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Realism Ancient and Modern: Thucydides and International Relations

When you're stymied on the measurement of one of your critical variables, put that project aside and write another essay on what Thucydides really meant (Singer 1975). The trouble with Classical Realism is that it is difficult to distinguish … dialectical insight from a refusal to define concepts clearly and consistently, or to develop a systematic set of propositions that could be subjected to empirical tests (Keohane 1983). In the study of ancient Greek democracy, Thucydides' account of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians surely deserves a privileged place. As a cardinal instance of the genre Hegel (1975, 14) called original history, Thucydides' work provides a uniquely direct point of contact with Athenian democracy in its most radical and imperial—phase: the chief figures of that work “express the maxims of their nation and of their own personality, their consciousness of their political position and of their moral and spiritual nature, and the principles that underlie their designs and conduct.” Thus, from Thucydides we get much more than a reconstruction of events. We also get access to the ancient Greeks' own understanding of the world they made and destroyed.