This leads him to a deep dive into Plato, Aristotle and the important thinkers that came before them in Greek thought.
One of the points that he makes is that the 'dialectic' is used more as a weapon to prove a point than in its idea sense where it uses rules to keep a discussion on track in search of the truth.  This sticks out all over in Socrates discussions.  He almost never (possibly never), hears something that changes his mind.  Instead, he turns the discussion into syllogism that aids him time and time again.  This makes him frustrating to read but so, so worthwhile.

Plato and Aristotle

For the past ten or eleven weeks I've been steadily reading either Plato, Aristotle or a commentary on the two of them.  (The commentary has been largely this book, 'The Cave and the Light: Plato vs Aristotle' by Arthur Herman, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.)  I've been absolutely steeped in their writings and who/what they've influenced.  This means that I've barely scratched the surface.  The two of them together constitute years of study and I won't pretend that I'm at that level.

But I do have thoughts.

• I've  become accustomed to thinking of Aristotle as the patron saint of text book writers.  He set out to systematically figure out how things work and then pass them on to others.  In the same regard, Plato is the patron saint of op-ed writers and gadflys.  His job is to question how things are done and point out flaws in the structures that others have built.
• They each have enormous roles in the development of western thought.  Through Aristotle we learn the very basic lesson that we can understand the world around us.  We can use our senses and our human faculties to grasp what's happening.  We can sit down and understand the the how and why of the world and use those thoughts to shape our own lives and futures.
• Plato is more mystical but he's also more uncertain.  Or at least he leaves great room for uncertainty.  His greatest gift to the world is the sense that we ought to question everything around us.  I've long said that the Great Books have taught me of the great streak of rebelliousness in Western thought.  That started with Plato.  
• Both of these things are strengths.  Aristotle gave us absolute knowledge and objective facts.  At some point those facts became gospel writ and it was hard for people to question him.  Then the Platonic influence rebounded and the 'gospel' quality receded.  People again sought the same objective facts and we got a scientific revolution.
• Plato's 'Republic' is a landmark book, not for what it gets right but for what it attempts to do.  Aristotle's 'Politics' is a similar landmark, for the opposite reasons.  Today it reads as an utterly conventional book of political theory but it inspired much of our understanding of how government should work.
• The university model was based on the academy that benefited both Aristotle and Plato but it has wandered far off course.  Could such a thing be remade?  Would it still work even if you couldn't prove its utility?  Would an entirely free search for knowledge lead students into areas where they'd be condemned?  (If the last question is answered 'yes', it's an enormous indictment on modern society.)

Every year of the reading list features works from Plato and Aristotle.  It's not hard to understand why.

Biography of Aristotle

Original post found here.

Aristotle is one of the foundational peoples of the western world.  Without him, much of the world would have been wildly different.

Readings for March

Two pieces, but neither of them are long.

March
Aristotle: Physics (book 4, chapters 1-5, 10-14) link
Aristotle: Metaphysics (book 1, chapter 1-2, book 4, book 6 chapter 1, book 11 chapter 1-4) link

Readings for March

Two pieces:

March Aristotle: Physics (book 4, chapters 1-5, 10-14) link Aristotle: Metaphysics (book 1, chapter 1-2, book 4, book 6 chapter 1, book 11 chapter 1-4) link

Stop Making Fun of Philosophy!

Interesting article here about the modern value of philosophy. 

We should all examine our lives and the fundamental nature of living. But few of us do. American culture is famously pragmatic. We are only interested in what works, what doesn't, and what will put a dollar in my pocket. We make jokes about philosophy majors. ("Lotta lucrative career prospects there, amirite?") We don't see the value in going around asking questions like "What is Beauty?" and "What is Justice?" and "Why is there something rather than nothing?" But there is tremendous value in asking these questions, even if that value is not quantifiable in U.S. currency.

 And:

And at the level of our society, there is a dramatic pragmatic stake in philosophy. We live in enormously complex, technologically advanced societies where we have the power to do a great deal of harm and a great deal of good. Our societies are built on complex institutions (such as "democracy," "the free market," and "science"), which are in turn premised on ways of looking at the world and on ideas about the world and humanity — in other words, on philosophy.
But we have become like people in a Star Trek episode whose planet is ruled by a benevolent artificial intelligence, and who live such charmed lives as a result that, over generations, they have forgotten how the computer works, so that when it breaks down, they are completely powerless to repair it, and have to call the Enterprise for help. Our entire civilization is built on technology called "philosophy" that, in many ways, we are losing a basic understanding of.

 Well, I agree of course.  If I disagreed, I wouldn't be nearly three years into the Great Books.  I never would have started a ten year reading list.  But let's turn that around.  I've spent the past three years reading the Great Books.  What has it gotten me?

• The most obvious thing that has happened is that my grasp of history is much, much stronger.  I've been a history buff for as long as I can remember.  (This is true of almost all strategy gamers.)  The Great Books have given me much better perspective on the ancient Greeks and Romans.  I now have a more comprehensive feel for the Renaissance.  I know much more about the political writings that led to our modern governments.  And I'll be adding seven more years of learning!
• I've come to appreciate a more high level approach to important questions.  'What is justice?', asked Socrates.  Now I ask that too.  I look for the basic, over-arching questions and work from there.  Aristotle has given me a much greater appreciation for finding the right categories to make comparisons from.
• Several writers, most notably Montaigne and Marcus Aurelius, have made me think about my general approach to life.  (And now that I've put them both in the same sentence, I can't help but think how wonderful an Odd Couple type TV show would be with the two of them forced to live together!)  I am using a somewhat more distanced approach when I think about how I live.  A more 'examined life', if you will.

I'm not any closer to answering the big questions that folks like Kant wrestled with and I probably never will be.  That's ok.  I'm still a better and more informed person.  Who wouldn't want that?

What is Science?

This is a very interesting article on the definition of science. 

A little history: The first proto-scientist was the Greek intellectual Aristotle, who wrote many manuals of his observations of the natural world and who also was the first person to propose a systematic epistemology, i.e., a philosophy of what science is and how people should go about it. Aristotle's definition of science became famous in its Latin translation as: rerum cognoscere causas, or, "knowledge of the ultimate causes of things." For this, you can often see in manuals Aristotle described as the Father of Science.
The problem with that is that it's absolutely not true. Aristotelian "science" was a major setback for all of human civilization. For Aristotle, science started with empirical investigation and then used theoretical speculation to decide what things are caused by.
What we now know as the "scientific revolution" was a repudiation of Aristotle: science, not as knowledge of the ultimate causes of things but as the production of reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation.

This is somewhat hand in hand with the history of 'Le Cid' in which Corneille got grief for going outside of Aristotle's rules.

Galileo disproved Aristotle's "demonstration" that heavier objects should fall faster than light ones by creating a subtle controlled experiment (contrary to legend, he did not simply drop two objects from the Tower of Pisa). What was so important about this Galileo Moment was not that Galileo was right and Aristotle wrong; what was so important was how Galileo proved Aristotle wrong: through experiment.
This method of doing science was then formalized by one of the greatest thinkers in history, Francis Bacon. What distinguishes modern science from other forms of knowledge such as philosophy is that it explicitly forsakes abstract reasoning about the ultimate causes of things and instead tests empirical theories through controlled investigation. Science is not the pursuit of capital-T Truth. It's a form of engineering — of trial by error. Scientific knowledge is not "true" knowledge, since it is knowledge about only specific empirical propositions — which is always, at least in theory, subject to further disproof by further experiment. Many people are surprised to hear this, but the founder of modern science says it. Bacon, who had a career in politics and was an experienced manager, actually wrote that scientists would have to be misled into thinking science is a pursuit of the truth, so that they will be dedicated to their work, even though it is not.

Even though I've quoted at length, the full article is worth reading, especially for the comparison to modern approaches.  As far as the critique of Aristotle goes, Bertrand Russell said something similar about the launch of the Italian renaissance.  The rediscovery of old texts allowed readers to choose between Aristotle's insights and those of Plato (and others).  This opened up intellectual space for challenges to settled dictum.  New things were discovered, new avenues were explored and things absolutely blossomed. 

I do wonder how well we do this today.  I'd argue that once a scientific idea gets politicized, it is very hard to keep it in the scientific realm.  Each camp looks for signals of agreement rather than testing for evidence.  The only way that this can change is by a revolt amongst scientists and I don't see that happening any time soon.
I also wonder about the art world.  Makers of art have never had more freedom of theory to pursue their ends.  In fact, the idea that there is a limit to what may be described as art is wildly unpopular.  I don't know that this has led to a better overall universe of art.  In the museums of the year 3000, will there be more art from 1700's or the 1900's? 
I've got my suspicions but if I'm right, what does that say about the usefulness of rules?

