Comments Elsewhere

scott: ok john, what ought i do? or would you like to start a new blog entry for this never-ending issue?

I think, in spite of your put-on of ignorance, you actually know some of the answer to this question, or at least some of the things that you need to get a start on answering it. In any case, if you don’t, there’s nothing I can do to help you.

For, while we must begin with what is evident, things are evident in two ways—some to us, some without qualification. Presumably, then, we must begin with things evident to us. Hence any one who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just and, generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits. For the fact is a starting-point, and if this is sufficiently plain to him [sic], he will not need the reason as well; and the man [sic] who has been well brought up has or can easily get starting-points. And as for him [sic] who neither has nor can get them, let him hear the words of Hesiod:

Far best is he who knows all things himself;
Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right;
But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart
Another’s wisdom, is a useless wight.

—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Bk. I, section 4.