From John Lachs' entry on "Footnotes to Plato" in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
A.N. Whitehead once wrote that "the safest general characterization" of Western thought is that "it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". This testy assessment of an entire tradition is often recited by Platonists and has earned for Whitehead the accolades of the aphorism crowd.
The great thinkers of the past certainly did not think that they were adding footnotes to Plato's text. Had Kant thought he was adding one, he would surely have kept the Critique of Pure Reason under 500 pages. And should Wittgenstein have suspected that he was producing scholia, he would have spent at least a little time reading the text.
... Does Descartes, who subverted the starting-point of ancient philosophy, constitute no more than an afterthought to it? Should Hume, who rejected both its premisses and its conclusions in favour of his own original views, get no credit beyond having discovered a new wrinkle on wisdom's old face? Can we even think that in his stunning synthesis of everything ancient and modern, Hegel rehearsed only what Plato had always known?
Possibly, however, Whitehead's statement was made in the spirit of rampageous over-generalization one can expect from footnoters to Plato. If so, it must be taken with a grain of salt or greeted by rolling one's eyes. But even then, in one clear respect, the claim he makes is false. For the safest way to deal with the history of Western thought is not to characterize it in general terms at all.
