The Review of Politics 77 (2015), 425–448.

© University of Notre Dame

doi:10.1017/S0034670515000352

Nietzsche on Thucydidean Realism

David Polansky

Abstract: It is now conventional in both pedagogical and scholarly venues to

characterize Thucydides as a “realist.” Few, however, have noted that the first major
writer to describe him in these terms is not Machiavelli or Hobbes (alongside whom
he is frequently placed), but Friedrich Nietzsche. This article seeks to investigate the
particular character of Thucydides’s realism through a close reading of Nietzsche’s
discussions of Thucydides and his History. Three interpretations are explored:
realism as a mode of investigating or understanding the world, realism as a set of
ideas about the possibilities of establishing grounds for justice in the world, and
realism as a matter of character.

Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness.

–—Nietzsche, The Will to Power

When introducing students to the literature on political realism, there are

certain conventions which nearly all textbooks and syllabi adhere to, from
the lowliest freshman survey courses to graduate seminars. Among these con-
ventions, they must begin with a section on classic texts, which will frequently
go unmentioned for the remainder of the year. Foremost among these classics
stands the unholy trinity of Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes.1

David Polansky is a doctoral student in Political Science at the University

of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G3 (david.polansky@
utoronto.ca).

I am grateful to Clifford Orwin for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. He
bears no responsibility for the problems contained in this version. I would also like to
thank the journal’s anonymous referees and especially the Editor for helpful correc-
tions and suggestions.
1
On Thucydides’s status as a realist, see G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the
Peloponnesian War (London: Duckworth, 1972), 26; Robert Gilpin, “The Richness of
the Tradition of Political Realism,” International Organization 38, no. 2 (1984): 287–
304, and War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981); Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1979),
127; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton,
2001), 163; Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical

425
426 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

This common designation implies that the three writers are joined by a
common teaching of realism. But this represents a contemporary viewpoint
superimposed upon thinkers separated from one another and from us by
time and space; it does not necessarily arise out of the texts themselves.
Machiavelli’s explicit connection to Thucydides is limited to a single para-
graph in his Discourses on Livy.2 Thomas Hobbes famously translated
Thucydides’s history into English (the first such translation), and offers
brief remarks on Thucydides’s life and teaching at the outset of that work.3
Thucydides’s influence on Hobbes’s later thought—particularly in the
account of the stasis in Corcyra—is clear enough. But Hobbes never refers
to Thucydides as a “realist” (an anachronistic term in his day).4 Whatever
the character of Hobbes’s thought,5 and the uses to which he put

Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 4–13. For a more qualified view of
Thucydides’s place in the realist canon, see Jack Donnelly, Realism and International
Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. chap. 6; Michael
W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism & Socialism (New York: Norton,
1997), esp. chap. 1; and Nancy Kokaz, “Moderating Power: A Thucydidean
Perspective,” Review of International Studies 27 (2001): 27–49. For critiques of how con-
temporary realists have appropriated Thucydides, see Peter J. Ahrensdorf,
“Thucydides’ Realistic Critique of Realism,” Polity 30, no. 2 (1997): 231–65; Laurie
M. Johnson Bagby, “The Use and Abuse of Thucydides in International Relations,”
International Organization 48, no. 1 (1994): 131–53; Steven Forde, “International
Realism and the Science of Politics: Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Neorealism,”
International Studies Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1995): 141–60; Daniel Garst, “Thucydides
and Neorealism,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1989): 3–27; and Paul
A. Rahe, “Thucydides’ Critique of Realpolitik,” Security Studies 5, no. 2 (1995):
105–41. For a more nuanced elucidation of Thucydides’s compatibility with contempo-
rary realist theories, see Jonathan Monten, “Thucydides and Modern Realism,”
International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2006): 3–25. For the view that Thucydides is
not a realist at all, see Richard Ned Lebow, “Thucydides the Constructivist,”
American Political Science Review 95, no. 3 (2001): 547–60. For what remains the most
jaundiced take on the use of Thucydides by modern scholars, see David A. Welch,
“Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides,” Review of
International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 301–19.
2
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan
Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3.16.1. See Steven Forde,
“Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli,” Journal of Politics 54, no. 2
(1992): 372–93.
3
Thomas Hobbes, “Of the Life and History of Thucydides,” in The English Works of
Thomas Hobbes, ed. William Molesworth, vol. 8 (London: Bohn, 1839).
4
It is common enough, however, to draw this connection; see Lebow, “Thucydides
the Constructivist,” 547.
5
For the argument that Hobbes does not comport well with realism as we under-
stand it today, see Michael C. Williams, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of
International Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chap. 1. For
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 427

Thucydides’s work in it, it is far from clear that he endorses Thucydides on the
basis of some shared realism—at least not explicitly.6
The earliest thinker of comparable stature explicitly to discuss Thucydides
in such terms is Friedrich Nietzsche—a philosopher with a more tenuous con-
nection to political realism.7 Nietzsche repeatedly refers to Thucydides as a
kind of realist, and accordingly praises him in the highest terms. True, in
his sober way Hobbes too undertakes to vindicate Thucydides—arguing
against the preference of Dionysius of Halicarnassus for Herodotus’s histo-
ries. Yet Hobbes’s support for Thucydides differs from Nietzsche’s not only
in tone (who can readily imagine a yea-saying Hobbes?) but on the
grounds for which he champions him. Nietzsche is also the earliest thinker
to make the now-common association of Thucydides with Machiavelli.8
Realism is an admittedly woolly term, referring less to a concrete theory or
set of theories and more to a broad set of claims—sometimes in the form of
unchanging laws—about power and interest as enduring elements of political
life, combined with skepticism about the applications of justice to human
affairs. Consequently, perhaps, iterations of realism tend to be shaped as
much by the particular concerns of scholars and practitioners as by any over-
arching commitment to a “realist” ethos. Present-day realists, for example, are
largely concerned with challenging the dominance of liberal political
thought,9 or disclosing the structural or systemic constraints under which
states operate.10 In recent years, a number of scholars have turned to
Thucydides as a source of particular wisdom about realism in politics.11 Yet

the claim that Hobbes actually sits at the fount of liberal thought, see Leo Strauss, The
Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1963).
6
On the Hobbes-Thucydides connection, see Richard Schlatter, “Thomas Hobbes
and Thucydides,” Journal of the History of Ideas 6, no. 3 (1945): 350–62; Ioannis
Evrigenis, “Hobbes’ Thucydides,” Journal of Military Ethics 5, no. 4 (2006): 303–16;
and Laurie M. Johnson, Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism (Dekalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 1993).
7
Though cf. Paul E. Kirkland, “Nietzsche’s Tragic Realism,” Review of Politics 72, no.
1 (2010): 55. Raymond Geuss, an avowed realist, has also claimed Nietzsche as a major
influence.
8
See note 51.
9
For an excellent overview of this tendency, see William Galston, “Realism in
Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 4 (2010): 385–411.
10
See note 2.
11
A by no means exhaustive list would include Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision
of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
and A Cultural Theory of International Relations (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), both of which draw heavily on Thucydides, as does Ioannis
D. Evrigenis, Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008); Edith Foster, Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Realism (New York:
428 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Thucydides’s text is notoriously elusive, offering grist for a variety of mills.12

