To Paulinus. (360)
Our disagreement on the point you raised is, I think, less serious than it appears. We are arguing about emphasis, not substance. You say philosophy must engage with the world; I say it must first understand the world before presuming to reform it. Both positions are defensible, and both have dangers: yours risks the philosopher becoming a politician, and mine risks him becoming irrelevant.
But what delights me about our correspondence is that we can disagree without rancor. How many friendships have foundered on far less? And yet here we are, decades in, still exchanging ideas with the same energy we brought to it as young men -- better, perhaps, since experience has taught us which battles are worth fighting and which are merely exercises in vanity.
I enclose a speech I gave last month on the duties of the governor. You will find much to agree with and something to object to, which is exactly as it should be. If everything I wrote met with your approval, one of us would not be thinking hard enough.
Write back soon. The interval between your letters is always too long, though I understand the demands on your time. Just remember that an old rhetorician in Antioch measures his good days partly by whether the post has brought something from Constantinople.
Our disagreement on the point you raised is, I think, less serious than it appears. We are arguing about emphasis, not substance. You say philosophy must engage with the world; I say it must first understand the world before presuming to reform it. Both positions are defensible, and both have dangers: yours risks the philosopher becoming a politician, and mine risks him becoming irrelevant.
But what delights me about our correspondence is that we can disagree without rancor. How many friendships have foundered on far less? And yet here we are, decades in, still exchanging ideas with the same energy we brought to it as young men -- better, perhaps, since experience has taught us which battles are worth fighting and which are merely exercises in vanity.
I enclose a speech I gave last month on the duties of the governor. You will find much to agree with and something to object to, which is exactly as it should be. If everything I wrote met with your approval, one of us would not be thinking hard enough.
Write back soon. The interval between your letters is always too long, though I understand the demands on your time. Just remember that an old rhetorician in Antioch measures his good days partly by whether the post has brought something from Constantinople.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.