Thucydides
(460 - 400 BCE)
Timothy H. Wilson
Embedded Files
Temple on the Island of Delos(Site of treasury of the Delian League)
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is a detailed account and analysis of the fifth-century BCE war between Sparta and Athens and their respective allies. Thucydides has been called the first "scientific historian" as well as the father of the school of "political realism". My interpretation of Thucydides is largely shaped by that of Leo Strauss. This interpretation questions both of these aspects of traditional Thucydides scholarship. In relation to the supposedly scientific basis of Thucydides history, the assumption here is that Thucydides follows standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering as well as an analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities. However, rather than approach history as a scientific "object" of theoretical reflection, his approach is in fact more “phenomenological”. That is, Thucydides approaches the political phenomena as they arise “for us”. So too, in terms of his supposed "political realism" -- i.e., that all political and international relations are based on brute self-interest and power relations, not on higher values or ideals -- we can see that in fact his analysis of the causes of the war emphasize the justice or injustice of certain acts in relation to existing treaties, for instance. Rather than reducing the political to power relations, rather than merely side with the position of the Athenians in the "Melian Dialogue", Thucydides carves out a space for a certain "humanity" in political and international affairs.
As the first, true "political history" and as a necessary compliment to classical political philosophy, Thucydides' work has a firm place on my List of 101 Greatest Books of the Western Canon.
Reflections on the Great Books
Reflections on the Great Books
Pericles's Funeral Oration (Perikles hält die Leichenrede) by Philipp Foltz (1852)
Thucydides: Between Political History and Philosophy
A detailed set of notes on Thucydides' work. The notes begin with a critique of the general point of departure with respect to Thucydides' work in modern scholarship, that he is a "scientific" historian and that he is the father of "political realism". In critiquing the notion of "scientific history", the notes analyze the notion of "causality" within the classical tradition: aitia = "responible for" (not "cause"); prophasis = "explanation" (not "true cause"). In this questioning of projecting modern concepts of causation onto the classics, the Straussian reading is building on the Heideggerian reading of aitia in ancient Greek literature and philosophy
History of the Peloponnesian War (Great Book Overview)
Online Texts
Online Texts
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (The Landmark Thucydides), Ed. Robert B. Strassler. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Thomas L. Pangle, Literal Translations of Passages from Thucydides.
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War (Greek Text), at Perseus Digital Library.
Further Reading
Further Reading
Thucydides, History and Causation
Thucydides, History and Causation
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1983.
Lionel Pearson, “Prophasis: A Clarification”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol 103 (1972). 381-94.
----, “Prophasis and Aitia”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Vol 83 (1952). 205-23.
Mario Vegetti, “Culpability, Responsibility, Cause: Philosophy, Historiography and Medicine in the Fifth Century”, Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge UP: 1999, 271-89.
Menno Hulswit, “A Short History of Causation”.
Thucydides as Political Philosopher
Thucydides as Political Philosopher
Michael Vickers, “Thucydides and Aristophanes”, in Jubilate et Bibite. Eds. Eliska Polackova et al. Prague: Filosofia, 2020. 107-32.
Werner Jaeger, “Thucydides: Political Philosopher”, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Volume I.382-411. Trans. Gilbert Highet. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1939.
David Bolotin, “Thucydides” in History of Political Philosophy, Eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987, 7-32. (PDF on-line)
Richard Ned Lebow, “Thucydides the Constructivist”, American Political Science Review. 95.3, 2001. 547-60.
Steven Forde, “Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli”. The Journal of Politics. 1992, 54.2. 372-93.
Edward Keene, “The Reception of Thucydides in in the History of International Relations” – in A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides. 355-72.
Christine Lee and Neville Morley (eds.), A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides. Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, 2015.
Christian R. Thauer and Christian Wendt (eds.), Thucydides and Political Order: Lessons of Governance and the History of the Peloponnesian War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Gregory Crane, Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Reason. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1998.
The Straussian Thucydides
The Straussian Thucydides
Leo Strauss, “Thucydides and the Meaning of Political History”, in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, Ed. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1989, 72-102.
----, “Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War”, in The City and Man. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1964.
----, “Preliminary Observations on the Gods in Thucydides’ Work”, in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. Ed. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1985. 89-104.
----, Course: Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1964), at The Leo Strauss Center
----, Course: Thucydides (1972-73), at The Leo Strauss Center
Seth N. Jaffe, “The Straussian Thucydides”, in A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides, Eds. Christine Lee and Neville Morley. Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, 2015, 278-95.
Sophie Marcotte-Chenard, “What Can We Learn from Political History? Leo Strauss and Raymond Aron, Readers of Thucydides”, The Review of Politics 80, 2018: 57-86.
Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Liisi Keedus, “Leo Strauss’s Thucydides and the Meaning of Politics”, in Thucydides and Political Order: Lessons of Governance and the History of the Peloponnesian War. Eds. Christian R. Thauer and Christian Wendt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 75-93.
Emil A. Kleinhaus, “Piety, Universality, and History: Leo Strauss on Thucydides”, Humanitas. XIV.1, p 68-95.
Clifford Orwin, The Humanity of Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.
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