Questions for the midterm
Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides’s Melian Dialogue has often been considered a key text of realism. Do you think this is an adequate characterization? Why or why not? Justify your answer with allusions to the text.
Also, describe the Mytilenian debate. What were the positions of respective positions of Cleon and Diodotus? Was Diodotus right to frame the argument as he did? Why or why not? What do you make of Cleon’s claims about empire?
Lastly, what did Thucydides think was the reason for war between Athens and Sparta? What lessons can we draw from the (whole) History of the Peloponnesian War about power and morality?
Running Head: MIDTERM QUESTION
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MIDTERM QUESTIONS
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Midterm Questions
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1. What, for Thucydides, was the impetus for war between Sparta and Athens?
To discuss the impetus between the War of Sparta and Athens to be described according to the directional Athenian historiographer, Thucydides, made people understand the important History of the Peloponnese War. The development of the power of Athens and the alarm which this divine in Lace daemon made war ineluctable. Mostly 50 years earlier, the war had been asterisked by improving Athens’s leading quality in the world. The moving forces between the War of Sparta and Athens. For Thucydides, the development of Athens’s ”quality and the consternation which this divine in Lace daemon (Sparta) made war fatal. Thucydides accepted that the Peloponnese War was unavoidable because of the improving inability foremost another ability, they needed remuneration war against other, and it continues further. The real origin of the war was the development of Athens’s powerlessness and its emotion in Sparta (Rhodes, 2008).
2. For Thucydides, humans are motivated by what three main impulses?
Thucydides, also mentioned as Thucydides’s Trap, is also popularized by American governmental scientist Graham T. Allison, who describes an evident inclination towards war where an emergent quality warns deracinate an existent outstanding power as a territorial and global hegemony. Three main impulses that helped motivate humans are Honor, Vengeance, and Liberty because Thucydides’ political psychological science earnestly researched different motives which humans can be motivated in Thucydides. A detailed reading of his production demonstrates that honour, shame, vengeance, and the tendency for in-dependency exercise great determinants in political dealings, excluding dealings among political communities.
3. Know the protagonists and their main arguments in the Melian Dialogue.
The Melians represent a neutral city and do not work as an enemy to others, so Athens has no demand to suppress. The Athenians’ negative aspects and if they evaluate Melodist disinterest and independence, they will look dynamic. Their capabilities deliberation about leaving Melos unsocial because they were not capable of getting success.
4. Know the protagonists and their main arguments in the Melian Dialogue.
The protagonist Mytilenians succeeded in Athens, Salaethus was instantly dead, and the construction concentrated on measuring the condition and balloting on the penal act that can be taken. The National capital construction, frightened of further insurrection, hurriedly final decision all of the male nationals of Mytilene to decease, also the women and children would be oversubscribed into bondage. For Thucydides, the determination was subsequently ready-made galley sent to Mytilene to transport the regal. The Athenians, angered through planned rebellion, thrashed all of the unfortunate individuals, numbered about one thousand.
5. What were the three virtuous and three vicious (corrupt) forms of government according to Aristotle?
According to Aristotle, three main virtuous and corrupt forms of government include considering the intrinsic government, the aggregation of the political system, and philosophy under the law are the abstract kind of authorities. And he discovers that all three are firm and states will interval among the three forms in a disconnected and disorderly procedure renowned by kyklos, including autocracy, nobility, and civil order. And the corrupt form of government is represented as a dictatorship, undemocratic systems, and theocracy (Jimenez, 2016).
6. Explain the Stoic conception of concentric circles of obligation.
The Stoic conception is one of the most famed through the description of Stoic cosmopolitanism finished the utilization of concentric circles in respect to oikeiôsis and the Hierocles employee respective people as well of the ordination of the ellipse. The first circle revolves around the human mind; the future comes the close family, moved by the lengthy social unit or families, and afterward the national assemblage.
