Bertrand Russell’s Views of Plato and Socrates are Enlightening

I have this seven-pound book I sometimes dig out and read (at the gym, of all places): A history of western philosophy, by Bertrand Russell.  He’s an iconoclast, so he breaks down these figures a bit for us.  I found the following account of his views on Socrates from a website entitled Bertrand russell’s views on plato and aristotle:

https://tigerpapers.net/2012/03/08/bertrand-russell-on-plato-and-aristotle/

Plato is perpetually getting into trouble through not understanding relative terms. He thinks that if A is greater than B and less than C, then A is at once great and small, which seems to him a contradiction. Such troubles are among the infantile diseases of philosophy.

The belief in the good as the key to the scientific understanding of the world was useful, at a certain stage, in astronomy, but at every later stage it was harmful. The ethical and aesthetic bias of Plato, and still more of Aristotle, did much to kill Greek science.

Another good quote is this one:

Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals. It has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand him. This is the common fate of great men. My object is the opposite. I wish to understand him, but to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of totalitarianism.

There are some blind spots to Socrates and his questioning method.  He seems to assume some incorrect ideas about the ways we think or learn at some points.  When you encounter the dialogues–as you will in your education–consider the blind spots and assumptions these thinkers had.