> For me, a person who dramatically prefers democracy to totalitarianism, Socrates' critiques of democracy hold up quite well in our present context.
Which critiques specifically?
Most of the critiques he made I'm aware of are not fundamental problems with democracy, but rather problems for which we have solutions in 2025--in cases where these problems are not solved it is because of concerted efforts by totalitarians to undermine democracy that these problems are not solved. As it turns out, a lot of work has been put into addressing the problems Socrates mentioned. In fact, it's arguable that some of the solutions were known at the time of Socrates, and Plato did not feel motivated to share facts which disagreed with his teacher, because, you know, sophistry.
And, ultimately, Socrates presented all these ideas with the rather self-serving conclusion that philosophers should be kings--so as someone who "dramatically prefers democracy to totalitarianism", I'm sure you found some point along the way where he got it wrong.
> Why limit this criticism to philosophers? Should we drop Einstein from the theory of relativity (especially given how wrong he was about aspects of quantum mechanics)? Or Newton from mechanics and so on.
Uh, yes, obviously, which is why this has already happened, because physics is a field which is concerned with whether what they're teaching is true or not.
Ask a physics major: did they read anything actually by Einstein? Did they read anything actually by Newton? The answer will invariably be "no", because they learned from modern textbooks which at least make an effort to communicate what we know to be true about physics. And sure, those textbooks might mention that an idea was discovered by Einstein or Newton, because they did get a lot of things right. But they aren't just having you read Einstein or Newton in physics classes, because Einstein and Newton got enough wrong that presenting their ideas unfiltered and uncorrected to students would be counterproductive. This is exactly what philosophy should be doing, and it's exactly what I'm saying philosophy is failing to do.
The argument you're making is founded upon facts you only know because physics did a better job than philosophy did. The only reason you know Einstein or Newton got things wrong is because physics actually finds the mistakes of its heroes and corrects them, instead of passing them on like a genetic disease to future generations.