Like realism itself, it is easily subject to particular interpretive agendas. It is
worth returning to the philosopher who first explicitly perceived in
Thucydides a realist ethos, but who shares few if any of the presuppositions
of contemporary realists, to discover a surprising Thucydides—one whose
realism is apparent without being easily assimilated to modern categories.
Of course, the attempt to learn about Thucydidean realism from Nietzsche
should not be taken as equivalent to wholesale acceptance of Nietzsche’s
reading.13
Nietzsche’s references to Thucydides broadly take two forms: he comments—
sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely—on specific historical events
chronicled in Thucydides’s history, and he comments on Thucydides
himself. The relationship between the two kinds of references will require
some elaboration. Taken together, these references indicate three dimensions
to realism and to Thucydides’s realism: realism as a set of ideas about the pos-
sibilities of establishing grounds for justice in the world, realism as a mode of
investigating or understanding the world, and realism as a matter of charac-
ter. The first two align more closely with conventional accounts of realism,
though Nietzsche’s interpretations are characteristically distinctive; the
third, however, which is arguably a precondition for the other two, offers a
particularly novel understanding of realism.14

What Is a Realistic View of Justice?

To begin with, for Nietzsche, Thucydides’s realism is indistinguishable from

his status as a sophist (about which more below). Like the sophists,
Thucydides entertains no illusions regarding the competing priorities of
power and justice:

Cambridge University Press, 2010); Gregory Crane, Thucydides and the Ancient
Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998); and Geoffrey Hawthorne, Thucydides on Politics: Back to the Present
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
12
See S. Sara Monoson and Michael Loriaux, “The Illusion of Power and the
Disruption of Moral Norms: Thucydides’ Critique of Periclean Policy,” American
Political Science Review 92, no. 2 (1998): 285–97.
13
For a case in point, see Brian Leiter, “In Praise of Realism (and Against ‘Nonsense’
Jurisprudence),” Georgetown Law Journal 100 (2012): 868–71.
14
The focus here is on Thucydides by way of Nietzsche, rather than on how
Thucydides may have influenced Nietzsche’s own thought. For examples of the
latter, see Scott Jenkins, “What Does Nietzsche Owe Thucydides,” Journal of
Nietzsche Studies, no. 42 (2011): 32–50; and Robert Eden, Political Leadership and
Nihilism: A Study of Weber and Nietzsche (Tampa: University Presses of Florida, 1983),
chap. 4.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 429

The Sophists are no more than realists: they formulate the values and
practices common to everyone on the level of values—they possess the
courage of all strong spirits to know their own immorality—
Do you suppose perchance that these little Greek free cities, which from
rage and envy would have liked to devour each other, were guided by
philanthropic and righteous principles? Does one reproach Thucydides
for the words he put into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors
when they negotiated with the Melians on the question of destruction
or submission?15

Not incidentally, the Melian dialogue is the hinge for Nietzsche’s reading of
Thucydides.

Origin of Justice.—Justice (fairness) has its origin among people of approx-

imately equal power, as Thucydides correctly understood (in the terrible di-
alogues of the Athenian and the Melian ambassadors); where there is no
clearly discernible superiority and a struggle would lead to ineffectual
damages on both sides, the thought arises of coming to an understanding
and negotiating the claims of both sides: the character of exchange is the
original character of justice. Each satisfies the other, in that each receives
what he values more than the other. We give the other person what he
wants, as henceforth belonging to him, and receive in return what we
wanted. Justice is therefore requital and exchange under the assumption
of an approximately equal position of power.16

According to this reading, justice for Thucydides (whom Nietzsche equates

with the Athenians at 5.85–113) is not an independent moral category but a
term of convenience applied to certain negotiations between equally powerful
actors, wherein a mutually beneficial exchange of interests replaces a mutual-
ly destructive exchange of blows.17 Thus, justice has its origins in expediency.
Where it is expedient to be “just,” one is just. Or, to paraphrase Clausewitz,
justice is expediency by other means. Among states or peoples, it is the
balance of power that induces considerations of justice as recourse.
Meanwhile, what is left for the Melians? Nietzsche provides an answer of
sorts later in the same work:

Of the right of the weaker.—If someone submits under certain conditions to

someone stronger, as for example a besieged city does, the reciprocal con-
dition is that he can destroy himself, burn the city, and thus cause a great

15
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 233–34. See also aphorism 428.
16
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Gary Handwerk (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000), 70. See also aphorism 259 in Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966).
17
References to Thucydides’s History are given in text and are by book, chapter, and
sentence in The Landmark Thucydides, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Richard Crawley
(New York: Touchstone Books, 1996).
430 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

loss to the stronger foe. Hence, a sort of equivalence arises here, on the basis
of which rights can be stipulated. The enemy gains an advantage from
one’s preservation.18

Right in this instance equals power, or is commensurate with power.19 This is

also the basis of equality, though it is a rougher equality than Hobbes’s
version, where equality derives from the mutual potential to do harm to
the other’s person and the consequent fear this engenders. Here, equality
derives from the ability to do harm to another’s interests, which is less
equal and more circumstantial. That is to say that interest rather than fear
is the basis for mutuality, whereby the stronger and weaker parties can
come to some negotiated agreement, short of the stronger party simply im-
posing its will. This equality is premised upon a deeper inequality. For
rights here are not intrinsic and immutable but are instead contingent upon
the calculations of the stronger party. If the survival of the weaker is judged
to be of value to the stronger, there arises the basis for (unequal and
limited) negotiation. It is notable how this logic parallels Diodotus’s insight
during the Mytilenian debate, which anchors his logic of the expediency of
Athenian leniency toward Mytilene:
Consider a moment! At present, if a city that has already revolted perceive
that it cannot succeed, it will come to terms while it is still able to refund
expenses, and pay tribute afterwards. In the other case, what city think
you would not prepare better than is now done, and hold out to the last
against its besiegers, if it is all one whether it surrender late or soon?
And how can it be otherwise than hurtful to us to be put to the expense
of a siege, because surrender is out of the question; and if we take the
city, to receive a ruined city from which we can no longer draw the
revenue which forms our real strength against the enemy? (3.46.2–3)

How does Nietzsche’s interpretation comport with Thucydides’s text? A dif-

ferent set of Athenian envoys making their case before the Spartans and
Corinthians at Sparta before the start of the war suggest that warring
parties continue to invoke justice on the basis of expediency:
And it was not we who set the example, for it has always been the law that
the weaker should be subject to the stronger. Besides, we believed our-
selves to be worthy of our position, and so you thought us till now,
when calculations of interest have made you take up the cry of justice—
a consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his am-
bition when he had a chance of gaining anything by might. (1.76.2)

