What shall we talk about this afternoon?
Thucydides gives us a fascinating picture of the great war that weakened and undermined and eventually led to the downfall of the Greek world. You might compare it in the broadest historical terms to the two World Wars which saw European power exhausted and fall under the shadow of not one but two new world powers. One topic you might like to think about is Thucydides' assertion about the fundamental character of power along with his analysis of that concept.
A second might be the concepts of 'tyche' or 'fortune'. Just how important are these and are we able to control them? Is our judgement or technology ever sufficient to control 'events'? You might like to think of more homely examples as for example the film Apollo 13, where NASA's astronauts triumph over sudden and unexpected disaster.
Thucydides gives us or rather works with an analysis of power, but is this what his History is about? What is our experience as we read his account? What do we feel as we see states and individuals carried forward towards success or disaster. What is the writing of history about, at least as we see it in this book?
Is democracy all it is cracked up to be? Should democratic sentiment somehow have prevented the decisions to execute the men of Mitylene and Melos or are democracies just as capable of cruelty as the worst dictatorships? And why should we have any such feeling at all, especially if everything is about the expression of power? Should power be retained in the hands of the more capable elements in the population and if so who are they?
Is there a connection between the manipulation of public opinion and power? Is there a difference between public and private morality? Do we expect people to behave differently in public office from the way they do in their private lives? And is there again a connection with what Thucydides tells us about the way words and language slip and metamorphose under the pressures of civil war?
These are wildly broad-ranging questions, written without proper refection and in haste. I hope you will forgive me for not preparing properly. Still, these topics will I hope serve as triggers for more general discussions than we might usually hope to have. There is no point in trying to keep Thucydides behind academic partitions.
See you this afternoon at 2.30!
Thucydides gives us a fascinating picture of the great war that weakened and undermined and eventually led to the downfall of the Greek world. You might compare it in the broadest historical terms to the two World Wars which saw European power exhausted and fall under the shadow of not one but two new world powers. One topic you might like to think about is Thucydides' assertion about the fundamental character of power along with his analysis of that concept.
A second might be the concepts of 'tyche' or 'fortune'. Just how important are these and are we able to control them? Is our judgement or technology ever sufficient to control 'events'? You might like to think of more homely examples as for example the film Apollo 13, where NASA's astronauts triumph over sudden and unexpected disaster.
Thucydides gives us or rather works with an analysis of power, but is this what his History is about? What is our experience as we read his account? What do we feel as we see states and individuals carried forward towards success or disaster. What is the writing of history about, at least as we see it in this book?
Is democracy all it is cracked up to be? Should democratic sentiment somehow have prevented the decisions to execute the men of Mitylene and Melos or are democracies just as capable of cruelty as the worst dictatorships? And why should we have any such feeling at all, especially if everything is about the expression of power? Should power be retained in the hands of the more capable elements in the population and if so who are they?
Is there a connection between the manipulation of public opinion and power? Is there a difference between public and private morality? Do we expect people to behave differently in public office from the way they do in their private lives? And is there again a connection with what Thucydides tells us about the way words and language slip and metamorphose under the pressures of civil war?
These are wildly broad-ranging questions, written without proper refection and in haste. I hope you will forgive me for not preparing properly. Still, these topics will I hope serve as triggers for more general discussions than we might usually hope to have. There is no point in trying to keep Thucydides behind academic partitions.
See you this afternoon at 2.30!