7. Why did Plato argue for a philosopher-king?
Plato accepts that philosophers can become the best mortal of the social group because of their abilities to realize true morality and righteousness in a manner that different groups cannot perform. Also, because they would realize that the sterling self-welfare is virtuous, they did enactment virtuously and did not exceed self-involvement. He argues because of the opinion about philosopher-king, which seems to be a theoretical rule in which governmental accomplishment is concerted with philosophic noes. The conception of a city-state subordinated by scholars is archetypal explored in Plato’s Democracy, engrossed close to 375 BC (Nikitovic, 2014).
8. Describe Plato’s “noble lie” and why it was necessary for maintaining the Republic?
Plato’s noble lie is based on the service as a contract myth for Plato’s corking city. It is also known as the local or civil recognition myth instead of two accompanying myths. The combined foundation of that identity in the earthy fraternity of the full autochanger grouping and also they all independent figuratively calved from the Earth and makes the other cities. And it is necessary for the maintenance of the Republic because of the individual activeness in the society where he argued about the fact needs a progressive conflict. This advises that reality is never earned through a passive attitude toward human experiences and this estate that male person essential be retroactive in his hunt for actuality.
9. Know the three virtues and occupations/positions corresponding to the three metals.
Three metal virtues correspondent to 3 metal are religion, expectancy, and foundation, where divine quality has conferred on states that form for existence and devotion done the cognition of power and glory. And three occupations with the correspondence of 3 metal are student, lawyers, and politicians are required the cases belongs to the Republic.
10. Describe “just war” as formulated by both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (both examples of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello). Know the latter’s three formal stipulations. Know Aquinas’ “doctrine of double effect.”
The explanation of “just war” described by St Augustine in which the only retributive rational motive to go to war demonstrates the tendency for serenity and not to move harmony in command to represent as action, demonstrating the peace before going to war. Be pacific, hence, in belligerent, and also you can beat those you war with and convey to the financial condition of the order. For example, Jus ad Bellum is ethically sensed as the natural object of law that offers evidence confirming the alteration from serenity to equipped military force. Thomas Aquinas altered Augustine’s interpretation through creating three suggestions for retributive war, and it required to be waggle by a lawful authorization and involves around the right purpose. Also, a war cannot be humorist by various groups that cannot represent the lawful authorities. For example, when worker onset non-combatants engage their opposition on the far side of commonsense and conform to different regulations of anti-monopoly behaviour, they perpetrate no actions of war but as the action of murder. Thomas Aquinas have attributable with acquainting the generalization of dual consequence in his treatment of the admissibility of self-defensive measurement in the Sum-ma Theologian (II-II, Qu. 64, Art. 7) in which kill other’s attacker is even, he assures by providing that an individual not think to kill someone (Boucher, 2011).
11. Who was the author of the Arthaśāstra, and known as the Indian Machiavelli?
Artha-shastra, known as “The Science of Material Gain” and remarkable essential Indian extremity on the creation of political science, is attributed to Kautilya, also known as Chanakya. And he was the chief minister to the sovereign Chandragupta (c. 300 BCE), the beginner of the Mauryan phratry. Chanakya was known as the “Indian Machiavelli” “because his sacred writing has a governmental philosophical doctrine kindred to that shown in Machiavelli’s activity and represents as the King Maker (Shah, 1981).
References
Rhodes, P. (2008). Thucydides and his audience: What Thucydides explains and what he does not. Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 48(1-2), 83-88. DOI: 10.1556/aant.48.2008.1-2.11
Jimenez, M. (2016). Aristotle on Becoming Virtuous by Doing Virtuous Actions. Phronesis, 61(1), 3-32. DOI: 10.1163/15685284-12341297
Nikitovic, A. (2014). Plato, statesman, and philosopher. Filozofija I Drustvo, 25(2), 235-256. DOI: 10.2298/fid1402235n
Boucher, D. (2011). The just war tradition and its modern legacy: Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello. European Journal Of Political Theory, 11(2), 92-111. DOI: 10.1177/1474885111425115
Shah, K. (1981). Of artha and the Arthaśāstra. Contributions To Indian Sociology, 15(1-2), 55-73. DOI: 10.1177/006996678101500106