different periods where, for example, aristotle gets the opportunity to reply to or to answer machiavelli's view of the limits of the virtue and political life and plato gets to respond to the importance that attaches to the suffering and cruelty in their relation to human greatness and so appreciating how he writes these books, you have to appreciate that he is in fact doing this new kind of philosophy where we are the judges and we construct and participate in peace dialogues between the fingers of different periods and see how they disagreed and try to understand those disagreements with the view alternately that thinking for ourselves about what are the best or the most reasonable answers to the fundamental questions. and it seems to me that strauss does actually indicate that this is exactly what he is doing and it is a new kind of philosophical dialogue that he is constructing on these works and i just want to read you a passage from his liberalism and modern education. he says the greatest minds on her dialogues. we must transform the monologue into a dialogue. they are side-by-side