According to this logic, questions of justice do not arise in disputes between

parties of unequal power. Rather, the stronger proceeds as their interests

18
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 71.
19
Cf. Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Michael Silverthorne
and Jonathan Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 195–97.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 431

dictate and the weaker “makes way.” At most, the degree of interest that the
stronger may have in claiming an unspoiled city or territory allows some lat-
itude to the interests of the weaker. Between parties of more or less equal
power, however, a mutual interest in “judicious self-preservation” results in
strategic negotiations that, if successful, yield mutual advantages. These ne-
gotiations thus take on the aspect of justice, though they are hardly the
same. For justice is typically viewed as the denial of egoistic interests in
view of a higher right. But right is coeval with power.
Accordingly, the Melian dialogue ends in mutual failure—the Melians and
the Athenians suffer destruction and the loss of the revenues of a potential
tributary ally, respectively—due to the failure of the Melians to grasp the sig-
nificance of the imbalance of power between them. Yet the Melian dialogue
occurs within the context of Athens’s much larger war with Sparta, a more
equally matched adversary—indeed, so well matched that their conflict
does not conclude for twenty-seven years. And, as Nietzsche’s aphorism
would have predicted, it ends to the ultimate detriment of both parties (not
to say Hellenic civilization).
Yet the Spartans do not seek negotiation. Instead they issue a series of
demands, culminating in an ultimatum (1.139). As Pericles (though not
without his own interest in the matter) notes, “they wish complaints to be
settled by war instead of by negotiation” (1.140.2). Moreover, the Spartans’
proximate stated cause for declaring war is their judgment that the
Athenians are guilty of injustice, specifically in their treatment of Sparta’s
allies and more generally in their acquisition and keeping of the Athenian
empire (1.187). This is especially the argument made by the bellicose
Sthenelaidas, who warns his countrymen not to “deliberate under injustice”
(1.86).
But this partly inverts Nietzsche’s logic regarding the relationship between
justice and power. Justice in this case is not the given name for an attempt at
mediation between groups of like power; it is instead the stated reason for
choosing destructive war over mediation. The Nietzschean account of
power equilibrium as the basis for arbitration more accurately describes the
armistice ten years into the war (5.14–26), though this too fails and war is
resumed.
It is also worth noting that Nietzsche’s claims regarding justice are disputed
by the Athenian envoys at Sparta, when they argue that “praise is due to all
who, if not so superior to human nature as to refuse dominion, yet respect
justice more than their position compels them to do” (1.76.2). In this formula-
tion, justice is a function of inequality; it is the forbearance of the stronger
party, rather than a mutual exchange between equal parties.
Clifford Orwin suggests that, according to the nameless Athenian envoys at
Sparta (whose speech is thematically linked with the Melian dialogue), it is
precisely when there is an imbalance of power between states that justice
becomes significant: “Justice among nations is the grace of the strong
432 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

towards the weak, rooted in the grace of nature towards man.”20 For only in
such cases can a state be said to be acting from motives other than fear, honor,
and interest. Thus, the Melian case would seem to have presented an oppor-
tunity for the Athenians to exhibit justice in their geopolitical affairs.
To return to Nietzsche’s original statement, Thucydides’s realism entails an
acknowledgment of justice as a function of power, and a refusal to cling to
delusions about the nature and extent of one’s own power. If this constitutes
Thucydides’s political and ethical realism, it is not especially unconventional
as far as realism goes. But what is the mode by which Thucydides establishes
this understanding?

Realism as a Mode of Understanding the World

A hallmark of political realism is supposedly its ability to uncover truths not
evident to most men. A realist sees the underlying reality, and discerns causal
relationships that are obscure to mere observers. This is realism as skepticism.
The skeptical realist does not accept what is merely observable, but attempts
to discover first causes and true reasons.21 Thucydides would seem to be no
exception, most famously his discussion of the true causes of the
Peloponnesian War (1.23.6).
Similarly, Thucydides notes that “the way most men deal with traditions,
even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are
delivered, without applying any critical test whatever” (1.20). He contrasts
himself with such men so as to establish his authority:
On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs
quoted may, I believe, be safely relied upon. Assuredly, they will not be
disturbed by the verses of a poet displaying the exaggeration of his
craft, or by the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at
truth’s expense; the subjects they treat of being out of the reach of evi-
dence, and time having robbed most of them of historical value by en-
throning them in the region of legend. Turning from these, we can rest
satisfied with having proceeded upon the clearest data, and having
arrived at conclusions as exact as can be expected in matters of such antiq-
uity. (1.21)

This passage concludes a longer section of the Archaeology, throughout

which he replaces mythical accounts of Hellenic history with his own mate-
rialist one.22 This is Thucydides as proto–scientific historian.23

20
Clifford Orwin, “Justifying Empire: The Speech of the Athenians at Sparta and the
Problem of Justice in Thucydides,” Journal of Politics 48, no. 1 (1986): 84.
21
Brian Leiter, “Classical Realism,” Philosophical Issues 11 (2001): 245.
22
See Bernard Williams, “What Was Wrong with Minos? Thucydides and Historical
Time,” Representations 74, no. 1 (2001): 1–18.
23
See Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” 291.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 433

Thucydides is here dealing with a whole line of political development

which no longer belongs to the present and which no longer involves
any choice; it is shown as made up of good and bad elements which are
indissolubly linked together by the very necessity of this development.
Thucydides takes note of this development and explains it; and, in his im-
partial, theoretician’s mind, the particular case brings out the general law.
This scientific detachment, on which Thucydides’s impartiality is based,
enables him to understand, and consequently to justify, without prejudice
and without illusions.24

Thus the connection between Thucydides’s political and epistemological

realism: the Thucydides who confirms his sources and refuses to print
hearsay, who demythologizes the Trojan War and reduces it to economic
causes, who insists on distinguishing between fact and superstition (to say
nothing of his complicated treatment of popular religious belief), is of
course the same Thucydides who does not flinch at presenting the horrors
of the Corcyrean revolution or the brutal dealings of the Athenian ambassa-
dors at Melos.25
Treating Thucydides as a kind of scientific realist may be problematic gen-
erally, but is necessarily problematic vis-à-vis Nietzsche’s interpretation.
Consider his ironic missive “to the realists” in aphorism 57 of The Gay
Science: “you call yourselves realists and insinuate that the world really is
the way it appears to you: before you alone reality stands unveiled.”26
Nietzsche similarly derides the skeptic type (“a delicate creature”), which is
so congenial to realism.27 The causal logic that Romilly, among others, sees
at the heart of Thucydides’s analysis is especially mistaken:

One should not reify “cause” and “effect” as the natural scientists do (and
whoever, like them, now “naturalizes” in his thinking) according to the
prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and
push until it “effects” its end; one should use “cause” and “effect” only
as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose
of designation and communication—not for explanation. In the “in-itself”
there is nothing of “causal connections,” of “necessity,” or of “psycholog-
ical non-freedom”; there the effect does not follow the cause: there is no
rule of “law.” It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-
other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, and purpose; and

24
Jacqueline de Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, trans. Philip Thody
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), 272. Cited in Crane, Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity,
261.
25
Cf. Darien Shanske, Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 130–33. Shanske argues that Nietzsche denies the
connection between the two types of realism in Thucydides.
26
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press: 2001), 69.
27
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 129.
434 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed “in
itself,” we act once more as we have always acted—mythologically. The
“unfree will” is mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and
weak wills.28

For Nietzsche, sophistic realism is not a scientific approach as we understand

the term. Thucydides cannot be a mere rationalist. Nietzsche’s Thucydides is
not that of, for instance, Charles Norris Cochrane.29 He does not propose any-
thing like nomothetic explanations concerning human conduct.30 Whether or
not Thucydides is a forerunner to or influence on scientific historians, he is not
one of them.31
What is otherwise presumed true of Thucydides is largely true of most con-
ventional realists: that their political teaching derives from assumptions about
an underlying reality that may be discerned through proper study.32 For
Nietzsche, the underlying reality—the mechanistic scheme of cause and
effect—is itself a fiction, an invention of the “realists.”33 After all, there are
no facts, only interpretations.
It is in fact this absence of common ground, rather than any firm basis in
human nature or the international system, that induces conflict.34 One does
not grasp this central conceit by retreating to stable systems of thought.
Thucydides (like the sophists) accepts the “apparent” diversity of the world
and opinions about it, rather than relying upon abstract explanations of the
causes of political things.35 Whether or not Thucydides’s accounts of, for in-
stance, the rise of Minoan civilization (1.4–8) or the fall of the Pisistratid
tyranny in Athens (6.54–59) are truer is less relevant than the fact that they
do not entail a flight from the actual into mythologizing (especially Platonic
mythologizing).

