"B." wrote:
>
> Carrol,
>
> You need to tell this to Noam Chomsky, too, then,
> because that's from whom I got it. To wit:
Read the second of your quotations (emphasis added): "Chomsky: The answer was given a long time ago by Thucydides (******the Melian dialogue*****, in The Peloponnesian War, Book 5)"
In general, quotations found on the Web tend to be stripped of context, as in the first passage you quote, but it is obvious from the second that Chomsky is aware that Thucydides is quoting. Of course, the provenance of Thucydides quotations is I believe often argued. Shorthand didn't exist, and it is highly probable that the famous funeral oration of Pericles must have been 'rewritten' by Thucydides, though most of its substance must have been Pericles.
But the debate on Marx & Justice has been rekindled over on the A-list,
and let me note in this connection that Chomsky's secone claim makes the
first unnecessary:
>
> "Concepts aside, actions in the real world all too
> often reinforce the maxim of Thucydides that 'The
> strong do as they can, while the weak suffer what they
> must' — which is not only indisputably unjust, but at
> the present stage of human civilisation, a literal
> threat to the survival of the species."
If X threatens our very survival "as a species," debate over whether or not X is just seems sort of redundant. And this threat is not itself threatened a bit by labelling it unjust; the problem is to acquire the strength to oppose those who now wield power -- otherwise we sound too much like King Lear: "I'll do such things, I know not what, that all the world shall tremble." (Quoted from memory without checking.) "The weak suffer as they must" is a mere tautology, without theoretical interest.
Carrol
>
> --Noam Chomsky,
> http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20060509.htm
>
> And:
>
> "Chomsky: The answer was given a long time ago by
> Thucydides (the Melian dialogue, in The Peloponnesian
> War, Book 5): The strong do as they can, and the weak
> suffer as they must."
>
> http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20060821.htm
>
> There is a Shakespeare quote that is very similar, but
> it's dialog from one of Shakespeare's characters.
> "Timon of Athens," I think. That's also a rotating
> quote at the blog.
>
> -B.
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> "On your blog you have a sidebar quoting 'Thucydides'
> as saying, 'The
> strong do what they can while the weak suffer what
> they must.' This is like quoting _Shakespeare_ (as
> opposed to that old windbag Polonius) as saying to
> thine own self etc. It's been awhile since I read
> Thucydides but he didn't say this, he quoted someone
> else (I think some Athenian diplomats) as saying it."
>
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