Every tradition of theory has its own longstanding canon: its own annals of great texts that the tradition’s contemporary theorists take to be foundational. Upon reading the work of contemporary theorists, one will find that they more or less regularly refer to canonical texts, sometimes for guidance, sometimes to indicate the timeless wisdom of their tradition, sometimes to focus their questions, and more often to establish a bedrock of authority for the claims that contemporaries want to advance. For example, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are part of the canon of liberal political theory.
Political Realism is no exception. It has its own canon. And we have just read from three of Realism’s canonical texts: Thycydides’ The Peloponnesian War, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Machiavelli’s The Prince. Nearly every contemporary realist would accord great authority to these texts. Most would say that these texts are foundational – that they established the foundation for realist thought even today.
In this forum, you will be asked to explore these three canonical texts (or at least the snippets that we have drawn from them). Just below you will find three “questions.” Each one consists of several questions. Each one is addressed to one of these texts. And each one is the lead question for a forum thread. To get to the forum threads, click on the link just above and to the left.
Please understand, these are not simple and direct questions requiring simple and direct answers. These questions are more nearly invitations to think. Thinking here means a lot more than providing your answers. It means grounding your interpretations in the readings themselves, and it means seriously engaging the contributions and interpretations of other participants in this forum.
2. Machiavelli. When first carried from court to court in the saddlebags of itinerate condottiere of Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, Machiavelli’s famous pamphlet, The Prince, was considered scandalous. It might be read by princes wanting effectively to found and rule great principalities, but it should not be known by their peoples that they read it. After all, the text could be considered sacrilege. It was disdainful of the idea, then prevalent, that princely rule should be conducted in accordance with Christian virtues (see Chapter 18). To Machiavelli, the fall of Venice (the home of papal rule) taught otherwise. So he set out in The Prince to produce a gift to the Medici that would not only win Machiavelli’s return from exile but also lay bare the real and often duplicitous practices of audacity and cunning by which a Prince might contest the violent currents of fortuna and rule a fickle people. Responding to the several chapters appearing in the excerpt you’ve read, what are some of the lessons that a contemporary realist might take from Machiavelli? Which of these lessons might be taken to be most important, and why? Taken overall, are these lessons more about how to conduct relations among states or about how to effectively found and rule a state (or principality)?
3. Hobbes. It is important to understand that Hobbes’s Leviathan was published in 1651 – against the background of the Protestant Reformation, the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years religious wars of Europe, the dawn of science with Galileo, and Civil War in England. The world was changing. And one change was particularly salient: it was simply no longer possible to justify and legitimate sovereign rule and sovereign law by appeal to the absolute authority of any one interpretation of God’s Word. It had once been possible for a king to pronounce his law as the earthly extension of God’s will and intentions – and to pronounce violations of his law as not only criminal but also heretical. (Think of the concluding scenes of the film Braveheart, where a Cardinal appeals to William Wallace to call out for God’s mercy while he is being drawn and quartered.) By the time of Leviathan, though, this was no longer possible. Rule by virtue of theocratic warrant just didn’t work. Understanding this, what was Hobbes trying to do in his text? How did he try to do it? What part did the state of nature allegory play? Specifically considering the state of nature allegory (i.e., the part about life in the absence of a sovereign being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”), what lessons might be drawn by contemporary realist
answer 2 question in different paragragh
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