 That the success of understanding is educative in this manner can be clarified by an example, say, in reading a text such as Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. When we say that we understand this text, we mean that our attempts to interpret it (whether rigorously, as in scholarship, or more casually, as in evening reading) have gotten at something, perhaps: that in politics, prudent reasoning is not always persuasive enough to stem the tide of war. Certainly, we have not arrived at this understanding in result of repeatable scientific experiment or based on an indubitable epistemic foundation. But it is not for this reason any less educative. In this understanding, we have come to something that we can agree or disagree with, something that in any case expands or changes our views about the role of reason in politics (and no doubt then also of public discourse and the causes of war), and, finally, something that can also teach us something about ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves.