[grey_whiskers]

and some other names including Aristotle, which is possibly a translation from Latin, which was from Arabic, which was from Aramaic, and who knows if he wrote it in Aramaic to begin with.

That's almost as bad as Kierkegaard...

Have you considered reading any of the enlightenment French, or nosing about among the Federalist papers to find *their* cited sources?

Cheers!

[RightWhale]

I am currently reading Lessing and Herder, who were reacting to the French revolution. Also, I am reading Ockham and Bacon, Roger, having read Bacon, Francis a couple years ago. There is a lot of reading. The trail became clear not long ago when I finally stumbled across a book in the Public Library and found that the author actually appeared to know what he was talking about. Fom there I followed his cites, and then the cites of those cites. After a while it starts to make some sense. Since I have been power reading for effect I have been doing what I can to preserve my eyes, which are still functional—that is important. I do not spend much time reading articles on the PC monitor since that will ruin the eyes. I find most of the modern writing on these topics is silly and may be disregarded without missing anything. Read the AntiFederalist papers, which is the stenographers note of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, there being no journalists reports allowed. Closed-door, bipartisan, secret, rushed through—sound familiar?