[lbo-talk] Interview w/ S-Haters, old commie Brit punk band

[Charles Brown]

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“The Sophists' radical interpretation of nature in general as raw  
and primitive stuff, which needs to be improved by art (that is,  
technology) led them in the case of human nature to an atomistic,  
mechanical and almost socio-biological view of human nature, and an  
instrumental view of reason as serving the passions by the social  
engineering of articles of convention. They claimed that that was  
being rational; that they were seeing nature as it is, and not as it  
allegedly ought to be or could be; they were being what Max Weber  
called "disenchanted". In fact, however, their view of nature was a  
reductionism which forced human nature into a Procrustean bed. They  
represented it as a manifold of finite beings competing for pleasure,  
possession, domination, in which the stronger individuals rule and,  
according to nature, should rule. Thucydides's account of the  
Athenians' Realpolitik attitude to the Melian delegation which came  
suing for mercy expressed their view succinctly: of the gods we  
believe, they said, and of men we know that the stronger rules and  
the weak submit. Men bargain about justice only when their forces are  
equal. We did not invent this law, we found it in nature, and we  
expect it to go on forever; that is why we apply it. You would do the  
same to us if you had the power. So they massacred the men of Melos,  
sold the women and children into slavery, and later colonised the  
deserted island.”
<http://www.greenex.co.uk/philosophy/deals.html>

Ted

^^^^^^^^
CB: Which tradition is Nietzsche in on this issue ?