Monday, August 15, 2011

No longer convey the same conviction

Via The Constitution of Liberty by Friederich Hayek, Page 1.

I have been working on some material related to how education is in part a means of cultural replication and this opening sentence of Hayek's leaped out at me.
If old truths are to retain their hold on men's minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations. What at one time are their most effective expressions gradually become so worn with use that they cease to carry a definite meaning. The underlying ideas may be as valid as ever, but the words, even when they refer to problems that are still with us, no longer convey the same conviction; the arguments do not move in a context familiar to us; and they rarely give us direct answers to the questions we are asking.

No comments:

Post a Comment