IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/syd/wpaper/2123-7407.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Moral rhetoric in the face of strategic weakness: modern clues for an ancient puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Varoufakis, Yanis

Abstract

Moralising is a venerable last resort strategy. The ancient Melians presented the Athenians generals with a splendid example when in a particularly tight corner. In our Western philosophical tradition moral rhetoric is often couched in the form of reasons for action either external to preference and desire (eg. Kant) or internal to the agent's calculus of desire (eg. Hume, Gauthier). A third tradition dismisses such rhetoric as the last recourse of the weak (eg. Aristotle, Nietzsche) whereas a fourth calls for an extermination of the social context (eg. Socrates, Marx, Wittgenstein, Habermas). This paper reports on an experiment which throws some empirical light on these debates and which offers a surprising twist to the interpretation of the Melian's plea.

Suggested Citation

  • Varoufakis, Yanis, 1994. "Moral rhetoric in the face of strategic weakness: modern clues for an ancient puzzle," Working Papers 211, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2123/7407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7407
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:syd:wpaper:2123/7407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vanessa Holcombe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deusyau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.