Download or read book Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity written by Gregory Crane and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides written by Ryan Balot and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides contains newly commissioned essays on Thucydides as an historian, thinker, and writer. It also features chapters on Thucydides' intellectual context and ancient reception. The creative juxtaposition of historical, literary, philosophical, and reception studies allows for a better grasp of Thucydides' complex project and its intellectual context, while at the same time providing a comprehensive introduction to the author's ideas. The volume is organized into four sections of papers: History, Historiography, Political Theory, and Context and Reception. It therefore bridges traditionally divided disciplines. The authors engaged to write the forty chapters for this volume include both well-known scholars and less well-known innovators, who bring fresh ideas and new points of view. Articles avoid technical jargon and long footnotes, and are written in an accessible style. Finally, the volume includes a thorough introduction prefacing each paper, as well as several maps and an up-to-date bibliography that will enable further study. The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides offers a comprehensive introduction to a thinker and writer whose simultaneous depth and innovativeness have been the focus of intense literary and philosophical study since ancient times.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought written by Stephen Salkever and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought provides a guide to understanding the central texts and problems in ancient Greek political thought, from Homer through the Stoics and Epicureans. Composed of essays specially commissioned for this volume and written by leading scholars of classics, political science, and philosophy, the Companion brings these texts to life by analysing what they have to tell us about the problems of political life. Focusing on texts by Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, they examine perennial issues, including rights and virtues, democracy and the rule of law, community formation and maintenance, and the ways in which theorizing of several genres can and cannot assist political practice.
Download or read book Silence and Democracy written by John Zumbrunnen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of elites vis-&à-vis the mass public in the construction and successful functioning of democracy has long been of central interest to political theorists. In Silence and Democracy, John Zumbrunnen explores this theme in Thucydides&’ famous history of the Peloponnesian War as a way of focusing our thoughts about this relationship in our own modern democracy. In Periclean Athens, according to Thucydides, &“what was in name a democracy became in actuality rule by the first man.&” This political transformation of Athenian political life raises the question of how to interpret the silence of the demos. Zumbrunnen distinguishes the &“silence of contending voices&” from the &“collective silence of the demos,&” and finds the latter the more difficult and intriguing problem. It is in the complex interplay of silence, speech, and action that Zumbrunnen teases out the meaning of democracy for Thucydides in both its domestic and international dimensions and shows how we may benefit from the Thucydidean text in thinking about the ways in which the silence of ordinary citizens can enable the domineering machinations of political elites in America and elsewhere today.
Download or read book Brill s Companion to Thucydides written by Antonis Tsakmakis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 968 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions by thirty leading international scholars, this volume offers an up-to-date and in-depth overview of all current approaches to Thucydides’ History.
Download or read book Thucydides on Politics written by Geoffrey Hawthorn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an introduction to and original reading of Thucydides' understanding of practical politics.
Download or read book Thucydides on Strategy written by Athanasios G. Platias and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2017 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterfully crafted and surprisingly modern, "History of the Peloponnesian War" has long been celebrated as an insightful, eloquent, and exhaustively detailed work of classical Greek history. The text is also remarkable for its deep political and military dimensions, and scholars have begun to place the work alongside Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Clausewitz's On War as one of the great treatises on strategy. The perfect companion to Thucydides' impressive History, this volume details the specific strategic concepts at work within the History of the Peloponnesian War and demonstrates, through case studies of recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the continuing relevance of Thucydidean thought to an analysis and planning of strategic operations. Some have even credited Thucydides with founding the discipline of international relations. Written by two scholars with extensive experience in this and related fields, Thucydides on Strategy situates the classical historian solidly in the modern world of war.
Download or read book How to Think about War written by Thucydides and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible modern translation of essential speeches from Thucydides’s History that takes readers to the heart of his profound insights on diplomacy, foreign policy, and war Why do nations go to war? What are citizens willing to die for? What justifies foreign invasion? And does might always make right? For nearly 2,500 years, students, politicians, political thinkers, and military leaders have read the eloquent and shrewd speeches in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War for profound insights into military conflict, diplomacy, and the behavior of people and countries in times of crisis. How to Think about War presents the most influential and compelling of these speeches in an elegant new translation by classicist Johanna Hanink, accompanied by an enlightening introduction, informative headnotes, and the original Greek on facing pages. The result is an ideally accessible introduction to Thucydides’s long and challenging History. Thucydides intended his account of the clash between classical Greece’s mightiest powers—Athens and Sparta—to be a “possession for all time.” Today, it remains a foundational work for the study not only of ancient history but also contemporary politics and international relations. How to Think about War features speeches that have earned the History its celebrated status—all of those delivered before the Athenian Assembly, as well as Pericles’s funeral oration and the notoriously ruthless “Melian Dialogue.” Organized by key debates, these complex speeches reveal the recklessness, cruelty, and realpolitik of Athenian warfighting and imperialism. The first English-language collection of speeches from Thucydides in nearly half a century, How to Think about War takes readers straight to the heart of this timeless thinker.
