You may know that we often read Plato but never read Socrates, and you might have wondered why the hell we don't go back to the 'originals'. Reading Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus" gives an answer near the end: Socrates apparently believed "that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence." Socrates of course was famous for using questions to try and ferret out truth; the idea that you couldn't have a conversation with a book seemed to make Socrates very cautious. He expresses other concerns as well: that memory must be exercised to be strong, and that writing would thus lead to a weakening of memory; also that writing makes it easier to pretend to know something which you don't really understand; and that people will write texts which cannot be used to learn the subject but only can be used as an aid to remember it.
Thus ironically, Socrates seemed to believe that books would end the existence of knowledge. This presumably was the reason that he never wrote down his own philosophy, and his students had to do it for him.
Feynman had some similar advice to not read too much. He'd get just the basic idea, stop reading, and try to solve the problem himself. There's a similar anecdote about Turing. You don't have to be a genius to profit from this approach, though of course it affects how far you can take it.
I am currently reading Plato's works (chronologically). As you mention I keep asking myself "why did he not write anything? he knew he was a teacher of virtues." Now I am looking forward to the answer in Phaedrus.
Socrates, by means of Plato, Plato, by means of Aristotle, and Aristotle himself are all examples of masters, original communicators. Much of the way we think today, not just the philosophy, but even the mechanism, has to do with their writings. For example it appears the concept that something is either right or wrong comes from Aristotle, and that affects even our laws and sciences where as other cultures may have 4 possibilites: right, wrong, both right and wrong, and neither one nor the other. (I have not verified this, I just heard it last week)
You may know that we often read Plato but never read Socrates, and you might have wondered why the hell we don't go back to the 'originals'. Reading Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus" gives an answer near the end: Socrates apparently believed "that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence." Socrates of course was famous for using questions to try and ferret out truth; the idea that you couldn't have a conversation with a book seemed to make Socrates very cautious. He expresses other concerns as well: that memory must be exercised to be strong, and that writing would thus lead to a weakening of memory; also that writing makes it easier to pretend to know something which you don't really understand; and that people will write texts which cannot be used to learn the subject but only can be used as an aid to remember it.
Thus ironically, Socrates seemed to believe that books would end the existence of knowledge. This presumably was the reason that he never wrote down his own philosophy, and his students had to do it for him.