The Classical Rationalism of Thucydides

Thucydides is interesting partly as a representative of “classical rationalism,” a type of rationalism that may help us to correct, or at least understand, the limitations of modern rationalism. Interpreters who approach the classical authors with this purpose in mind tend to presume that all classical rationalism is alike, that all the great thinkers of antiquity display a rationalism like that of the Socratics, Plato and Aristotle. The rationalism of the Socratics held that the political world is intrinsically burdened with certain contradictions, that wisdom grasps those contradictions, and resolves them within itself. This is most visible in the Platonic teaching regarding eros: ordinary eros is contradictory, but those contradictions are resolved in philosophic eros and the life of philosophy. I argue that Thucydides fits this pattern in some respects, but he does not hold that the life of wisdom takes up and resolves the contradictions of politics. Rather, it leaves them behind. The life of wisdom is not the culmination or fulfillment of politics; it is a life of immunity from the eros that rules ordinary life.