The direct effects of " preaching" about economic relations and obligations are in general bad; and the kind of legislation which results from the clamour of idealistic preachers-and from the public attitude which such preaching at once expresses and tends to generate or aggravate-is especially bad. All this is the natural consequence of exhortation without knowledge and understanding-of well-meaning people attempting to meddle with the workings of extremely complicated and sensitive machinery which. they do not. understand (418).
The problem to which Professor Knight calls our attention here is not unlike the problem we identified earlier and to which we will return repeatedly throughout the course. When Pericles broadens the franchise to include most Athenians, he does so not in order to empower them, but to empower himself through their ignorance. He is a demagogue. Aristotle’s solution to this problem is to isolate the political elite from the realm of necessity—an ideal, incidentally, that the framers of the US Constitution took quite seriously (Elliot’s Debates, 1787-1789).
Theorists and policy makers who embrace Aristotle’s solution have, however, been of two minds; call them minimalists and maximalists. The minimalists (such as Knight) argue that not all can be experts and therefore that policy-making should be reserved to a small elite. Maximalists argue that, while not all should be empowered with decision-making, economic and educational policy should endeavor to make all who are citizens competent and able to intelligently debate over policy decisions.
The danger that Knight sees in “preaching” is that it appeals to individuals who, while deeply affected by economic policy and economic forces, have neither the competence to understand what is happening to them nor the expertise to appreciate what can and cannot be done. But the “solution” is not to work towards extending this competence or expertise to them. The solution is for preachers to cease and desist their rabble-rousing.
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