28
Ibid., 29. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans.
R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 58–62.
29
See Charles Norris Cochrane, Thucydides and the Science of History (London: Oxford
University Press, 1929).
30
See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1956), 30.
31
See also Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2008), 162–63.
32
This error is in no small measure the basis for contemporary praise and use of
Thucydides; see Robert Gilpin, “The Theory of Hegemonic War,” in The Origin and
Prevention of Major Wars, eds. Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15–38. Though cf. Leo Strauss, The City and Man
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 181–82.
33
See Catherine Zuckert, “Nietzsche’s Rereading of Plato,” Political Theory 13, no. 2
(1985): 228.
34
This comes quite close to Hobbes’s conception of the state of nature, though
Hobbes’s “solution” is hardly congenial to Nietzsche.
35
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 46, 49.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 435

What is of greatest importance is not Thucydides’s acuity in seeing the

origins of maritime empires or the causes of the Peloponnesian War, but
the manner in which he chooses to see them. This is in marked contrast to
how we might evaluate a scientific historian. But, as Nietzsche notes, the sci-
entific man “is not noble.”36 For Nietzsche, Thucydides’s nobility is what
defines him and makes possible his other virtues.

Realism as a Matter of Character

A model.—What is it I love in Thucydides, why do I honor him more

highly than Plato? He takes the most comprehensive and impartial
delight in all that is typical in men and events and believes that to each
type there pertains a quantum of good sense: this he seeks to discover.
He displays greater practical justice than Plato; he does not revile or belit-
tle those he does not like or who have harmed him in life. On the contrary:
through seeing nothing but types he introduces something great into all
things and persons he treats of; for what interest would posterity, to
whom he dedicates his work, have in that which was not typical! Thus
in him, the portrayer of man, that culture of the most impartial knowledge
of the world finds its last glorious flower.37

Nietzsche’s reading of Thucydides is useful, because he does not distinguish

between Thucydides’s scholarly virtues and his human ones. Thus he reminds
us that before being a historian or political philosopher, Thucydides was a
man—that he was a wartime general and citizen of Athens before he took
up his history. His primary response to the conditions in which he found
himself was an active one. Thus both the writing of his history and the
manner of its writing must also be viewed as a kind of response to his condi-
tions and not apart from them.
This is also what distinguishes what Nietzsche will elsewhere call
Thucydides’s realism. It earns praise not merely (or even) for factual accuracy,
as one might praise a modern scholar’s theories, but because it entails a
refusal to turn away from or condemn what is troubling in humanity.
Realism is first and foremost a human response to our condition.38 It incorpo-
rates courage and openness to humanity. In a very different spirit than his dis-
cussion of the Melian dialogue, Nietzsche even employs the word “justice.”
Thucydides, who according to Nietzsche is not a philosophical believer in
justice, nonetheless displays a sense of fairness in his refusal to condemn

36
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 125. Though cf. The Will to Power, aphorism 443.
37
Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R. J.
Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 169.
38
The obvious contrast here is with Socrates and Plato, whom Nietzsche indicts not
for being in error about the truth of things but for displaying cowardice and
dishonesty.
436 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

what is human. Plato’s rhetorical commitment to justice requires unjust treat-

ment of Socrates’s interlocutors. By contrast, Thucydides’s quietism (as
Nietzsche sees it) on questions of justice and morality frees him to treat all
perspectives with magnanimity. As for those who harmed him directly, he
has little to say on the matter, and does not expressly indict his city of birth
for crimes against him. Tellingly, in the scant references to himself strewn
throughout the history, he continues to refer to himself as “an Athenian”
(1.1; 5.26). Cleon, the figure allegedly most responsible for his banishment,
admittedly comes in for some rough, if circumspect, treatment. In the
course of the history, Cleon is depicted as first bloodthirsty and demagogic
(3.37–40), then as an advocate of continued war in pursuit of his personal in-
terests and at the cost of his city’s (5.16), and ultimately as a coward (5.10.9).39
To this one might also adduce Thucydides’s presentation of Athenagoras at
Syracuse (6.36–40), who so resembles Cleon in both tone and substance.40
It is his refusal to indulge in moral condemnation of certain perspectives
that particularly marks Thucydides as a sophist in Nietzsche’s eyes.
Nietzsche notes of the sophists, among whom he includes Thucydides:

The Sophists verge upon the first critique of morality, the first insight into
morality:—they juxtapose the multiplicity (the geographical relativity) of
the moral value judgments;—they let it be known that every morality can
be dialectically justified; i.e., they divine that all attempts to give reasons
for morality are necessarily sophistical.… They postulate the first truth
that a “morality-in-itself,” a “good-in-itself” do not exist, that it is a
swindle to talk of “truth” in this field.41

Thucydides, then, is most sophistic in his unprejudiced depiction of an array

of (often incompatible) perspectives from the speakers in his work. His mode
of presenting speeches from men of different classes in different cities
throughout the Hellenic world—each speaker intent on justifying his own
cause—allows for a just rendering of each account (in contrast to Plato’s
depiction of Socratic dialogues, in which, per Nietzsche, one position inevita-
bly triumphs).42

39
Donald Kagan argues that Cleon did not wholly merit Thucydides’s depiction of
him in Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 187; though
Thucydides is not the only ancient writer to take a negative view of Cleon (see
Aristophanes’s Hippeis).
40
See W. Robert Connor, Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984),
171–72.
41
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 233. If the sophists only “verge upon the first critique
of morality,” who actually makes it?
42
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 235–36; Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 42. See Tracy
B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (Berkley: University of
California Press, 1988), 119.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 437

In this respect, Thucydides’s particular method of composition actually

serves, rather than detracts from, his meritorious position.43 Thucydides fa-
mously replaces what was specifically said with what was needful according
to the occasion (1.22.1). He might appear at first blush to be engaging in some-
thing like Platonic idealization or mythologizing—for example, doing for
Pericles what Plato did for Socrates—by making his speakers, in their own
ways, young and beautiful. Seen from Nietzsche’s viewpoint, however, it is
precisely Thucydides’s own hand in the composition, rather than the mere re-
cording and transmission (an impossibility in many cases), of the speeches in
his work that reveals his realism. For he does not merely avoid misrepresent-
ing the particular claims of his speakers or elide the harshness of their state-
ments, but contributes his own measure of art to present the claims as fully as
the historical record allows—regardless of the nature of the claim.
Nietzsche’s discussion of Thucydides’s “practical justice” also offers insight
into the two figures in his work who most resemble him: Diodotus and
Hermocrates.44 During the Mytilenean debate, Diodotus seemingly exoner-
ates the Mytileneans, who have revolted against the Athenian empire, in
the following terms:

