Description
In this paper, I argue that Hobbes and Thucydides are best understood as theorists of emotions in world politics, not realists. Taking my cue from revisionist interpretations of Hobbes and Thucydides, I defend my thesis by proposing that, for both Hobbes and Thucydides, the breakdown of moral language is the precondition for war. The open texture of language means that words like “justice” can be used by orators to advance unjust causes or narrow interests. Hobbes and Thucydides were consequently concerned with how orators could inflame the passions of the people by twisting the meaning of words, and how the abuse of moral language could divide people and incite them to war. I flesh out my account by examining Hobbes’s appraisal of Oliver Cromwell in “Behemoth” and Thucydides’ portrait of Alcibiades in “History of the Peloponnesian War”: two controversial military leaders who played important roles in rebuilding Hobbes’s England and Thucydides’ Athens from the ashes of war (when words had completely lost their moral meanings). My account complements—and problematizes—current IR research on emotions in world politics. Although IR scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of emotions in world politics, they have unfortunately paid little attention to Hobbes and Thucydides: two canonical thinkers who offer rich insights into the relationship between rhetoric, emotion, war and order. Addressing this gap will help us reappraise mainstream and revisionist interpretations of Hobbes and Thucydides as theorists of realism, fear and anarchy.
