To begin with Plato, let me describe my own experience with…

To begin with Plato, let me describe my own experience with him. My impression of Plato before I read him was of perhaps the top philosopher ever. As Whitehead said, "Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato". However, upon reading him, although I certainly enjoyed the experience, I found myself underwhelmed by the depth of his thought. As I stand now, the philosophers I judge as most important were not strongly influenced by Plato. To summarize, one could say that I was most influenced by the founders of modern science, the Austrian economists, and by Kant and other Kantians following Schopenhauer. Antecedents to these sorts of people can be found in the scholastics and Aristotle. Philosophers who are called idealists to put them in the same camp with Plato, such as the essentialists or the rationalist, I still find to be much closer to Aristotle in their overall way of thinking. In political philosophy, Plato is regressive and is very much opposed to the enlightenment and to the ideas of the American founding fathers. Thus, where is Plato's greatness? How can he be as big as people say?