Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T05:36:11.771Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thucydides the Constructivist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2002

Richard Ned Lebow
Richard Ned Lebow*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The most superficial level of Thucydides’ history examines the destructive consequences of domestic and foreign policies framed outside the language of justice. His deeper political-philosophical aim was to explore the relationship between nomos (convention) and phusis (nature) and its implications for civilization. Thucydides concludes that nomos constructs identities and channels and restrains the behavior of individuals and societies. Speech and reason (logos) in turn make nomos possible because all conventions depend on shared meanings. The feedback loop between logoi (words) and ergoi (deeds) created Greek civilization but also the international and civil strife (stasis) associated with the Peloponnesian War. International security and civil order depend upon recovering the meanings of words and the conventions they enable. Thucydides should properly be considered a constructivist.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 95 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 547 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adcock, F. E. 1957. The Greek and Macedonian Art of War. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Aeschylus, . 1938. Agamemnon. In The Complete Greek Drama, vol. 1, ed. Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. New York: Random House. Pp. 167–225.Google Scholar
Alker, Hayward R. 1988. “The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue.” American Political Science Review 82 (September): 806–20.Google Scholar
Alker, Hayward R. 1996. Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methods for International Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. 2d. ed., ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bedford, David, and Workman, Thom. 2001. “The Tragic Reading of the Thucydidean Tragedy.” Review of International Studies 27 (January): 51–67.Google Scholar
Beye, Charles Rowan. 1987. Ancient Greek Literature and Society. 2d rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowersock, Glen P. 1965. “The Personality of Thucydides. Antioch Review 35 (1): 135–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bury, J. B., and Meiggs, Russell. 1975. A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great. 4th rev. ed. New York: St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Cochrane, Charles. 1929. Thucydides and the Science of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Connor, W. Robert. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cornford, F. M. 1907. Thucydides Mythistoricus. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Crane, Gregory. 1998. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Democritus, . 1956. In Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker, ed. Hermann DielsandWalther Kranz. Berlin: WeidmannscheVerlagsbuchhandlung. Pp. 56–7.Google Scholar
De Ste. Croix, G. E. M. 1972. The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Dionysus of Halicarnassus. 1975. On Thucydides. trans. W. Kendrick Pritchett. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Doyle, Michael W. 1997. Ways of War and Peace. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Ellis, J. R. 1991. “The Structure and Argument of Thucydides’ Archeology.” Classical Antiquity 10 (2): 344–75.Google Scholar
Euben, J. Peter. 1990. The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finley, John H., Jr. [1942] 1967. Thucydides. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Finnemore, Martha, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change.” International Organization 52 (Autumn): 887–918.Google Scholar
Forde, Steven. 1989. The Ambition to Rule. Alcibiades and the Politics of Imperialism in Thucydides. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Forde, Steven. 1992. “Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli.” Journal of Politics 54 (May): 372–93.Google Scholar
Garst, Daniel. 1989. “Thucydides and Neorealism” International Studies Quarterly 33 (1): 469–97.Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert. 1986. “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism.” In Neorealism and Its Critics. ed. Keohane, Robert O.. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 301–21.Google Scholar
Guthrie, W. K. C. 1969. A History of Greek Philosophy. 5 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Havelock, Eric A. 1963. Preface to Plato. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Herodotus, . 1958. The Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus. trans. Harry Carter. New York: Heritage Press.Google Scholar
Herwig, Holger H. 1997. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Homer, . 1951. The Iliad of Homer. trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hopf, Ted. N.d. Constructing International Relations at Home: Finding Allies in Moscow, 1995–1999. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Jaeger, Werner. 1939–45. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. 3 vols., trans. Gilbert Highet. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kagan, Donald. 1969. The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kerford, G. B. 1981. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kokaz, Nancy 2001. “Moderating Power: A Thucydidean Perspective.” Review of International Studies 27 (January): 27–49.Google Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich V. 1989. Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Political and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich V., and John Gerard Ruggie. 1986. “International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State,” International Organization 49 (Autumn): 753–75.Google Scholar
Lain Entralgo, Pedro. 1970. The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity. ed. and trans. E. J. Rather and John M. Sharp. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned. 1991. “Thucydides, Power Transition Theory, and the Causes of War.” In Hegemonic Rivalry: From Thucydides to the Nuclear Age. ed. Richard Ned Lebow and Barry S. Strauss. Boulder, CO: Westview. Pp. 125–68.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned. 1996. “Play It Again Pericles: Agents, Structures and the Peloponnesian War.” European Journal of International Relations 2 (June): 231–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned, and Robert Kelly. N.d. “‘Thucydides and Hegemony’: Athens and the United States.” Review of International Studies 27 (October). Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Levy, Jack S. 1992. “An Introduction to Prospect Theory.” Political Psychology 13 (June): 171–86.Google Scholar
Levy, Jack S. 1996. “Loss Aversion, Framing and Bargaining: The Implications of Prospect Theory for International Conflict.” International Political Science Review 17 (2): 179–95.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. 1978. Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origins and Development of Greek Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Luce, T. J. 1997. The Greek Historians. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Meiggs, Russell. 1972. The Athenian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Monoson, S. Sara, and Loriaux, Michael. 1998. “The Illusion of Power and the Disruption of Moral Norms: Thucydides’ Critique of Periclean Policy.” American Political Science Review 92 (June): 285–98.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. [1951] 1982. In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Murray, Williamson, and Millet, Allan R.. 2000. A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ober, Josiah. 1989. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ober, Josiah. 1998. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood. 1989. World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Orwin, Clifford. 1994. The Humanity of Thucydides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Perlman, Shalom. 1991. “Hegemony and Arche in Greece: Fourth-Century Views.” In Hegemonic Rivalry: From Thucydides to the Nuclear Age. ed. Richard Ned Lebow and Barry Strauss. Boulder, CO: Westview. Pp. 269–86.Google Scholar
Rahe, Paul A. 1996. “Thucydides Critique of Realpolitik.” In Roots of Realism. ed. Benjamin Frankel. Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Pp. 105–41.Google Scholar
Rawlings, Hunter R., III. 1981. The Structure of Thucydides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Romilly, Jacqueline de. 1990. La construction de la vérité chez Thucydide. Paris: Julliard.Google Scholar
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. 1996. Athenian Democracy: Modern Myth-Makers and Ancient Theorists. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Stahl, Hans-Peter. 1966. Thucydides: Die Stellung des Menschen im geschichlichen Prozess. Munich: C. H. Beck.Google Scholar
Strauss, Barry S. 1986. Athens after the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Thucydides, . 1996. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. ed. Robert B. Strassler. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel. 1992. “Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty.” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5 (2): 297–323.Google Scholar
Wallace, W. P. 1964. “Thucydides.” Phoenix 18 (4): 251–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. The Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Gerhard L. 1994. A World at War: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
White, James Boyd. 1984. When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character and Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.