Was there ever city rebelling that did not believe that it possessed either in
itself or in its alliances resources adequate to the enterprise? … As long as
poverty gives men the courage of necessity, or plenty fills them with the
ambition which belongs to insolence and pride, and each of the other con-
ditions of life remains subjugated to some fatal and master passion, so
long will the impulse never be wanting to drive men into danger.
(3.45.2–4)

Though Athens may pursue its imperial policies, it should not resent its trib-
utaries for rebelling, given the opportunity. Like Nietzsche, Diodotus does not
speak of justice between the vastly disparate powers, though he inverts this
logic to impel moderation on the part of the stronger, rather than futility on
that of the weaker.
At Gela, Hermocrates uses similar logic to view Athens from the other end
of the telescope: “That the Athenians should cherish this ambition and prac-
tice this policy is very excusable; and I do not blame those who wish to rule,
but those who are too ready to serve. It is just as much in men’s nature to rule
those who submit to them, as it is to resist those who molest them” (4.61.5).
Later, at Syracuse and then at Camarina, he goes beyond absolving the
Athenians of guilt in acquiring their empire to blaming the Sicilians for

43
See Clifford Orwin, “Thucydides’ Contest: Thucydidean ‘Methodology’ in
Context,” Review of Politics 51, no. 3 (1989): 345–64.
44
Clifford Orwin, The Humanity of Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994), 200–206. Though cf. Arlene W. Saxonhouse, Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient
Athens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 175–76 for the argument that
that Hermocrates’s understanding of politics falls short of Diodotus’s in crucial ways.
438 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

failing to stop them. He observes that the Athenians “have a right” to move
against them in light of their obvious failure to ally with the Spartans earlier
(6.34.8). Hermocrates, apparently considering it futile to blame the Athenians
for injustices committed, focuses instead upon the myopia of the Sicilians who
have failed to unite against the Athenians despite the ample evidence of the
Athenian imperial formula at work: introducing their forces under the pretext
of settling local disputes (6.77).45 What these two speakers have in common is
a certain Thucydidean detachment, and the recognition that, paradoxically,
justice is understood not in terms of conventional right or wrong, but in the
refusal to label certain political actions unjust when such categories them-
selves are wholly inappropriate.
Nietzsche does not suggest that Thucydides’s justness goes beyond his im-
partiality in presenting the range of human interests and claims.46 For the
bulk of the speeches in the work are necessarily self-serving. They are rhetor-
ical devices employed on behalf of a political objective, whether to motivate
soldiers, win allies, advocate a specific policy, or advance the self-interest of
the particular speaker.
On a deeper level the speeches serve to justify the motivations or impulses
that underlie the speakers’ goals. What the speeches almost uniformly have in
common is that they are intended to benefit or exonerate the speaker or the
speaker’s cause. Diodotus’s complex account of human nature, while
similar to that presented by the Athenian envoys at Sparta, is used to
justify the behavior of cities adversarial to Athens. Conversely, Hermocrates
provides a justification for Athenian behavior even within the context of
urging the formation of a wartime alliance against Athens.
The speakers’ rhetoric transcends their particular political interests, not being
limited to achieving their immediate goals, and possibly being harmful to them
insofar as its universal application would justify actions taken against the
speakers. Nonetheless, the universal scope of their rhetoric is not in the end
politically counterproductive, but continues to serve political ends. And gener-
ally applicable insight does not come at the expense of political success. The
justness they display is more akin to the justice that Nietzsche attributes to
Thucydides himself: they do not use idealism or partisanship to condemn
the self-interested behavior of others. One could argue that unlike
Thucydides they are Thucydidean characters or at least figures in his history,
but this is to forget that Thucydides himself was a player in those events as well.
Like Thucydides’s work, the speakers’ claims go beyond the merely inter-
ested or “political” and point to more generally applicable principles,

45
See Machiavelli, Discourses, 2.1.
46
Though cf. Donald Kagan, Thucydides: The Reinvention of History (New York:
Penguin Books, 2010) and George Cawkwell, Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War
(London: Routledge, 1997), both of which attribute partiality to Thucydides’s
account, particularly with respect to Pericles.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 439

principles that would apply even to political enemies. Like theirs, however,
Thucydides’s thought is irreducibly political because he remains a citizen of
Athens, even in exile. He personally knew many of the statesmen and gener-
als of the war, and his native city was one of its principal antagonists.
The reader may wonder how Thucydides’s ability to portray the multiplic-
ity of perspectives accords with the fact that he himself is but one perspective
among them, both as participant in the events of the war and chronicler of
them, especially given Nietzsche’s derision of claims to objectivity, of a per-
spective that transcends perspectivism—what Thomas Nagel calls the
“view from nowhere.”47 For, if Thucydides intends objective status, it
would place him closer to the philosophers than to the sophists.
Though Nietzsche does mock pretentions of objectivity, he suggests that if
one were to approach objectivity, it would only be done not by surrendering
one’s perspective, but through mastering many perspectives:
let us not be ungrateful towards such resolute reversals of accustomed
perspectives and valuations with which the spirit has, with apparent mis-
chievousness and futility, raged against itself for so long: to see differently
in this way for once, to want to see differently, is no small discipline and
preparation of the intellect for its future “objectivity”—the latter under-
stood not as “contemplation without interest” (which is a nonsensical ab-
surdity), but as the ability to control one’s Pro and Con and to dispose of
them, so that one knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and af-
fective interpretations in the service of knowledge.… There is only a per-
spectival seeing, only a perspectival “knowing”; and the more affects we
allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes we can use
to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of the thing,
our “objectivity” be.48

Because Thucydides shows his hand in the reproduction of the speeches

(1.22.1), he has not merely reported on what was said, but has been com-
pelled, however provisionally, to adopt the perspective of the given
speaker.49 This may be what Nietzsche has in mind when he elsewhere
praises Thucydides for his impartiality.50 Thucydides’s method is praisewor-
thy for Nietzsche because he does not attempt to separate himself from his
subject—the war. For such a separation would only be a retreat into subjectiv-
ity masquerading as “objectivity.” Rather, he recreates the war by reliving its

47
See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 207.
48
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 119. I am grateful to the anonymous re-
viewer for this reference. See also Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 117.
49
See W. R. Connor, “A Post Modernist Thucydides?,” Classical Journal 72, no. 4
(1977): 289–98. Though note that Nietzsche goes further in linking this perspectivism
to political realism.
50
See note 37.
440 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

myriad experiences of it—experiences which the reader is compelled, willy-

nilly, to share.
In considering the human requirements for pursuing this way of knowing,
Nietzsche’s most extensive discussion of Thucydides may be useful.

