Melians Argument Analysis

to "invoke what is fair and right” and to allow them to remain neutral, declaring it unfair for the Athenians to want to force their rule over them. The Athenians, however, cared very little about their ethical and seemingly rational prepositions. Despite the Melians’ argument for fairness and righteousness, the Athenians responded: “you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Here, Thucydides effectively captured how human nature’s desire for power is able to undermine any ethical action because at the end of the day, all the Athenians cared about was the maintaining and gaining of power. This is even more clear when the Athenians state, “your hostility cannot so much hurt us as your friendship will be an argument to …show more content…
Without implementing ethical action that encouraged important virtues such as the virtue of peace, states are bound to make decisions that generate war and chaos. Clearly, chaotic and war-like environments no longer allow people to focus on the development of their full potential, and Kant argued that this is why people ultimately seek to avoid such environments. Through the use of reason, Kant argued that it becomes clear to people that states of war and chaos go against their drive towards progress. Thus, this is where ethical action plays a key role in politics. The implementation of ethical action in politics ensures the political stability of a state, which ultimately nurtures an environment in which human progress can actually take place in. This clearly comforts to people’s natural desire for progress, and thus it is in people’s best interest to implement ethical action into politics so that they can avoid any possibility of war and