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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
163282
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| Summary/Abstract |
David Hume famously argued that the idea of the balance of power existed in antiquity. However, he rests his case almost entirely on the deeds of the ancient Greeks. This evidence, by itself, only shows that balance of powers emerged as an outcome of competitive Greeks warring with each other for power and prestige. It does not demonstrate the existence of the balance of power as a social convention of the inter-polis society or as a goal of a regime's foreign policy. I argue that a focus on the speeches in the political histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon bears out his claim. Attention to these speeches rebuts Hume's main critics of the last century—that is, international relations scholars belonging to the English School. In particular, the speeches of the Corinthians from prior to the Persian Wars to the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War reveal an enduring thesis of their foreign policy: that imperial ambitions and leveling tendencies, such as those of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, should be countered in order to prevent a tyrant city from emerging within the society of Greek city-states.
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| 2 |
ID:
158996
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| Summary/Abstract |
The just war tradition is one of the key constituencies of international political theory, and its vocabulary plays a prominent role in how political and military leaders frame contemporary conflicts. Yet, it stands in danger of turning in on itself and becoming irrelevant. This article argues that scholars who wish to preserve the vitality of this tradition must think in a more open-textured fashion about its historiography. One way to achieve this is to problematize the boundaries of the tradition. This article pursues this objective by treating one figure that stands in a liminal relation to the just war tradition. Despite having a lot to say about the ethics of war, Xenophon is seldom acknowledged as a bona fide just war thinker. The analysis presented here suggests, however, that his writings have much to tell us, not only about how he and his contemporaries thought about the ethics of war, but about how just war thinking is understood (and delimited) today and how it might be revived as a pluralistic critical enterprise.
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| 3 |
ID:
153782
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| Summary/Abstract |
This study illuminates Xenophon's teaching about the underlying psychological motives of the most fully developed political ambition. An analysis of what the Cyropaedia portrays as the interplay among Cyrus's spiritedness, justice, benevolence, piety, and cultivation of an aura of divinity leads to an unveiling of supreme ambition's deepest root: not the desire for power as such, nor the love of justice, but the desire to be a quasi-divine benefactor. The article traces the development of this ambition from its earliest manifestations in the young Cyrus's puppylike spiritedness, through his hope-filled rise to power, to his grim mature rein and his death, showing how a shadowy concern for immortality drives him in ways he is reluctant to see or acknowledge.
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