My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been

Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli, are
related to me closely by their unconditional will not to deceive themselves
and to see reason in reality—not in “reason,” still less in “morality”… For
the deplorable embellishment of the Greeks with the colors of the ideal
which the “classically educated” youth carries away with him into life
as the reward of his grammar-school drilling there is no more radical
cure than Thucydides. One must turn him over line by line and read his
hidden thoughts as clearly as his words: there are few thinkers so rich
in hidden thoughts. Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture,
attains in him its perfect expression—this invaluable movement in the
midst of the morality-and-ideal swindle of the Socratic schools which
was then breaking out everywhere. Greek philosophy as the décadence
of the Greek instinct; Thucydides as the grand summation, the last man-
ifestation of that strong, stern, hard matter-of-factness instinctive to the
older Hellenes. Courage in face of reality ultimately distinguishes such
natures as Thucydides and Plato: Plato is a coward in face of reality—
consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has himself under
control—consequently he retains control over things…51

Here, Nietzsche once again emphasizes the importance of control and links it
to the virtue of courage. These qualities allow Thucydides to include himself
and his fate in the political world he coldly surveys. In describing the horrific
plague that afflicts Athens, he makes use of his own suffering to improve the
accuracy of his report, without dwelling upon his distress, noting only that
“This I can… do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in
the case of others” (2.48.3).52 On the subject of his exile, he merely offers
the terse remark: “It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for
twenty years after my command at Amphipolis” (5.26.5). More importantly
still, Thucydides’s self-control allows him to adopt his famously detached
tone without clinging to Platonic idealized abstractions. Because self-control
and not objectivity is the criterion, Thucydides’s realism is (as stated above)
ultimately due to his character rather than his wisdom.53

51
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 117–18.
52
Contrast this austere presentation of his condition with the responses of his fellow
Athenians in 2.51–53. Note also that Thucydides make no reference to supernatural
causes of the plague, as compared with 2.54.
53
See also Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorisms 41 and 284, particularly in
light of Thucydides’s exile.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 441

The Limits of Nietzsche’s Account of Thucydides’s Realism

Having argued for the way in which Nietzsche surpasses the limitations of
contemporary accounts of Thucydides’s realism, a few words may be in
order on the ways in which Nietzsche’s reading may itself be limiting. First,
a good deal seems to turn upon Nietzsche’s association of Thucydides with
the sophists.54 Nietzsche presents the sophists as the acme of Hellenic civili-
zation. That is to say, the sophists are a direct (and admirable) projection of
the authentic Hellenic spirit, prior to the perversion of Platonism. By
placing Thucydides among the sophists, Nietzsche presents him as a peak
Hellenic type, as the sophists represent the peak of Hellenic culture.55 “The
Sophists were Greeks: when Socrates and Plato took up the cause of virtue
and justice, they were Jews or I know not what.”56
It is worth bearing in mind that while Thucydides may appear in
Nietzsche’s scheme to benefit from his association with the sophists, the
reverse holds true as well. As none of the sophists’ writings has come
down to us as wholly as Thucydides’s history, it is certainly useful for
Nietzsche to recruit a ringer like Thucydides to the team he is championing
against Plato and Socrates. This is especially true given that, unlike many
of the sophists, Thucydides’s recorded thoughts exist wholly independently
of the Platonic corpus; we need not depend on Plato (or Xenophon) for our
understanding of him.
Defining Thucydides’s actual relationship to the sophists is no easy busi-
ness.57 As Nietzsche conceives of them, the sophists exemplified and demon-
strated mastery of the agonistic pursuits that came so naturally to the Hellenic
spirit: “Every talent must unfold itself in fighting: that is the command of
Hellenic popular pedagogy.”58 There are two manners in which Thucydides
might be understood as an agonistic writer. The first is the arrangement of
the speeches within his work, frequently juxtaposing one against the other
(e.g., Archidamus-Sthenalaidas, Cleon-Diodotus, Hermocrates-Euphemus,
Nicias-Alcibiades). As individuals, the speakers are counseling that specific
policies be pursued, but they are also engaged in dyadic contests with one
another, albeit contests with very real political stakes. The second is that
Thucydides himself is engaged in agonistic competition with prior accounts
of Hellenic history, most notably Herodotus’s and Homer’s (1.2–22).

54
Nietzsche may have been the first writer to explicitly label Thucydides a sophist.
55
Joel E. Mann and Getty L. Lustila, “A Model Sophist: Nietzsche on Protagoras and
Thucydides,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 42 (2011): 51–72.
56
Nietzsche, Will to Power, aphorism 429.
57
Orwin is skeptical of attempts to demonstrate sophistic (or other) influences on
Thucydides: see The Humanity of Thucydides, 13–14.
58
Friedrich Nietzsche, Homer’s Contest, cited in Scott Consigny, “Nietzsche’s Reading
of the Sophists,” Rhetoric Review 13, no. 1 (1994): 10.
442 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Thucydides seeks to supplant older interpretations, which resort to or repro-

duce mythologies, with his own.
And, of course, the sophists were realists. Thomas Johnson has argued that
not only were the sophists realists as we would use the term, but they were
forerunners of present-day realists owing to their denial of transcendent prin-
ciples of justice, low view of human nature, and (given the first two) a belief in
the primacy of power in human affairs.59 Even if this is correct, it does not al-
together capture the spirit of the sophists as either Plato or Nietzsche presents
them.
Obviously, Thucydides himself need not be either a sophist or a Platonist
(and there is something unsatisfying about simply positioning him between
the two). He may be a singular figure, much like Aristophanes—who also
comes in for high praise from Nietzsche.60 Achieving an independent evalu-
ation of Thucydides’s actual relation to the sophists is a difficult task, given
the fragmentary record of the sophists’ writings. One might begin by ques-
tioning Nietzsche’s positioning of the sophists as a natural extension of
Greekness, rather than a newer and possibly radical development in Hellenic
culture.61 Is the Hellenic world that flourished prior to the Peloponnesian
War better characterized by a “strong, stern, hard matter-of-factness” or by
an “ancient simplicity” (3.83)?62
In Thucydides, the two are not altogether mutually exclusive. That is to say,
his writings do demonstrate a “hard matter-of-factness,” for example, in his
accounts of the plague in Athens (2.48–54), the stasis in Corcyra (3.81–84),
the ultimate fate of Plataea (3.68), and the destruction of the Athenian expe-
dition at Syracuse (7.84–87). Certainly, various characters in his work
display a certain “matter-of-factness” and then some throughout, especially
Brasidas, Alcibiades, and the nameless Athenians at both Sparta and Melos.
Yet even in passages where his austere tone holds sway, the mere fact of
calling our attention to certain details (e.g., the degree of attention paid to
strategically insignificant Plataea or to the massacre perpetrated by the

59
Thomas J. Johnson, “The Idea of Power Politics: The Sophistic Foundations of
Realism,” in Roots of Realism, ed. Benamin Frankel (Portland: Frank Cass, 1996).
60
See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 28. Like Thucydides, Aristophanes
is specifically presented as a kind of antidote to Platonism—one imbibed even by Plato
himself.
61
Both Jacqueline de Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992) and G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981) lean toward the latter possibility.
Romilly (137) also considers the very Thucydidean possibility that the sophistic turn
was an effect rather than a cause of upheavals in the Hellenic world, chiefly the
Peloponnesian War.
62
For an extended discussion that traces a consistent line of thinking about power
from the oldest Hellenic writings through the sophists to Thucydides, see Crane,
Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity, chap. 3.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 443

Thracians at Mycalessus [7.29–30]) may indicate that there is more at work

than the stern relaying of terrible deeds.63 And unlike, for example,
Callicles or Thrasymachus, Thucydides never expresses contempt or disre-
gard for the expressions of simplicity in the work (see his attentiveness to
the religious controversy in 4.97–99). Rather, he contrasts the ancient simplic-
ity favorably with the horrors of the Corcyrean revolution (3.83). Finally, it is
especially difficult to imagine a true sophist offering a valediction akin to the
one Thucydides provides for Nicias (7.86.5). This is not to say that Thucydides
himself piously endorses that ancient simplicity; merely that he demonstrates
a very unsophistic respect of it. Again, he may be a more singular figure than
co-option by the sophists would allow for. He is especially attentive in his
history to the changes wrought within his lifetime across the Hellenic
world—changes that Nietzsche perhaps elides by so tightly linking
Thucydides with the sophists and with the Greeks generally.
As some of the foregoing may demonstrate, it is perhaps too easy at times
to go along with Nietzsche’s account of Thucydides. For all his vituperative
gifts, for which he is justly known, Nietzsche also excels at praise. Indeed,
the fulsomeness of his praise is the flip side to the corrosiveness of his
scorn. Nietzsche can venerate what is great with such passion precisely
because he is an excellent reviler; thus his endorsement of one thing is
almost always at the same time a reproach of another, related thing.64
Because we so admire Thucydides, who left us his “possession for all
time,” we are inclined to offer our assent to expressions of admiration for
Thucydides, especially when expressed by so gifted a writer as Nietzsche.
The power of Nietzsche’s writing and the forcefulness of his thought is
such that it is difficult for us readers (this reader, in any case) to make use
of Nietzsche’s praise of Thucydides without willy-nilly acquiescing in his cat-
egorization of him as a sophist, ineluctably opposed to Platonism as
Nietzsche understands it.
It is necessary, however, to recall that Nietzsche’s most extended encomium
to Thucydides (in the Twilight of the Idols) does not take the form of a discrete
chapter, but flows directly out of his scathing remarks on Plato.65 This is not
an isolated incident, but is rather true generally for Nietzsche’s discussions of
Thucydides, which are inextricably bound up with his vendetta against
Socrates and Plato. Thucydides’s inclusion among the ranks of the sophists,
in Nietzsche’s account, pits him against Plato and Socrates. None of which
settles the question over Thucydides’s actual debt to the sophists (besides
his rumored personal connection to Antiphon).

63
This idea is central in both Orwin, The Humanity of Thucydides and Connor,
Thucydides.
64
See Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, I §7.
65
See also the entire chapter entitled “The Problem of Socrates,” which is produced
earlier in the same work.
444 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

A second possible limitation: while Thucydides does not order the person-
ages in his work according to an explicit ethical scheme or moralize about
their conduct after the fact, it may be asked whether his account does not
in fact resolve into a complex hierarchy of human types. That is to say,
whether his supposed impartiality does not prove in the end to be a partiality
toward particular figures whose understanding of political things surpasses
that of the other characters in the work. This is not as such a problem on a
Nietzschean reading, given how Nietzsche is himself free with evaluative
judgments. Yet it remains in question whether Nietzsche’s evaluative claims
about the character of Thucydides (or any other writer he praises) can
stand in the absence of an intelligible order. This, however, is ultimately a
Nietzschean, rather than a Thucydidean, problem. Nietzsche’s original
reading calls our attention to the relationship between Thucydides’s character
and his realism about human affairs. Whether Nietzsche’s epistemology
offers sufficient ground in the end for assessing that character remains an
open question, albeit one beyond the scope of this work.

What We Learn from Nietzsche’s Account of Thucydides’s

Realism
Without conclusively settling such questions, what can we still gain from
Nietzsche’s reading of Thucydides, beyond the cavalier assumption that
any meeting of two great minds must perforce be edifying? Nietzsche pre-
sents a Thucydides who is far stranger to us than the Thucydides as godfather
of realism that we learn of today; a Thucydides whose realism is of a categor-
ically different strain from the one with which we are familiar. As noted at the
outset, whenever Thucydides is called a realist, we can expect that his history
is about to be yoked to some theory of politics, whether it concerns the
balance of power, hegemonic war, the fragility of human order, and so
forth. But these are largely contemporary perspectives. Nietzsche’s reading
allows us to see Thucydides with older eyes. More specifically, his remarks
on Thucydides suggest three potentially original (to us) ways of understand-
ing both Thucydides and realism.
First, Thucydides’s realism consists not of discerning an underlying
reality made visible through careful scrutiny (or worse, through the
prism of a “system of thought”). Rather, it consists of simply observing the
apparent reality; it is in this sense a negative proposition. “The ‘apparent’
world is the only one: the ‘real’ world has only been lyingly added.”66 The
real is not a dark underside of human nature, hidden from ordinary view,

66
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 46.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 445

that accounts for political evils—which realism always implies an element of

moralism.67
Nor is it the Platonic real as ideal (“Plato is a coward in the face of reality—
consequently he flees into the ideal”). Thus reality neither amounts to an un-
derlying order nor a transcendent one. Put another way, Thucydides does not
attempt (in Nietzsche’s reading) to replace nomos with phusis in our under-
standing of human conduct.68 Indeed, in such a reading, there is no phusis.
He instead portrays, without fear or prejudice, the conflictual relationship
of competing nomoi. For Nietzsche, then, Thucydides’s realism does not
consist of the belief that power necessarily “inheres in social practices.”69
Rather, in the absence of true grounds for moral beliefs, human social life
will be defined by conflicts arising out of clashing values.70 Thucydides’s
work is the classic depiction of the partiality of moral views and their clash,
which he himself presents without partiality. In sum, Nietzsche reminds us
via his discussions of Thucydides that a world of radical perspectivism is
not liable to be a pacific or moderate one.
Second, and consequently, there is Thucydides’s unique understanding of
the relationship of human life—especially human political life—to the possi-
bility of establishing or uncovering a comprehensive moral order. The tension
between the two Nietzsche draws out perhaps better than any other commen-
tator. It would not be accurate to say that Thucydides (or Nietzsche!) is pes-
simistic about these possibilities;71 rather, that he is in a profound sense
neither optimistic nor pessimistic.72 By this, one intends that there be a ruth-
less moderating of the hopes that one’s sense of justice will be confirmed by

