Tacitus on Political Failure
A Realist Interpretation
Dados Bibliográficos
| ID | 3970879 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Zoltán Gábor Szűcs (0000-0001-6595-5463, Centre for Social Sciences, Tóth Kálmán utca 4, Budapest N/A 1097, Hungary, autor correspondente) |
| Ano | 2021 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Fascículo | 5 |
| Páginas | 519-534 |
| Data de publicação | 2021-07-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sim |
| Open Access | Não |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Periódico | The European Legacy (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores do periódico | ISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316 |
| Editora | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10848770.2021.1910765 |
| OpenAlex | W3155826786 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referências citadas | 26 |
This article offers a realist interpretation of Tacitus’s analysis of political failure. Tacitus described the early Roman Empire as a balance between the conflicting and irreconcilable values and interests of the emperor, the army, and the senate. For him Stoic-republican morality in itself—without the intervention of a political standard demanding political agency in every circumstance—cannot provide an all-purpose guide to action. He provides a fine-grained analysis of types of political failure, such as failing to act, or to realize one’s limited scope for maneuver, or the inevitability of failure given particular political circumstances. Tacitus also describes Thrasea, a moderate member of the senatorial opposition to Nero, as an exceptionally laudable figure. His preference for moderate politics places Tacitus on the side of contemporary status-quo oriented, liberal, realists (e.g., Bernard Williams), rather than on the side of radical realists (e.g., Raymond Geuss, Enzo Rossi), but the central lesson of his understanding of Roman politics is not so much that political order is fragile as that the cost of political failure can indeed be unbearably high
Ancient history · Emperor · Morality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Status quo · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times
Moral Luck
Philosophy and Government 1572–1651
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
Is There a Distinctively Political Normativity?
Realism, Utopianism, and Radical Values
Liberal realism
The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus
Republicanism, Rhetoric, and Roman Political Thought
Philosophy and Real Politics
The Lesson of Carl Schmitt’s Realism
Being realistic and demanding the impossible
Political Legitimacy for Our World
Herodotean Realism
On What a Distinctively Political Normativity Is
On political responsibility in post-revolutionary times
Realism in political theory
Hobbes and political realism
With radicals like these, who needs conservatives? Doom, gloom, and realism in political theory
The Fragility of Goodness
Hope Abjuring Hope
What Makes a Utopia Inconvenient? On the Advantages and Disadvantages of a Realist Orientation to Politics
| Velocidade de citação | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | Não |