Groundhog Day and Aristotle

Here's an interesting article, from Charles Murray, that suggests that 20-somethings might be better off skipping Aristotle's 'Ethics' and watching and rewatching the movie 'Groundhog Day'.  (I'm going to assume that everyone reading this has seen the movie, but if you haven't, you probably should.)  Murray says that 'Groundhog Day' represents an argument against hedonism and that interpretation has a lot going for it.  Anyway, I very much like the idea of picking out modern movies to highlight various philosophical approaches.  Movies represent a clear picture of 'culture', maybe the clearest out there today.  Certainly they speak to the widest audience.
I'm not arguing against reading Aristotle, but some framework to use as comparison is pretty useful.

Who Decides? - Aristotle

There is something about Aristotle that makes my mind wander back to the works of Robert Heinlein.  In this case the discussion of various ways of governing brought me to a couple of Heinlein quotes that I'll share here. 
The quotes are from a book called 'Time Enough for Love'.  In the book, an incredibly long lived man named Lazarus Long is kept from death by his ancestors who want to find out what wisdom he has acquired in his life.  He scoffs at the idea but relents and keeps a journal in a section simply titled 'The Notebooks of Lazarus Long'.  In that section, these two quotes are back to back:

"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something."
"Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?"

Of course in any million people, the amount of people what will have the expertise to decide any kind of technical question will be overwhelmed by the ignorant majority.  This sometimes leads to wistful, late night discussions of having a benevolent dictator or some such.  "We need someone who can cut through the politics and do the common sense things that need doing."  That kind of thing.
But of course, how would you pick such a person?  You'd need to know what their thoughts were on budgets and defense and the environment and health care and so on.  You'd need to know what they thought of tax policy and abortion and gay marriage and so on and so on.  In other words, you could only pick such a person after they had gone through the political process. 
And then you'd risk the movement to tyranny.
This is why we go with democracy.  We'd rather have the messiness and uncertainty.  We'd rather be able to correct course if we go badly off track.  (One could argue that every major election in the US since 2006 have been course corrections.)  We want the legitimacy that majority rule brings.  And if the ignorant majority sometimes swallows up the wise few, well, that's an ok price to pay.

Politics (Books 3-5) - Aristotle

The bulk of this reading is concerned with categorizing various types of government and then discussing the differences between them.  Aristotle has three main categories: democracies, kingdoms and aristocracy.  Democracy is the rule of the many, kingdoms are rule of the one and aristocracy is the rule of a select (often wealthy) few.  He talks about various ways that a city will decided who is or who isn't a citizen and remarks that different cities require a different type of government.
Aristotle also talks about how to make the city better.  He argues that the virtue of a city will be derived from the virtue of its citizens.  He speaks at length on what will make this virtue and whether the virtue that makes someone a good man is the same virtue that makes a good citizen.  I found this striking because here today, we do very little educating on how to be a good citizen of our country.  Our children do some work on being a good 'world citizen' but beyond that the duties of a modern citizen are very little more than 1) obey the laws and 2) make sure you recycle.  This is probably not enough.
Another large element that Aristotle talks about is the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of government.  He says that 'when it is in the hands of the few, it will be a government of the rich; when it is in the hands of the many, it will be a government of the poor'.  He also argues that a blend of various governments could work well. 

But the best proof of a happy mixture of a democracy and an oligarchy is this, when a person may properly call the same state a democracy and an oligarchy.

I think you could argue that the US is in that situation right now.  I wonder if Aristotle would be happy with it?

One problem with reading Aristotle on your own is that there is so much in his writing that it makes it hard to digest it all.  Repeatedly while I was reading this, I wished that I could cover each 'book' of Politics in a group discussion or class room.  You could spend a week (or a month!) on each one and probably still have more to talk about. 
I'm sure this is a reflection of how this material first came together.  And I'm absolutely certain that this exact approach was taken in various schools and academies in centuries past.  I don't know if it is still done anywhere but I'm sure the results would be fascinating. 

