"A learned twaddler who at the bottom knows nothing can seldom be got to deal with anything concrete; he does not talk of a particular dialogue of Plato, that is too little for him-also it might become apparent that {he had not read it.} No, he talks about Plato as a whole, or even Greek philosophy as a whole, but especially about the wisdom of the Indians and the Chinese. This Greek philosophy as a whole, the profundity of Oriental philosophy as a whole is the prodigiously great, the boundless, which advantageously hides his ignorance. So it is much easier to talk about an alteration in the forum of government than discuss a very little concrete problem like sewing a pair of shoes, and the injustice towards a few capable men lies in the fact that by reason of the prodigious greatness of the problem they are apparently an par with every peer, who "also speaks out" {So it is much easier for a dunce to criticize our Lord than to judge the handiwork of the apprentice in a shop, yea, than to judge a sulfur match.} For if only the problem is concrete, he will, it is soon to be hoped, soon betray how stupid he is. {But our Lord and his Governance of the world is something so prodigiously great that in a certain giddy abstract sense the most foolish man takes part in gossiping about it as well as the wisest man, because no one understands it."} Kierkegaard (A&R 31-32)
