Would Socrates consider any of the professional academics on this site, who offer themselves for anyone who wants to ask anything, philosophers?

Throughout Plato's Republic, he makes alot of claims, that all stem from the question "what is justice", from there the soul to the analogy of the state, to the forms etc, my question is, does Plato actually believe in these analogies or are the just that, analogical statements to help his arguments

Has anyone written on the impact (or lack of it) of Descartes on Islamic thought?

A lecturer I met a few weeks ago said to me (among other things) that up to this point no-one has managed to disprove Kant's famous claim that 'we should always treat others as ends in themselves and never as mere means'. While I agree that this is a noble maxim by which to live our lives, is it true that it has not been disproved? It seems slightly hasty to claim this about anything.

Was wittgenstein an atheist?

This quote, "It is harder to give rightly than to receive rightly" hit me in the face with awe but I have no idea what the meaning entails. I have not read Thus Spoke Zarathustra and so I do not know the context it was used in. I keep thinking about this quote because it makes me feel something...something I must hold on to. Can anyone please help me understand the breadth of this greatness? I appreciate it immensely.

I've heard, in the pre-Internet era of the 80s and early 90s, that because of academic specialization and professionalization in philosophy, one would be really hard pressed to discover a non-academic personal kind of philosophy like the kind found in Kierkegaard's journals and self-published writings in the 20th century. But now with the Internet in the 21st century, it seems that non-academics can put forth one's philosophy in blogs, websites and forums and even self-publish their own philosophy books and ebooks on online publishing sites very inexpensively. So, my question is can one discover a great philosopher like Kierkegaard in our digital Internet era? And more importantly, will we?

When studying Socrates should I read Plato or Xenophon or both?

Do you think that Wittgenstein knew he was a genius before people started telling him what they thought about the Tractatus? I'm sure that Wittgenstein thought he was a genius before that, but too many people (especially teenaagers, I guess) think they are geniuses. :-) What I mean is to ask if Wittgenstein had enough reason to think he was a genius before reasonable people started tell him things that gave him reason to think that he was.

I'm having trouble appreciating Kant's moral philosophy. According to him an action is bad if we can't universalize it as a maxim of human behavior. Under that way of thinking being gay is bad because if everyone was gay nobody would have any babies and that means you are willing the non-existence of the human race which would be a contradiction if you want to exist. So I guess bisexuality is okay but being a monk isn't. The reasoning seems absolutely bonkers if you are gay whether from choice or from nature there is no reason to surmise that you think everyone has to be gay. If Kants moral philosophy is so lame I must admit that it prejudices me against his whole philosophical system. Is there any reason why I should give Kant's ethics more credit?