How worthless is Philosophy?

[vulcanlogician]

A mistake, yes. A claim that we should be logical and scrutinize our possible mistakes. I think Plato had that part right. Taking Platonism as a whole is foolish.

But the denying of Plato's ideas wholesale is equally as foolish. He had good ideas. We both know it.

Absolutely.  Like I keep yammering about...I think that the likes of plato and laozi or their compilers spoke the most authoritatively on the subject of good government order as they saw it.  To be clear, some of the ideas or arguments I would call good ones are not even things I agree with - I admire the delivery, and the proof of their utility as governing philosophies of the mind or the mind of a nation would be in the pudding of the empires that were founded on their justifications and advice.

But you also gotta understand that Plato was a student of Socrates. Socrates said we should question all ideas. We should see what is true about them... but also test them for weaknesses, exposing any falsehoods we discover along the way. Understanding Plato without taking Socratic skepticism into account is a sure fire way to miss Plato's points.

Now there are several things that work against my arguments. In his later works, Plato became "less Socratic" and more certain of his own ideas. The Neoplatonists took this aspect of Plato and ran with it (but that's hardly Plato's fault!) I think that Neoplatonism is responsible for most of the distorted views we have of Plato in contemporary times. They forgot he was a skeptic! And that's a pretty important part of his overall thinking.

As for Laozi. IDK. I wouldn't put him anywhere near Plato-tier as far as philosophers go. But he was an interesting poet and had some insightful things to say. 

Anyone who accepts Laozi wholesale is a blithering idiot, sure. But so is someone who fails to recognize that Laozi had a few interesting things to say.