[coldtea]

>but do I really need to read thousands of pages of his dialogues (as a modern reader!)

Yes. For one, because those are foundational texts of the western civilization. Even if Plato's text were insignificant, understanding one's civilization (in a way that goes beyond the pop culture of the day) remains as illuminating as ever.

Second, because texts written 100, 50, 20 and 1 year ago are still influenced by them, including seminal texts in their own right.

Third, because good philosophy (including theology) is perennial, not tied to this or that era. If anything, it will be this or that era that will come to pass, while Platos ideas (and other such inquiries) will still be around.

It's like Lisp: those who don't understand philosophy will construct their own philosophical system badly (or adopt wholesale some poorly made IKEA-grade one, adapted to appeal to consumers of their era -- from the plethora of self-help gurus to various pulp attempts at philosophizing).

[westoncb]

Sure, I agree about the history—and I have already read a decent amount of Plato, and multiple summaries.

> Third, because good philosophy (including theology) is perennial, not tied to this or that era

For historical relevance sure, but from what I can tell the rest of it has already passed its time.

> those who don't understand philosophy will construct their own philosophical system badly

This is a common defense I hear from philosophers: the 'real' philosophy is always around the corner—the 'real' interpretation, the 'real' way of doing it. But from what I can tell, 'real' is just a colorful expression of how positive their subjective experience of reading so-and-so was.

Or maybe the several hundred hours or so I've spent reading philosophy (or meta-philosophy, inquiring into the proper way of approaching it) is insufficient for me personally and I'll never 'really' understand Plato and others.

[ianai]

It’s important to remember that, aside from mathematics, every area of modern human knowledge started in philosophy. Over the years, all of these topics were taken out of philosophy. And all of those topics still have philosophy in them - including logic and the basic approaches to reasoning in the field.

It’s too much to divorce a topic from philosophy and later go back to philosophy for a defense of its worth.

[coldtea]

>For historical relevance sure, but from what I can tell the rest of it has already passed its time.

I wouldn't say there's much in it that has "passed its time". What would that be? It's not like in the era of Trump (or Hillary if you prefer) we have mastered good government. Or we can't benefit from inquiries about the nature of good, or the nature of the state because they're "old".

It's not like some great scientific discovery rendered those obsolete (and if so, only the most superficial parts), or like man changed in essence. We don't have any settled once and for all "better" arguments -- and those all arguments are still not just foundational, but very current.

Someone not familiar with them, still uses half of them (badly) when explaining their viewpoints or politics -- just like someone who doesn't know about parsers might be able to parse something, hooking together regular expressions and ad-hoc code, but not very rigorously, and missing an awful lot of tricks.

>This is a common defense I hear from philosophers: the 'real' philosophy is always around the corner—the 'real' interpretation, the 'real' way of doing it.

"Real philosophy" is not some rare event that arrives accompanied by some Michal Bay-styled revelation, with explosions and fireworks. It's an inquiry and a dialogue.

People have been really reading philosophy, real philosophy, -- and applying it to their lives and their states, for millennia.

Not sure why a philosopher (which are few and far between today, most are just tired tenured academics rehashing and elaborating on what others wrote. Original philosophers come once in a blue moon) would say that "real philosophy" is "around the corner".