Possessions Forever

Thucydides and Kant on Peace, War, and Politics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6355237
AutoresGerald M Mara (Georgetown University, autor de correspondencia), Gerald Mara (0000-0003-3328-9683)
Año2013
Volumen45
Número3
Páginas318-346
Fecha de publicación2013-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPolity (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0032-3497 • E-ISSN: 1744-1684
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1057/pol.2013.14
OpenAlexW2032151320
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas13

Understanding how Thucydides and Kant contribute to the theorization of international politics is of more than historical interest. Kant is the most important resource for political theorists who envisage the reconstruction of international political institutions along constitutionally democratic lines. Yet this broadly Kantian perspective is challenged by critics who underscore the hostile and dangerous character of the world and who often use Thucydides’ History as a counter-Kantian resource. In this article, I try to set their perspectives in conversation and move the discussion beyond a simple restaging of the quarrel between morality and power. I suggest that Thucydides represents politics in a way that is both demanded and frustrated by Kant’s perspective. At the same time, Kant’s project requires us to ask whether Thucydides’ framework is too accommodating of political necessity, and whether the History is too dismissive of possibilities for political improvement

Conversation · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Global politics · International relations · Morality · Perspective (graphical · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification