When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it. Otherwise your own opinions block the way... The ghost [Phaedrus] pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of rationality itself."