On The Margins

(Masood Mortazavi)

All | Persian (فارسی) | Announcements | Art (هنر) | Business | Code | Culture | Design | Economics | Here | History | Java | Mathematics | Media | Networks | Papers | Personal | Philosophy | Science | Society | Sports | Sun Microsystems Inc. | Technology | Telecommunications | This | Web | Work

(Books)(Blogger)(java.net)
Check Google Page Rank

« Why we cooperate and... | Main | VoIP, A New Legal... »
20040811 Wednesday August 11, 2004

[ Philosophy ] War's equal sides?

Rarely (note, I'm not saying "never") does war have equal sides, whether measured in force or moral weight. Often the side with the smaller force (note, I'm not saying man-power) is fighting on its own territory and has basic moral arguments on its side.

Aphrodite of Melos. The statue was found on the Aegean island of Melos, in 1820. Its height is 2.4m, and is dated as early as 3rd century BC and as late as 150 BC.The sculptor is unknown. Louvre, Paris.

On the inequality of warring sides' force or moral weight, when it does happen, I have always recommendded a repeated reading of the History of the Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides with particular attention paid to the Melian dialog. In fact, many believe the Melian dialog to be the best part of Thucydides' almost journalistic report of Athens' wars. (The dialog was extracted for inclusion in W.H. Auden's collection of the Greek classics. Auden's selected passages from Thucydides end with the defeat of Athens in Syracuse. If Auden selects something, it is definitely worth reading as I discovered on my way to live and work in China back in 1990-1991.)

Melians lived on the small island of Melos. They posed no real threats to Athens. Athens attacked the Melians because Melos' elders wanted to remain neutral in Athens' wars. When Athens won the battle, after a long resistance, it massacred the male population and took the rest to slavery.

. . . the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.

Imperial wars are rarely equal, from either moral or force perspectives. However, if one lives in an empire, one needs to have a very superb moral imagination and a proper emotional education to be able to relate to the suffering of others.

2004-08-11 16:24:56.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Comments:

Post a Comment:

Comments are closed for this entry.
« Why we cooperate and... | Main | VoIP, A New Legal... »

On the Margins Tag Cloud

america apache art berkeley blogs books business canada capital code communications community computing conference connectors content contribution corporate costs culture databases derby design desktop developers development economics education energy engineering film finance history information innovation international internet iran isfahan java java-db javaone law linux logic management markets mathematics media mobile music mysql netbeans networks news open open-solaris open-source opensolaris opensource os persian philosophy phones photography photos politics postgresql practice privacy products programming ruby science server services social society software solaris sports strategy sun sun-microsystems systems technology tehran telecommunications tools transactions transportation travel tv us video war web windows work writing

Del.icio.us

RSS Feeds

XML

All
/ Persian (فارسی)
/Announcements
/Art (هنر)
/Business
/Code
/Culture
/Design
/Economics
/Here
/History
/Java
/Mathematics
/Media
/Networks
/Papers
/Personal
/Philosophy
/Science
/Society
/Sports
/Sun Microsystems Inc.
/Technology
/Telecommunications
/This
/Web
/Work

Disclaimer

I work at Sun Microsystems. The opinions expressed here are purely my own, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.

Coordinates

Locations of visitors to this page

« December 2009
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
  
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
  
       
Today


blogs.sun.com
Weblog
comments
Login

www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from M.Mortazavi. Make your own badge here.

Entry Statistics

Entries: 1246
Comments: 919

Recent Entries

StatCounter

Statistics from StatCounter

Page Rank

Check Google Page Rank

On the Margins Tag Cloud

america apache art berkeley blogs books business canada capital code communications community computing conference connectors content contribution corporate costs culture databases derby design desktop developers development economics education energy engineering film finance history information innovation international internet iran isfahan java java-db javaone law linux logic management markets mathematics media mobile music mysql netbeans networks news open open-solaris open-source opensolaris opensource os persian philosophy phones photography photos politics postgresql practice privacy products programming ruby science server services social society software solaris sports strategy sun sun-microsystems systems technology tehran telecommunications tools transactions transportation travel tv us video war web windows work writing

RSS Feeds

XML

All
/ Persian (فارسی)
/Announcements
/Art (هنر)
/Business
/Code
/Culture
/Design
/Economics
/Here
/History
/Java
/Mathematics
/Media
/Networks
/Papers
/Personal
/Philosophy
/Science
/Society
/Sports
/Sun Microsystems Inc.
/Technology
/Telecommunications
/This
/Web
/Work

Other Places




Landmine Casulties
free counters'

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
© Masood Mortazavi
This is a personal weblog, I do not speak for my employer.