(no subject)

[timelets]

...one realizes that one must have broken completely with traditional morality and traditional beliefs in order even to consider that counsel. But the judicious reader cannot be satisfied with raising the question of how that particular counsel could be put into practice and thereafter whether it can be put into prac­tice under the given circumstances.

--- Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli.

This is one of the fundamental issues in socials sciences: how do you transition from what is to what ought to be?