> That's funny; I read the passage and came to the same conclusion about
> Chomsky's argument. Chomsky claims that there's some higher Justice
> that he just knows is infallible. However, asserting that there is
> some transcendent form of Justice that we must adhere to is a
> political argument through and through!
Someday I'd like to make a list of all the stock phrases, endlessly repeated with minor variations, that people who take this position like to place in the mouths of their interlocutors:
> "some higher Justice"; "some transcendent form of Justice"; justice
> "floating above" human beings; "a justice that exists in the world
> independently of humans' conceptions of that justice"; a "justice like
> God"....Etc, etc.
And that's literally just from two emails that appeared on this list in the last hour or two.
These phrases never actually come out of the mouths of the "accused," it's their interlocutors who make them up and them incant them.
In Chomsky's case it's especially unjustified (ha ha) since everyone knows that he neither believes in god nor has ever posited any metaphysical theory (in which justice is a property of the universe, for example) - in other words, they know very well their accusations about his alleged belief in "floating, transcendent" whatnot are, strictly speaking, false.
Apparently some ancient text or favorite prof instilled the idea that any talk of justice (or whatever) *requires* a belief in transcendence, and appropriate jeering slogans were fashioned accordingly and then lovingly preserved for future repetition.
SA