"No Claim to rational superiority, on the view which I am ascribing to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, can be made good except on the basis of a rationally justifiable rejection of the strongest claim to be made out from the opposing point of view, that it is able to afford at least as adequate and perhaps a more adequate account and explanation of the failures and limitations of one's own standpoint than that standpoint itself can provide.

For one view to have emerged from its encounter with another with its claim to superiority vindicated it must first have rendered itself maximally vulnerable to the strongest arguments which that other and rival view can bring to bear against it.

This is why Aquinas systematically begins by setting out any particular issue the strongest arguments yet advanced from any rival point of view against his own position."

- Alasdair Macintyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry