Realism's classical tradition

About this book

Realism is "the most distinguished school of thought in international relations," and part of its institutional hegemony within the field--according to one study, it accounts for 90% of hypotheses in behavioral studies--is its "millennia-long" tradition. While Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes are universally acknowledged as the three major Realist thinkers before the twentieth century, no scholarly work treats the three together systematically. My dissertation is an investigation into the tradition of Realism, seeing exactly what is unique and distinctive about it as a philosophy of international life. My research has uncovered some original and interesting results regarding the diversity of Realism's sources and the effects of morality, a narrative one would not expect if one picked up a standard text. The three thinkers are examined by looking not only at their "timeless" insights but also at the context in which each wrote. I attempt to show how the historical context of realism matters--in effect, why Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, despite some similarities, all approach international politics differently--and how the question of ontology is critical for understanding international morality. Finally, I argue that the use of "Realism," with a capital "R," is an invention of theorists, a fiction seeking to unify a rather divergent field of thought.