How to read Plato (1995)
&quot;Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato&#x27;s dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind&quot;<p>So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant.<p>&quot;most of what is good in Aristotle is Plato&#x27;s, often ill digested; but if you haven&#x27;t heard of Aristotle yet, you are lucky and enjoy your luck as it last, and forget about Aristotle; only be aware that even if you don&#x27;t know it, Aristotle had a great influence on our way of understanding the world, and contributed to instilling in our mind the wrong notions about Plato, this picture of Plato as an idealist dreaming in a world of &quot;ideas&quot; or &quot;forms&quot; unconnected with the real world).<p>So the author believes that Aristotle was part right in his philosophical beliefs and part wrong, and that the parts he got wrong, Plato got right. And that the modern world follows Aristotle, and so we need Plato to correct our beliefs.<p>I wonder what the author&#x27;s metaphysical and political beliefs are, and how they would stand up against critiques from Aristotle and also various modern philosophers if the author presented them as such in a well-organized fashion. My guess is they would fair quite poorly, and he hiding behind Plato as a way of keeping this from happening.