alt Hacker NewsPlato wasn't an idiot.
But generations of philosophers who have described the next couple of thousand years as "footnotes to Plato", and treat philosophy as if it can only be understood in terms of one very dead guy... It turned me off philosophy for a very long time. Maybe they aren't stupid, but they at least lack the tool kit for showing me the merit of their position.
The "footnotes to Plato" quote is more about the idea that Philosophy doesn't exist in a vacuum rather than just scoring brownie points with peers studying the same thing.
I had a longer written reply but it turned out pretty snarky. In my opinion Philosophy is built upon just like Mathematics otherwise most people can't meaningfully engage.