“If he [the student] embraces the opinions of Xenophon and Plato by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs but his. Who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing, and indeed is seeking nothing. ‘We are not under a king; each man should look after himself.’ Truth and reason are common to all men, and no more belong to the man who first uttered them than to him that repeated them after him.”
Source: Michel de Montaigne, “On the Education of Children”, 1575.
Came across this several days ago:
“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.”
– Alexandra K. Trenfor
A contrast to the view criticized by a Persian doctor, polymath and Aristotelian philosopher more than a thousand years ago:
“On what ground do you deem it necessary that God should single out certain individuals [by giving them prophecy], that he should set them up above other people, that he should appoint them to be the people’s guides, and make people dependent upon them? … If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for its soundness, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.”
– Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī (854 CE – 925 CE)