Bringing the ancient world back in: Hubris and the renewal of realist international relations theory

The multi-disciplinary initiative taken in this dissertation will ignore the conventional academic distinctions demarcating the study of history, politics and economics. A revision of realist international relations theory emphasizing the political economic relations comprising the state will combine theoretical insight with historical perspective to acknowledge how recurring conflictual processes rooted in the human condition are institutionally expressed through changing material relationships. The realist approach to international relations has conventionally been understood within the field as minimizing the importance of how political order is institutionalized. To discard realism altogether in favor of an alternative approach would overlook how the writings of classical realists such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau are capable of providing foundations that would allow realism to address how material conditions coalesce with intra- and inter-state conflict to determine the expressed form a state will take. A revision of the realist approach to international relations will confront humanity's faith in the ability to design and implement institutions capable of eradicating or indefinitely postponing hubris' destructive effects by alternatively suggesting how a renewed realist appeal to a transcendent truth offers a more prudent way of moderating the moral arrogance that accompanies individual and collective expressions of hubris. By emphasizing hubris, this dissertation aims to provide a bridge between ancient political thought and modern realism and in so doing, contribute to the richness of the realist tradition.