No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations Since Machiavelli

(2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This wide-ranging book is the first comprehensive history of the development of realist ideas in international relations throughout the last five hundred years. Jonathan Haslam focuses on the emergence and relevance of realist (or statist) thought, showing how it has shaped political thinking and international events since Machiavelli's time. Haslam draws on an array of original texts in various European languages to illustrate the views of rulers and thinkers, to reveal how wars and other crises affected the thinking of those who experienced them, and to locate realist thinking squarely within the history of political and economic thought. The author explores four themes relating to modern era international relations: reasons of state, the balance of power, the balance of trade, and geopolitics. He contrasts realist ideas with universalist alternatives, both religious and secular, which were based on a more optimistic view of the nature of man or the nature of society. Realist thought never attained consistent predominance, Haslam demonstrates, and the struggle with universalist thought has remained an unresolved tension that can be traced throughout the evolution of international relations theory in the twentieth century.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Machiavelli on International Relations.Marco Cesa (ed.) - 2014 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Introduction to international relations.Robert H. Jackson - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Georg Sørensen.
As relações internacionais no pensamento de Thomas Hobbes.Gabriel Ribeiro Barnabé - 2009 - Philósophos - Revista de Filosofia 14 (1):45-77.
The Non-State Actor and International Law: A Challenge to State Primacy?J. Howley - 2009 - Dialogue: Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. 7 (1):1-19.
The history of the future of international relations.Donald J. Puchala - 1994 - Ethics and International Affairs 8:177–202.
The International Relations of Middle-Earth: Learning From the Lord of the Rings.Abigail E. Ruane - 2012 - Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Edited by Patrick James.
Carl Schmitt And The New World Order.William Rash - 2009 - Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia 4 (1):71-76.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-02

Downloads
31 (#445,444)

6 months
1 (#1,042,085)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Aristotle, Epicurus, Morgenthau and the Political Ethics of the Lesser Evil.Seán Molloy - 2009 - Journal of International Political Theory 5 (1):94-112.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references