Power-Knowledge and the Culture of Argument: Reading Thucydides as Postmodern IR Theory (original) (raw)
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The Logic of the Hegemon: Constitutive Power and Narrative Interpretation in Thucydides
This paper will argue that a specific and coherent argument about power and empire can be drawn out of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Through the use of dramatic juxtaposition in the narrative and through common themes in several speeches, the History illustrates that bearing and exercising power produces a kind of character and logic that limits itself. The character of the powerful will tend to limit itself by virtue of ignoring the existential insecurity caused by fortune in human affairs as well as the ‘reverse law of the stronger,’ meaning that imperial subjects will have a natural tendency to rebel against that imperial power. Methodological issues about whether coherent arguments can be drawn from the History and about the intentions of Thucydides himself in shaping his narrative will be discussed, as will several possible counter-arguments. These latter possible refutations include the issue of agency against the structuralist implications of this power thesis in Thucydides and the counter-case that Sparta provides - an empire that explicitly does not arrogantly ignore fortune and act aggressively as a result. The final implications are that, if a coherent thesis about power can be drawn out of the History, and regardless of the intentions of Thucydides in possibly placing that argument in his text, can a thesis about the constitutive and self-limiting effects of power be applied beyond the world of the Peloponnesian war and, if so, what does this mean for the powerful in the contemporary world?
Thucydides at Melos: An Archeology of Democracy and Oligarchy
The Political Science Reviewer, 2022
This paper presents a new interpretation of Thucydides's Melian dialogue that avoids the by-now-traditional alternative of reading it either as simply a statement of ‘realism,’ or else as a conflict between Melian ‘traditionalism’ and Athenian ‘rationalism.’ Rather, the Melians are oligarchs and the Athenians democrats, and inasmuch each speaks according to an understanding of justice, politics, and history befitting democracy and oligarchy as Thucydides presents them in the Archaeology. The belief in saving gods is found to be based in the deep Spartan past. The belief that ‘he who can, rules’ is found similarly based in the deep Athenian past. This reading can help us understand the Melian dialogue in its peculiar character as a dialogue, as well as enable us to treat both the Melian and Athenian positions with the respect Thucydides seems to have believed they deserved; and this can point the way to further reflection on the fundamental presuppositions of democracy, and the tension between democracy and imperialism. I engage a wide range of secondary literature.
The Journal of Greco-Roman Studies, vol. 60-1, 2021
This article brings together two central episodes in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The interpreted episodes are the Mytilenean Debate in Book III and the Melian Dialogue in Book V of the History. In the present study, these episodes are approached as original inquiries into moral and political matters, assuming the shape of subversive social criticism: immanent critique. A particular focus lies on the socio-political ordering principles scrutinized in the Thucydidean episodes. In the Mytilenean Debate, it is the principle of expediency (τὸ ξύμφορον) that is given the upper hand, whereas in the Melian dialogue the dominating social ordering principle is that of safety and survival (σωτηρία). In each episode, a contending point of view aims at undermining the pre-eminence of the stronger principle. However, the critique only succeeds if the subversion is managed from within, and if it pays outward allegiance to the frames determined by the supreme communal will.
Greek Political Thought in Ancient History
Polis, 2016
Greek historians of the fifth and fourth centuries bce also intended their works to be political commentaries. This paper concentrates on the work of Thucydides, and his interest in fifth-century ideas of constitutionalism. Honing in on the political ‘opposites’, democracy and oligarchy, this paper argues that Thucydides collapses these categories, to show not only that they are unstable, but that, built upon the same political vocabulary, they naturally lead towards his new idea of the measured blending of the few and the many in a mixed constitution, which creates political stability and a positive political experience for the community. In this sense, Thucydides’ text, which uses historical narrative as a vehicle for political commentary, needs to be understood within the framework of historical contextualism, but also as a ‘possession for all time’.
THUCYDIDES: BETWEEN POLITICAL HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY
Detailed notes on Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides has been called the first "scientific historian" as well as the father of the school of "political realism". My interpretation of Thucydides is largely shaped by that of Leo Strauss. This interpretation questions both of these aspects of traditional Thucydides scholarship. In relation to the supposedly scientific basis of Thucydides history, the assumption here is that Thucydides follows standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering as well as an analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities. However, rather than approach history as a scientific "object" of theoretical reflection, his approach is in fact more “phenomenological”. That is, Thucydides approaches the political phenomena as they arise “for us”. So too, in terms of his supposed "political realism" -- i.e., that all political and international relations are based on brute self-interest and power relations, not on higher values or ideals -- we can see that in fact his analysis of the causes of the war emphasize the justice or injustice of certain acts in relation to existing treaties, for instance. Rather than reducing the political to power relations, rather than merely side with the position of the Athenians in the "Melian Dialogue", Thucydides carves out a space for a certain "humanity" in political and international affairs.
Sleepwalkers in Athens: Power, Norms, and Ambiguity in Thucydides
Review of History and Political Science, 2015
tensively in English and in Greek on Greek foreign policy, US foreign policy and the war on terror, Turkey, the Balkans, the effects of disaster diplomacy, EU foreign policy and European security. He is a senior research associate at the Karamanlis Foundation and serves as the Director of Navarino Network (a public policy think-tank in Thessaloniki) and of Olympia Summer Academy.
Realist Stronghold in the Land of Thucydides? Appraising and Resisting a Realist Tradition in Greece
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, 2015
IntroductionWho cares about 'realist strongholds'? Who cares about the 'land of Thucydides'? In the first place, is there such a land and what would it mean? More or less obviously, the term is used for a hopefully eloquent reference to Greece. However, it is not in the intention of this article's author to offer a geoculturally reified concept, taking into account the multiplicity of 'Hellenisms' in terms of identity formation (Zacharia, 2008). With all its complexity and border variability, indeed, this piece of land -like several others- has emerged as the milieu for a variety of forms of socio-political organization: e.g. an inter-state system of city-states (the ancient classical era), an imperial system with broad cultural interaction (the Hellenistic world), an imperial system comprising it as both a political periphery and a cultural core (the Greco-Roman Synthesis), another one consisting of it eventually as both socio-political and cultural core...