I just re-read the a segment of The Republic arguing why the “philosopher kings” would be such a great idea, here Internet History Sourcebooks Project: Ancient History . It sounds wordy, convoluted and like a collection of just-so stories. Replace the “philosopher” with “unicorn” and you could make an essentially word for word equivalent argument why we should be ruled by the wise and gentle unicorns - regardless of the question of whether this ideal “unicorn” or “philosopher” is likely to be found any time soon. Now, we get our share of just-so stories from the mass media as well nowadays, but this just seems even lower quality than a run-of-the-mill partisan hack of an opinion column. Athenian politicians quoted by Thucydides’s “Melian debate” argued more cogently and intelligently than this.
Well, so we all know about the whole “Platonist” school of thought or religion which apparently held the guy in very high regard. But did the vaunted Greek thinkers and rhetoricians produce any dissent against this BS? Seeing how rhetoric is supposed to be the study of how to ascertain the truth instead of how to bamboozle people with glittering generalities, was there any notable criticism of Plato for engaging in the latter activity?