This is the pedagogical paradox. The person and the teacher is required precisely because the knowledge itself is nontransferable from teacher to student.
Rebecca GoldsteinFrom the beginning philosophy sought for The order behind the disorder Thales sipped cheap wine And in this did divine: "Why it's nothing at all but pure water!"
Rebecca GoldsteinPlato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.
Rebecca GoldsteinIt is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.
Rebecca GoldsteinTo matter ... Is there any human will deeper than that? ... We don't want to live when we become convinced that we don't, can't, will never matter. ... We no sooner discover that we are than we desperately want that which we are to matter.
Rebecca GoldsteinGod doesn't help. I think that's a knockdown argument. I think that it really shows that whatever moral knowledge we have and whatever moral progress we make in our knowledge or whatever progress we make in our moral knowledge is not coming really from religion. It's coming from the very hard work really of moral philosophy, of trying to ground our moral reasonings.
Rebecca Goldstein