Plato's Retreat

Plato's understanding of understanding was, in my view, not about power, prestige and possession but about, well, undertanding. Sure, the knowledge might be useful, but it wasn't mainly about manipulation and prediction. Aristotle, on the other hand, was the original white boy, on a quest for power. Knowledge became a thing to be acquired and owned, a source of personal and societal enhancement. 

There's a bunch of overlap. Plato used his tactics to expose and confuse his epistemological enemies. I see it as impersonal, not about him or any author or agent but about the argument itself independently of any ego-inflating effects accruing to anyone. Aristotle made big advances in areas in which there are minimal, directly practical applications but the spirit of it has undercurrents of aggression. 

I'm too rusty on this to discuss it very well but we are inheritors of the traditions of Aristotle, since the Enlightenment, and it hasn't exactly worked, not if you regard the quest for power as a faulty and futile thing and fear the nearing capability of destroying the systems that maintain us and our civilization. I count cultural suicide as a bad thing and recommend a return to the more humane ways of Plato.