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Thucydides on Honor, Vengeance, and Liberty

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Thucydides on Honor, Vengeance, and Liberty Motives Beyond Fear: Thucydides on Honor, Vengeance, and Liberty Author: Aleksander Chance Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/2770 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2012 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Political Science MOTIVES BEYOND FEAR: THUCYDIDES ON HONOR, VENGEANCE, AND LIBERTY a dissertation by ALEK CHANCE submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August, 2012 © copyright by ALEKSANDER HAYDN CHANCE 2012 Abstract: Motives Beyond Fear: Thucydides on Honor, Vengeance, and Liberty Alek Chance Whereas many modern political philosophies and social science theories emphasize security or fear as the prevailing motivator of states and human beings more generally, Thucydides’ political psychology seriously explores diverse motives. A careful reading of his work shows that honor, shame, vengeance, and the desire for liberty exert great influence in political affairs, including relations between political communities. I argue that this broad account of human motivation gives us a better account of many enduring features of international politics than theories which prioritize fear and interest. Thucydides portrays the importance of “spirited” concerns as issuing from the nature of political life. People ground their sense of worth in the exercise of freedom, and participation in political society promises the most substantive liberties. This affirmation of freedom culminates in the association of great worthiness and honor with the exercise of unfettered moral agency. While the powerful city must still bow to natural necessity, its great accomplishment is that it need not regard the rest of humanity as part of an inexorable nature. Ultimately it finds it impossible to relate to others on prudential terms and thus tends to conceive of relations between states as battles of wills. I conclude the dissertation by drawing out the moral implications of Thucydides’ study of motives. Because Thucydides does not find the causes of significant conflict to lie solely in hard conflicts of interest or mutual fear, he shows mankind to be more mutually invidious but also more free to resist conflict than it is, for example, in Hobbes’ thought. Thucydides’ emphasis on spirited motives also shows us that a doctrinaire realpolitik is frequently infected by desires for punitive justice or an irrational intolerance of uncertainty. Most significantly, Thucydides suggests that given the unpredictability of human affairs, an unyielding rejection of moral considerations is as unrealistic as an idealism that seeks reliably to effect justice. His deep realism reopens a space for ethical action in international affairs by reminding us that realpolitik’s emphasis on the riskiness of ethical action springs from an optimism that an a-moral doctrine of interest can reliably mitigate risk. Such optimism, Thucydides would urge, is unfounded. Thus in the end, Thucydides grounds a kind of liberality in a deep pessimism. Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The Meanings of Fear in Thucydides’ Realism .......................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: Thucydides on the Moral Significance of Wealth and Power ................................................... 47 Chapter 3: Honor, Insolence, and Retribution in War ................................................................................ 77 Chapter 4: Thucydides on Honor, Reputation, and Freedom of Action ................................................... 111 Chapter 5: The Evolution of Politics and the Cultivation of Interests ....................................................... 145 Chapter 6: The Mitigation of Conflict in Thucydides’ History ................................................................... 184 Summary and Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 231 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 253 It is one of the fine things about history that we see nations more easily consoled for their material losses than for injuries to their honor. —Heinrich von Treitschke Introduction In their speech to the Spartan assembly, Athenian representatives announce that their city’s behavior has been driven by the greatest compulsions: fear, honor, and profit1 (timē, deous, ōphelia, 1.76.2). Despite contemporary realists who read him as placing a priority on fear as the mainspring of political action2 throughout his History, Thucydides maintains a broad view of fundamental human motivations and political concerns.3 This expanded view stands in contrast to contemporary theories of international relations as well as much political philosophy since Hobbes, although Hobbes did give a certain pride 1 ōphelia has a range of meanings from succor to plunder. I steer away from the commonly used “interest” to avoid, in Arnold Wolfers’ words, using an “ambiguous symbol.” I avoid the word “advantage” because this may misleadingly focus us on relative rather than absolute gains. 2 One example among many is Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (Waltz 1959 p.159). 3 Some commentators, for example Palmer, make a point of refusing to call Thucydides’ work a history, let alone The History, citing the fact that the book seems originally to have been called The War between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians. I unequivocally take Thucydides’ work to be a work of political science rather than a mere recounting of past deeds. Nonetheless, for simplicity’s sake I will use the shorthand History to describe this book, which has for centuries been conventionally titled History of the Peloponnesian War or History of the Grecian War (the latter being the title to Hobbes’ 1648 translation). 1 of place to Thucydides’ categories. A significant class of modern theories of human action prioritizes fear as the most powerful passion, and security as the most fundamental of all human objectives.4 The most elegant of security-based theories is achieved with neorealism, which relies on nothing other than minimal assumptions about man’s desire to endure in order to explain the persistence of conflict across time and space, blaming the anarchic structure of the international milieu for this tragic outcome.5 Each of the three motives mentioned by the Athenians appears as significant in the History,6 and each plays its individual role. But Thucydides doesn’t merely assert that the mainsprings of human action are manifold. He shows us that the basic motives of the weak and the strong, of the individual and the community, differ. Most significantly, he shows us the great importance of the strangest and most controversial of these motives—honor—as a foundation of developed political communities. Through its cultivated concern for honor, the motives of the political body are altered and expanded. What is striking about Thucydides’ treatment of fear and the desire for gain is that they are both inadequate explanations of war by themselves. Moreover, they are both influenced by considerations of status. Thus fear is expanded to include the fear of losing 4 Although one must acknowledge the alternative view given by the Marxist tradition which places class and economic interest at the forefront, including in theories of international politics, as in the cases of Lenin and Hobson. 5 Waltz’ Man the State and War presents a prototype of neorealism, but the main theoretical text is his Theory of International Politics. 6 Some commentators, for example Palmer, make a point of refusing to call Thucydides’ work a history, let alone The History, citing the fact that the book seems originally to have been called The War between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians. This kind of distinction, however, has no relevance to my inquiry, so I will use the convenient shorthand History, to describe this book, which has for centuries been conventionally titled History of the Peloponnesian War or History of the Grecian War (the latter being the title to Hobbes’ 1648 translation). 2 political mastery or preeminence. Sparta goes to war out of fear, yet the real dilemma presented to Sparta is whether to choose war or inferiority.7 The concern for material goods grows stronger the more one has, for not only is there shame in giving up what is one’s own [2.62], but men who have nothing, rather than “having nothing to lose,” instead have nothing to fight for [1.2; 2.43]. These two motives take on a political, and what I will call a “moral” character. This is to say that considerations of honor and shame, prerogative and right, influence those motivations that “compel” mankind, and especially political communities. This in turn leads us to a careful consideration of that motive whose enumeration might otherwise seem odd in Thucydides’ rather sober treatment of the human being—honor. Is it helpful today to turn to Thucydides’ threefold account of human motivations? What are the real differences between Thucydides’ realism and contemporary realism, and do these differences amount to a more realistic realism? What does it mean
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