  A prophet, a Jeremiah, for example, might well adduce facts of moral wrongdoing and guilt to alert his fellow citizens that their actions risk God’s wrath. And a philosopher, a philosopher of history, for example, might adduce those facts in order to instruct them as to the meaning, writ large, of the plot that the historian has chronicled—precisely as Du Bois instructs his fellow citizens that the story of slavery and reconstruction he has chronicled (in his capacity as an historian) exhibits “the clear mistake and guilt” that characterizes the “plot” of Aristotelian tragedy (1935, 585, 595). In both cases, the point would be the same: namely, to use moral knowledge to warn one’s fellow citizens of the fateful consequences (God’s wrath, tragedy) that await them lest they refuse to heed the lessons of the past and change—reform—their ways.