So, that wraps up Plato. I think I've pretty much said how I feel. He/Socrates don't really advance proper arguments, so much as vague assertions with no basis. Socrates can't kill himself cause he belongs to the gods. He doesn't prove that he belongs from the gods, or that belonging to the gods prevents him from killing himself, just go with it. Likewise, he can't escape because loyalty to the state is such a high virtue (but you can still go around trolling apparently), but he doesn't prove that. He also could've been loyal and asked to get exiled or something, but that's beyond him. The dialogue format is atrocious for communicating them, both unwieldy and awkward sounding.
In general, I've never liked Plato. My Intro to Philosophy course in undergrad basically just consisted of the prof going, "You're all idiots in a cave!" at us and then leaving to go smoke weed in his office while we took tests with typos on them.
And that kind of sums up my experience with Plato here in these readings. I guess I'm just too clueless to understand how Socrates is so fucking brilliant while he goes around bothering people and then gets himself killed in the most pointless way possible. If I was assembling a 5FSOB style collection, I might include Crito as an example, being both shorter and slightly less terrible than the others. He's a major figure, so some representation seems reasonably, though not a third of a book.
If I was doing excerpts, ala GW2TGB I'd probably pull "The Cave" out of Republic. I reread it tonight. It's probably the least objectionable Plato I've read. It's still pretentious claptrap, but at least it has a coherent thesis.
Plato 1/5.
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