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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Nine political essays' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85'

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2 ideas

25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / c. Teaching
Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato]
     Full Idea: Only a man of very great natural gifts will be able to understand that everything has a class and absolute essence, and an even more wonderful man can teach this.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135a)
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / d. Study of history
After history following God, or a people, or an idea, we now see it in terms of animals [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Earlier we sought God's intentions in history: then an unconscious purposefulness, in a people or an idea. Only recently are we considering the history of animals, and the first insight is that no plan has so far existed. Coincidences have been dominant.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[127])
     A reaction: Not a Whig historian then! Presumably Hegel is his main target. In 2024 there is a definite feeling that western democracies are regressing.