On Interpretation - Aristotle

This is one of the shortest pieces in the whole list.  The entirety of these first ten chapters is only six pages.  But, typically of Aristotle, it packs quite a bit into those pages.
In chapter one, Aristotle states that spoken words are symbols of thought.  He also says that nouns and verbs cannot be true or false on their own.  In the next chapter, he goes on to define a noun as 'a sound . . . which has no reference to time, and of which no part is significant apart from the rest'.  By this, he means that what we think of as a compound word like 'pirate-boat', the word 'boat' has no meaning if it were split out.  (And no, I don't quite follow that either.)
Anyway, I'm not going to summarize each chapter here.  The ninth and tenth chapters are the most interesting as he starts to get into ways of characterizing arguments.  This leads to the following chart, which is my very favorite one so far in the entire reading list:

I showed this to my wife (who helped recreate the chart), and she was baffled.  Why in the world would you start an example with something like 'not-man'?  And why would you get to a place where you'd use 'Not-man is not not-just'?  Ridiculous!
I kind of want to get this printed on a t-shirt.

Readings for March

It's a busy month.

March
Plato: Statesmen link
Aristotle: On Interpretation (Chapters 1-10) link
Aristotle: Politics (book III-V) link
Euclid: Elements (book I) link

I'm through the first three and they're worth your while. 

Update: I just started in on Euclid and found this series of videos to be wonderfully helpful.

Readings for March

It's a big month coming up:

March
Plato: Statesmen link
Aristotle: On Interpretation (Chapters 1-10) link
Aristotle: Politics (book III-V) link
Euclid: Elements (book I) link

I won't kid you, this isn't an easy month.  But its doable!

Plato Vs Aristotle Revisited

I've been thinking about this post earlier in the month where I quoted Ayn Rand on how Aristotle 'paved the way' for the golden ages in Western civilization.  As I said then, I don't know enough of the philosophical history behind the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, etc., to really comment on how true that is.  (I still don't, but I'd find some really solid analysis on this to be fascinating.)  I did think quite a bit on the approach that each one encourages towards learning.
Plato is famous for presenting the Socratic method, in which a pupil is asked a series of questions in hopes of finding true answers.  The Aristotle approach (well, the surviving records) are very much lecture notes.  Plato makes the student work and continually ask questions about what they believe.  Aristotle gives you the answers so that you can learn them.  If we look just at this aspect, I'd have to give the nod to Plato.  I'd much rather have a culture that respects questioning wisdom than one that simply applies the knowledge that has been given to it.
Which isn't to say that I'm all that fond of rejecting received knowledge simply because it is received.

The writings of Aristotle are like a guide book from a very wise man.  In more than 2000 years, I can't see any large improvements over his writings on drama.  Which is amazing!  I can see how he inspires a pure scientific approach.  He looks at what is and tries to explain that.  This is the 'objective' viewpoint that so inspired Rand.
The writings of Plato ask us to consider things.  His approach produces questions and sharpens definitions.  Sometimes the discussion goes into unproductive areas, but not always.  With good guidance, the method has obvious benefits.
I'd be very surprised if Western thought hadn't benefited greatly from both writers.

Ethics - Aristotle

This is in regard to Book II and parts of Book III and VI.

These readings from Aristotle seem to be a direct answer to Plato's 'Meno' in the sense that Aristotle tackles the question of what virtue is.  He says that intellectual excellence is a product of teaching and moral excellence comes from custom.  He says that moral virtue doesn't come from nature and can't come to us by custom.  He argues:

'The Virtues then come to be in us neither by nature, nor in despite of nature, but we are furnished by nature with a capacity for receiving them and are perfected in them through custom.'

The seems exactly right to me.  We must be carefully taught virtue.  And that teaching should be backed up by constant example from the people around you.  He also says:

'For Moral Virtue has for its object-matter pleasures and pains, because by reason of pleasure we do what is bad, and by reason of pain decline doing what is right (for which cause, as Plato observes, men should have been trained straight from their childhood to receive pleasure and pain from proper objects, for this is the right education).'

Which seems to be an argument in favor of spanking.  I liked this bit here:

'Again, one may go wrong in many different ways (because as the Pythagoreans expressed it, evil is of the class of the infinite, good of the finite), but right only in one; and so the former is easy, the latter difficult; easy to miss the mark, but hard to hit it: and for these reasons, therefore, both the excess and defect belong to Vice, and the mean state to Virtue;'

This sets up a lengthy list of examples in which Virtue is the mean between two undesirable states.  For instance, Cowardice---Bravery---Reckless.  I'm not sure how much I agreed with this section.  To take this example, I don't have a problem with the idea that Cowardice and Bravery exist on opposite sides of a spectrum.  I just don't think that the if you continue along that spectrum you get to Recklessness.  It seems to me that Recklessness isn't a matter of being too Brave but of simple ignorance of possible dangers. 
There are also plenty of virtues that don't really fall into this set up.  For instance, Ignorance---Knowledge---???  Or False---Honest---???  Which isn't to say that overall idea of a golden mean isn't useful, I just wonder if Aristotle pushes it too far here. 

Poetics - Aristotle

'Poetics' is largely a study of literature, some epic poetry but mostly stage drama.  In it, Aristotle conducts a very thorough breakdown of the pieces that go into a dramatic effort.  He uses contemporary examples throughout and explains why 'Oedipus Rex' is such a great play.
Like many of Aristotle's works, 'Poetics' reads like a series of lecture notes.  It works, but I found myself wishing for a whiteboard to help me keep things straight.  Especially the six parts that go into a tragedy (Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Melody, Spectacle).  As I was reading through, I kept looking for areas where I would disagree but I found very little.  The basic rules that Aristotle pointed out still work.  The exceptions also work as they clearly are based on a simple reversal, in many cases simply for the sake of that reversal.
Some highlights to me:

• A story should contain a beginning, a middle and an end.  This seems like a no-brainer but just last week I saw a movie that was structured Beginning/Middle/End/Beginning/Middle/End/Beginning/Middle.  By the time the third part of the story started, I was simply waiting for some kind of climactic payoff so it would be done.  It failed that criterion.  (My friend was pleased that she got to see some shirtless Ryan Gosling, so it wasn't a complete loss.  Btw, I think that would fall under the 'Spectacle' heading.)
• A story is superior to history because a story has a specific reason behind it.  History is prone to more random events where good and evil is harder to figure out.  In this way, art is only 'art' if it has some narrative purpose behind it.  
• Drama depends on reversals.  Aristotle mentions the reversal of powerful to powerless and that is still a staple today.  Not just that a rich person becomes poor (though we get that) but that a rich person goes to prison and loses all freedom and power.  

Aristotle's main strength seems to be in taxonomy.  He does great work in categorizing things both in general and in their parts.  I'm curious how drama grew up in cultures that didn't have an Aristotelian influence.  Places like Japan, China and India.  Unfortunately I'm wildly ignorant here but I'd love to see a study of, say kabuki theater, as it relates to Aristotle.

Intro to Poetics - Aristotle

As I was preparing to read Aristotle's Poetics, I ran across this clip from an AP class.  It seems like a good intro:

Plato vs Aristotle

While I was gathering material for this months readings, I was reminded that Ayn Rand's views on aesthetics were guided, at least in part, by Aristotle.  I'll write about that connection later, but while I was looking for it, I found this Rand quote on Aristotle:

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.  The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back to the cave of his antipode: Plato.
There is only one fundamental issue in philosophy: the cognitive efficacy of man's mind. The conflict of Aristotle versus Plato is the conflict of reason versus mysticism. It was Plato who formulated most of philosophy's basic questions - and doubts. It was Aristotle who laid the foundation for most of the answers. Thereafter, the record of their duel is the record of man's long struggle to deny and surrender or to uphold and assert the validity of his particular mode of consciousness." 

I've written before about the bright spots of Western history (ancient Greece and Rome, Renaissance Italy, Enlightenment Paris and England).  I don't really know enough about the darker spots to find common reasons for their declines.  This is something that I'll keep an eye out for now. 
I do want to write something that is at least a bit in Plato's defense.  After I wrote about Plato last year, Stan left this comment:

"I've always liked the Whitehead quote, and I've always viewed systematic interpretations of Plato with suspicion. Take the Republic: Is Socrates Plato's mouthpiece? Didn't Plato write the arguments of the other characters as well? Does dialectic lend itself to system? We don't think of Shakespeare as any one of his characters, so why think of Plato as any one of his? Whitehead is suggesting that the seeds of even contradictory philosophies are all found in Plato. For me, the dialogues are best read as a training ground for philosophic thought, rather than a source for statements of Platonic dogma."

This year when I read Plato I tried to keep the 'training ground' idea in front of me and that helped.