Philosophy, and this is where the academy might get it wrong in the interests of keeping the game going, isn't about gaining status, or learning a sequence of strategies as if you were studying chess, or even gaining facility with a language game that you could play as if you played no other. It is about attunement to the present, in repairing the lines of code inside you that get in the way of experience and learning. Evey iota of thought works to clarify the basic relation to the world.
W said that he was merely trying to help the fly out of the bottle. So there is this sense that the way that the others think might have some problems to it. Conversely, there is also a care for all of the ideas of the past in a sort of pastoral sense. The second human philosopher was probably motivated, at least in part out of care for the fellow who had been wandering through the marketplace a few days ago shouting that everything was made of water.
The danger is that one can make a profession of this pastoral care for the souls and ideas of the past. The souls of the past were attempting to repair their present minds. To clarify their present relation to all things. As should we.