Re: The concept of a 'Thucydides trap' is misguided

Thanks, Mark and Dan -- I hadn't noticed this piece. Now I think I'll look at something Zaretsky wrote out of his own research, his 1995 Nîmes at War. I spent part of a day in Nîmes with a class I was teaching, back in the 1980s, mainly at the Arena, and enjoyed that -- I had to restrain that class from trying to do oral history projects along the lines of "What did you do in the War" but I'd be interested to think about a professional's fine-grained study of what people did to get through the Vichy years. 
I do think that Thucydides belongs in International Relations and Political Theory, though! Hobbes, after all, started his publishing career there.
Owen Cramer

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From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group <[email protected]> On Behalf Of DANIEL P. Tompkins
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2019 10:14 AM
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Subject: Re: The concept of a 'Thucydides trap' is misguided

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It is common sense, and he avoids the errors too many are making these days (but why pick on Harvard yet again...).  As a tweeter named ThucydidesBot has said, nothing very new here, but the column is worthwhile and informative for many readers.

Dan

On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 12:06 PM Mark Davidson <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Some common sense about Thucydides for once, in an article by Robert 
> Zaretsky in the NYT:
>
> "Is it possible that the real trap, though, is the still widely 
> unquestioned assumption that Thucydides was a political realist? That 
> if he does offer lessons, they are not found in the study of 
> international relations but in the study of human nature? That his 
> brand of realism has little to do with the work of modern political 
> theorists and much to do with the work of ancient tragedians?"
>
> Full article:
>
> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.
> nytimes.com%2F2019%2F10%2F16%2Fopinion%2Ftrump-history-lessons.html&am
> p;data=02%7C01%7COCramer%40COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU%7C80a9157cd22344df58fc0
> 8d7525402db%7Ccfc7b13c12964387b3085de08fd13c99%7C1%7C0%7C6370683930834
> 44009&amp;sdata=eaxo8hPGwy1%2B4cxg7HIq6nIvPAkv8N5Lrpeb2L20ji0%3D&amp;r
> eserved=0
>
> Mark D
>