Choose an assigned reading from this week and write a 1-2 page double spaced font 12 critical summary.

Week 1 March 2: Introduction, Ancient Thought, Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages  

Brown, “Thucydides”

Brown, “Augustine”

Introduction: Antiquity

Development of INR – Lecture
Week 1

Antiquity
• Why do we need to return to antiquity?
• Do events and philosophies speak to our

own ideas and political practices?
• What is the historical legacy of ideas from

antiquity that have come to us?
• Do we find theories of politics or of “IR” in

antiquity?
• Is it possible to really understand ancient

texts as their authors intended?

Brown, “Marx and Engels”Brown, “Marx and Engels”

Thucydides
• Lived before Plato & Aristotle.
• General during the Peloponnesian War

(431-404 BC). Result is Sparta victory.
• History of the Peloponnesian War (written 7

years before the end of the war)
• The polis is Thucydides’ main political unit; no

intimation of larger Pan-Hellenic union.
• “In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay

which is to win the applause of the moment, but
as a possession of all time.”

Thucydides Cont.
• More than just a narrative history: there are

theoretical positions that can be teased
out. Was Thucydides offering a “scientific”
account of the causes of war between
Sparta and Athens? (i.e. an objective
analysis of events).

• Or was there a normative claim? Practical
moral objectives; a tragic sensibility?

Thucydides Cont.
• What was the cause of the war between Sparta

and Athens? Sea power vs. Land Power;
cultural center vs. provincial estate; trade vs.
self-sufficiency.

• Increasing division of Greece into two alliance
systems: Delian League and Peloponnesian
League.

• Thucydides: “The Growth of the power of
Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in
Sparta, made war inevitable.”

Thucydides Cont.
• Prelude to War: naval rivalry between Corcyra

and Corinth. Corcyra allies itself with Athens
and Corinth with Sparta.

• Deep-root of war: Fear => Security Dilemma.
• Uncertainty of future intentions.
• Perception of a lack of alternative to war. Better

to fight now than wait until losing becomes
inevitable.

• Similar calculation in Germany 1914 and fear of
Franco-British encirclement.

Thucydides Cont.
• Two types of Fear:
• 1) Mutual fear between two great powers

=> entails mutual respect. Potential for
destabilization when there’s an imbalance
of fear (i.e. when one power becomes
increasingly powerful).

• 2) Fear of tyranny of one power over
another (i.e. Mytilene revolt against
Athens).

Thucydides Cont.
• Fear is central for Thucydides.
• The emergence of Empire is a

consequence of fear; think of the
significance of fear today to compel
American national security and foreign
policy. Why are we so fearful?

Thucydides Cont.
• Key moments: (importance in his text of

speeches, generally rewritten by him).
• Pericles Funeral Oration: Eulogy of Athens.
• Mytilene Debate: Athenian Response to

the revolt of Mytilene.
• Corcyrean Revolution: Slaughter of anyone

opposed to democratic faction.
• Melian Dialogues: You’re either with us or

against us.

Thucydides the Tragedian
• What is a Tragedy?
• Dionysus (God of win/win-making) gives Icarius wine

and tells him to introduce it to shepherds throughout
Attica. The Shepherds get drunk and suspect that
Icarius is up to no good and murder him. While dying
he remembered that when he previously planted the
grapes he caught a goat poaching them and in a fit a
rage he had it killed. He then skinned it and
improvised a dance to honor the goat.

• Hence tragedy = “goat song”. Tragos = he-goat;
aeidein = “to sing”.

Cont.
• Tragedy becomes a significant genre of

theatrical/choral performance in Ancient
Greece. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes.

• Example: Antigone
• Tension between natural and state law;

Antigone caught between the two and only
reconciliation is suicide.

• Creon is punished by the Gods.

Cont.
• Tragic Trajectory: Hubris (Excessive self-

pride) – > Hamartia (error, tragic flaw) – >
nemesis (wrath of the Gods).

• What does tragedy impart to the spectator?
• Aristotle: catharsis, pity and fear leads to

cleansing or purification (medical sense);
understand one’s limits => an ethical
notion.

Aristotle on Politics
• Artistole: man is a political animal, zoon

politikon, we have a natural impulse to live with
others; friendship is a natural instinct in the
human race; seems to extend beyond Greece.

• Nonetheless, natural difference between
Greeks and non-Greeks. Greeks act in
conformity with reason; barbarians lesser
functions and therefore prone to being ruled –
destitute of reason (Assumed).

Aristotle Cont.
• The main problem Aristotle identifies is the manner in

which barbarians don’t distinguish between women and
slaves: “But among barbarians no distinction is made
between women and slaves, because there is no natural
ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male
and female.”

• Which for him this means they don’t live according to
reason, which implies that there is a natural hierarchy
between men, women and slaves. The fact that
barbarians don’t live according to reason implies then that
are only fit to be ruled by Greeks.

• Can barbarians change? Can they learn Greek and
behave like Greeks? No, intrinsic features of being other,
non-Greek. Their telos is inferior.

Aristotle Cont.
• Is the political equivalent to management of the

household?
• “The conclusion is evident: that governments which

have a regard to the common interest are
constituted in accordance with the strict principles of
justice, and are therefor the true forms; but those
which regard only the interest of the rulers are all
defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic,
whereas a state is a community of freemen” (70).

• What is the state for? The good life? (72-73).
Happiness (eudemonia) (81).