Changing the world involves a curious kind of doublethink. If we are to act effectively, the mind must buckle itself austerely to the actual, in the belief that knowing the situation for what it is is the source of all moral and political wisdom. The only trouble is that such knowledge is also desperately hard to come by, and perhaps unattainable in any complete sense. The difficulty is not so much the solutions themselves, but grasping the way it is with a particular bit of the world. If you get this right, it will intimate the kinds of solution you should look to. Answers are not the hardest thing.

LRB 20 February 2003 | PDF Download