67
See also, Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 197. Of course, how much one
accepts this interpretation will likely be affected by how one views the authenticity of
3.84 in Thucydides.
68
For a fine consideration of this theme in Thucydides, see Arlene W. Saxonhouse,
“Nature and Convention in Thucydides’ History,” Polity 10, no. 4 (1978): 461–87.
Saxonhouse contends that, unlike the sophists, Thucydides is sensitive to the impor-
tance of treating nomoi as natural for the good of the social order (464).
69
P. T. Jackson and D. H. Nexon, “Constructivist Realism or Realist-Constructivism,”
International Studies Review 6 (2004): 340. See also Michel Foucault, The History of
Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books,
1990).
70
Kirkland, “Nietzsche’s Tragic Realism,” 56. Mark Philp also makes this claim in his
discussions of realism, but he associates it with Bernard Williams rather than
Nietzsche (or Thucydides) in “Realism without Illusions,” Political Theory 40, no. 5
(2012): 640.
71
Though cf. Joshua Foa Dienstag, “Pessimistic Realism and Realistic Pessimism,” in
Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme, ed. Duncan Bell
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 159–76.
72
Raymond Geuss, Outside Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 231.
446 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

political outcomes, or, to put things in more philosophic terms, that our
ethical aims can be fitted to an intelligible world.73
It is clear enough that this vision is not optimistic (though it contrasts well
with what might be termed the optimism implicit in a certain kind of realism
whereby rationalism about politics yields both better understanding and
better politics);74 but, seen through Nietzsche’s eyes, it is not pessimistic
either. And if it is tragic, it is a tragic perspective of a very particular kind.
This wedding of the tragic and the realist views is not specific to
Thucydides or his readers, but recurs frequently as a rhetorical trope
among realists.75 The rhetorical use of the tragic tends to take one of two
forms. The first form, best exemplified by Richard Ned Lebow’s work,
might be called tragedy as phronetic education. Lebow’s vision can be
summed up as follows: a proper appreciation for the tragic possibilities of
politics, especially international politics, instills prudence which is precisely
what is needed to avoid tragic outcomes. Properly conceived, then,
Lebow’s vision is in fact not tragic but hopeful.76 The second form is what
might be called tragedy as pessimism, a hallmark of the writings of Hans
Morgenthau and E. H. Carr.77 But this mode of tragic discourse is premised
upon raising certain hopes that are themselves contrary to a realistic spirit;
it is only the collapse of these hopes that induces a sense of pessimism,
which certain writers call the tragic.78
Though Thucydides’s characters declaim their hopes regarding specific po-
litical events (5.102; 7.77), he himself does not participate in expressing these
hopes.79 And it is the failure of these hopes to be realized—which failure
Thucydides duly records (5.116; 7.84–87)—that lends his work its air of
pathos.80 It is this sense of pathos that has led certain commentators on

73
Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, 163–64.
74
See Charles L. Glaser, “Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help,”
International Security 19, no. 3 (1994–95): 50–90.
75
See Hans Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1967) and Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
76
Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics, 43, 364.
77
Ibid.; Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to
the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1946), 101.
78
See Michael Oakeshott, “Scientific Politics,” Cambridge Journal 1 (1947–48): 347–58.
See also Nicholas Rengger, “Tragedy or Skepticism? Defending the Anti-Pelagian
Mind in World Politics,” in Tragedy and International Relations, ed. Toni Erskine and
Richard Ned Lebow (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 53–62.
79
The speeches of Pericles are especially knotty when it comes to this theme. He spe-
cifically rejects pious hopes as a factor in political outcomes (2.62), yet nonetheless
maintains that the Athenians’ fortitude and daring (so close to Machiavellian virtù)
will allow them to prevail—which is to say he paradoxically expresses a species of
hope. See also Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 174.
80
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978), 292.
 NIETZSCHE ON THUCYDIDEAN REALISM 447

Thucydides to read him in the spirit of tragedy.81 But Thucydides’s work does
not exemplify either of the above approaches to tragedy—and for related
reasons. Thucydides does not hold out the hope that a tragic (or other) ped-
agogy will ameliorate our hubristic impulses. But precisely because it does
not project such hopes, Thucydidean realism avoids the slide into a pessimis-
tic philosophy.82 Whether this realism might accurately be called “tragic
realism,” Nietzsche’s remarks on both Thucydides and tragedy suggest that
such a vision would be far removed from how modern realists interpret the
tragic sensibility. Or, as Nietzsche puts it elsewhere: “There are heights of
the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic.”83
Finally, to ask how such a perspective is possible is to ask what realism
about the world requires. Here, Nietzsche draws out what is appropriately
Nietzschean but not simply Nietzschean: the importance of courage in
Thucydides. Thucydides’s courage is inseparable from his realism.84
Courage prevents him from fleeing into idealism or the systematic thought
so beloved of modern realists (and itself a form of idealism),85 on the one
hand, and a pessimism that is contrary to the true spirit of tragedy on the
other.86 And courage is the precondition for Thucydides’s justness, which
flows from his ability to harness myriad competing perspectives. It is likely
no accident, then, that Nietzsche’s presentation of Thucydidean realism is ul-
timately about character—about ethos.
By way of closing remarks, one should probably attach a caveat to this
paper’s approach to reading Thucydides through Nietzsche. In keeping
with Nietzsche’s agonistic teaching, one does not simply use his works to
reflect or illuminate; one also tries to avoid being wrestled into submission
by the force of his interpretations. After several rounds, one is no longer
certain if he sees Thucydides more clearly, or simply Nietzsche’s
Thucydides.87

81
Francis Macdonald Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (London: Edward Arnold,
1907); Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics. Nietzsche does not classify Thucydides as a tra-
gedian, but it is striking how his praise of Thucydides echoes his praise of the Greek
tragedians.
82
Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, 165.
83
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 42.
84
John Zumbrunnen, “‘Courage in the Face of Reality’: Nietzsche’s Admiration for
Thucydides,” Polity 35, no. 2 (2002): 237–63. Zumbrunnen, however, does not treat
courage as being of a part with realism, instead contending that Nietzsche’s reading
prefigures “constructivist” interpretations of Thucydides. See also Lebow,
“Thucydides the Constructivist.”
85
See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 35.
86
Ibid., 49, 93, 121.
87
Though the purpose of this paper is to clarify what Nietzsche reveals about
Thucydides, not vice versa, it would be useful to consider how Nietzsche’s apprecia-
tion for Thucydides in turn clarifies what is unique to Nietzsche’s mature thought. It
448 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

One would not wish to say that Nietzsche’s reading provides a clear
window onto Thucydides, where others are murky. Such a reading would
not only be naive, but would also run counter to Nietzsche’s own epistemol-
ogy. Nietzsche’s account of Thucydides cannot help being illuminating, given
its source. Where it is most distortive, this is chiefly due to the warping effect
of Nietzsche’s larger project, what Werner Dannhauser calls his “quarrel with
Socrates.” Because he unquestioningly places Thucydides among the soph-
ists, whom he champions, Nietzsche must amplify the opposition between
Thucydides and Plato.
But one might say that part of the value of Nietzsche’s reading is that what-
ever distortions he may introduce into his discussions of Thucydides, they are
profoundly different distortions than those of our contemporaries (not to say
of other thinkers of stature, e.g., Hobbes). The strangeness of Nietzsche in
some ways prepares us for the strangeness of Thucydides. Though they are
not at all the same, they are both far removed from the comforting modern
readings of Thucydides as proto–social scientist,88 or Thucydides as secret
moralist who shows how imperial aggrandizers ultimately receive their
comeuppance.89 Guided by Nietzsche’s reading, Thucydides’s history can
be read less as a teaching (much less a theory) of realism than as an expression
of it.90

might even be that one cannot fully appreciate Nietzsche’s concept of the new philos-
opher until one has fully thought through the importance of Thucydides for him.
88
E.g., Josiah Ober, “Public Action and Rational Choice in Classical Greek Political
Theory,” in A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Ryan K. Balot
(New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 70–84.
89
E.g., Foster, Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Realism.
90
See Ahrensdorf, “Thucydides’ Realistic Critique of Realism,” 254.