Download or read book Thucydides and Political Order written by Christian R. Thauer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the second of two monographs, consists of contributions by world-class scholars on Thucydides' legacy to the political process. It also includes a careful examination of the usefulness and efficacy of the interdisciplinary approach to political order in the ancient world and proposes new paths for the future study.
Download or read book Thucydides s Trap written by Steve Chan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) ostensibly arose because of the fear that a rising Athens would threaten Sparta’s power in the Mediterranean. The idea of Thucydides’ Trap warns that all rising powers threaten established powers. As China increases its power relative to the United States, the theory argues, the two nations are inevitably set on a collision course toward war. How enlightening is an analogy based on the ancient Greek world of 2,500 years ago for understanding contemporary international relations? How accurate is the depiction of the history of other large armed conflicts, such as the two world wars, as a challenge mounted by a rising power to displace an incumbent hegemon?Thucydides’s Trap?: Historical Interpretation, Logic of Inquiry, and the Future of Sino-American Relations offers a critique of the claims of Thucydides’s Trap and power-transition theory. It examines past instances of peaceful accommodation to uncover lessons that can ease the frictions in ongoing Sino-American relations.
Download or read book Thucydides Book 1 Edited by E C Marchant written by Thucydides and published by Sagwan Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Democracy Beyond Athens written by Eric W. Robinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full study of ancient Greek democracy in the Classical period outside Athens, which has three main goals: to identify where and when democratic governments established themselves; to explain why democracy spread to many parts of Greece; and to further our understanding of the nature of ancient democracy.
Download or read book The Ambition to Rule written by Steven Forde and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a fresh examination of Thucydides' treatment of Alcibiades in his History of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades' significance in the History, and his relation to Thucydides' political themes.
Download or read book Thucydides on Politics written by Geoffrey Hawthorn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides famously declared his work to be 'a possession for all time', and so it has proved to be, as each age and generation has seen new things to admire in it and take from it. In the last hundred years, Thucydides has been interpreted and invoked in support of many different positions in politics, political theory and international relations. Geoffrey Hawthorn offers a new and highly original reading, one that sees him as neither simply an ancestor nor a colleague but as an unsurpassed guide to a deeper realism about politics. In this account, Thucydides emerges as sensitive to the non-rational and the limits of human agency, sceptical about political speech, resistant to easy generalisations or theoretical reductions, and opposed to any practical, moral or constitutional closure in politics. The book will be of interest to students of politics and classics.
Download or read book Destined For War written by Graham Allison and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented. China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war. In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON “Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden “[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe “[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Thucydides on International Law and Political Theory written by Iacovos Kareklas and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides on International Law and Political Theory demonstrates that in classical times, especially in the era of the Peloponnesian War, international law and strategy existed in an advanced form among the city-states of ancient Greece. It shows how the work of Thucydides and classical Greek international law and politics have influenced aspects of modern international law and international politics. Iacovos Kareklas extensively analyzes Thucydidean political realism and indicates how it differs from modern realist and neo-realist theories of politics and presents that the “just war” theory of Thucydides’s time formed the legal and political basis of contemporary kinds of military intervention. Further, interstate treaties as listed in the work of Thucydides are categorized, interpreted, and commented upon. The military strategy of classical Greece and the role of religion in foreign policy decision making are also emphasized.
Download or read book Thucydides on the Outbreak of War written by S. N. Jaffe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-09 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cause of great power war is a perennial issue for the student of politics. Some 2,400 years ago, in his monumental History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote that it was the growth of Athenian power and the fear that this power inspired in Sparta which rendered the Peloponnesian War somehow necessary, inevitable, or compulsory. In this new political psychological study of Thucydides' first book, S.N. Jaffe shows how the History's account of the outbreak of the war ultimately points toward the opposing characters of the Athenian and Spartan regimes, disclosing a Thucydidean preoccupation with the interplay between nature and convention. Jaffe explores how the character of the contest between Athens and Sparta, or how the outbreak of a particular war, can reveal Thucydides' account of the recurring human causes of war and peace. The political thought of Thucydides proves bound up with his distinctive understanding of the interrelationship of particular events and more universal themes.
