Sotto un cielo vuoto. Il realismo politico nella storia del pensiero internazionale

Political realism is often reduced to a cynical, amoral view of both domestic and international politics. Realist thinkers, to be sure, regard any form of utopianism with suspicion and dismiss optimistic accounts of human nature, history, and politics. Yet by highlighting the roles of power, conflict, and interest in every individual action and collective enterprise, they not only offer a framework for interpreting political reality but also advance a critical theory of the pathologies of power. This volume—examining the reflections of Thucydides, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Carr, Morgenthau, and Niebuhr—aims to shed light on the inexhaustible richness and subtlety of the realist tradition in the history of international political thought.