With our fourth round pick team
Silent enim leges inter arma selects in the
Thinker category, the father of realism
Thucydides.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Thucydides ( c. 460 B.C. – c. 395 B.C.) ( Greek Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work. [1]
He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. [2] His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory.
More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, genocide (as practised against the Melians), and civil war.
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As a politics minor who loved taking courses in IR I found that I made a lot of similar assumptions about human nature as Thucydides and realized that I closely agree with realism as theoretical framework. In so many ways the Western World stands on the shoulders of Greek thinkers, but the importance of Thucydides can't be over stated.
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