Sublime

social order

‘What do we say on such and such a topic?’ is a question that he continuously asks, not ‘What do I say?’ Who is this ‘we’ in whose name he writes? Aristotle takes himself not to be inventing an account of the virtues, but to be articulating an account that is implicit in the thought, utterance and action of an educated Athenian. He seeks to be the

The Apology, as recorded by Plato, his student, is a bracing defense of the individual in search of truth:

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong. . . . I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I