The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides' Melian Dialogue

Bibliographic Data

ID3133035
AuthorsHayward R Alker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume82
Issue3
Pages805-820
Publication date1988-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1962492
OpenAlexW2142473725
LanguageEN
Citations received33
References cited32

If the realist tradition has underappreciated the formalizable quality of Thucydides' scientific investigations, neorealist teachers and writers have generally failed to see the normative and dramatical features of Thucydides' political science, each an expression of his dialectical epistemology and ontology. Nicholas Rescher's partial formalization of dialectics as a controversy-oriented approach to knowledge cumulation and Kenneth Burkes dramaturgical approach to textual understanding are both shown to fit Thucydides' argumentation in the Melian dialogue. Thus argumentation produces new knowledge about the inner determinants of Athenian imperialism; simultaneously it dramatically reveals the constituting practical rationale of Athenian actions to be unjust. Once Thucydides' determining essences of power politics are properly uncovered, their false "eternal, mathematical necessity" can be appropriately criticized. A case is thus suggested for a "neoclassical polimetrics" more fundamentally grounded in "political argumentation" about practical choices in particular contexts than in ahistorical laws, inductive statistics or deductive mathematics

Argumentation theory · Dialectic · Epistemology · Normative · Ontology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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