I'm in the middle of a philosophy 101 class. I had been meaning to read the works of Plato, but until now I was busy learning other stuff.
I have to say that surprisingly, I have lost all respect for Plato after reading Crito (It's Plato's take on what Socrates' reasons for not escaping his execution.) It contains the most illogical, oversimplified, flat-out erroneous thought processes I've ever encountered. If Crito is an accurate representation of Socrates' philosophy, I have to question the intelligence of anyone who felt that he was "wise."
I was pretty dissapointed by this, because I enjoyed some of Plato's other writings.
I do happen to agree that the Iliad is far superior to the quality of writing found in the bible.
I'm not sure why you were expecting to respect Plato for everything he wrote about. Plato may have been one of the brilliant minds of all times and have produced some of the most valuable bits of Western culture, history and philosophy, but even for his own time the guy had some seriously disturbing ideas about what the world should look like. The Republic for example has been a great inspiration for fascist ideas or the promotion of human inequality.
I didn't expect to agree with him on everything, but I did expect the quality of his writing to be pretty consistent. Crito is often used to illustrate logical reasoning, yet the arguments it presents are so ridiculous that no reasonable, logical person would agree with them.
You may be interested in Diogenes the Cynic, a contemporary of Plato. He hated Plato, he accused him of entirely misunderstanding Socrates and regularly interrupted Plato's lectures to ridicule him.
I have to say that surprisingly, I have lost all respect for Plato after reading Crito (It's Plato's take on what Socrates' reasons for not escaping his execution.) It contains the most illogical, oversimplified, flat-out erroneous thought processes I've ever encountered. If Crito is an accurate representation of Socrates' philosophy, I have to question the intelligence of anyone who felt that he was "wise."
I was pretty dissapointed by this, because I enjoyed some of Plato's other writings.
I do happen to agree that the Iliad is far superior to the quality of writing found in the bible.