Book Project

What is Real in Political Realism? Authority in the Work of Arendt, Machiavelli, and Kautilya uses three case studies to argue that realists from very different times and places understand that epistemic issues strongly influence how authority can be wielded sustainably in any given regime. Since the formalization of realism by International Relations theorists during the twentieth century, scholars have struggled to explain what enables the retroactive application of the “realist” label to historical figures who predate the modern term. I argue that realism’s primary nominal claim is its commitment to working with “reality”. However, because the contemporary study of the history of political thought is characterized by perspectivism, we must understand realism as manifesting differently across diverse historical contexts. This project offers a novel way of understanding political realism through the lens of authority. I propose that we identify historical writers as realists not by a shared, static doctrine, but by their strategic methodology: they are thinkers who work shrewdly with rhetoric within the specific epistemic frameworks of their respective societies to establish and maintain political authority.

ARTICLES IN PREPARATION (drafts available on request)

"The Protean Authority of Hannah Arendt's Political Realism"

Engages Arendt’s reflections on the historical collapse of traditional authority and the subsequent rise of totalitarianism. I argue that we must address the modern erosion of authority frankly if we wish to prevent insidious political movements from claiming authority by fabricating their own arbitrary criteria for self-legitimation. I demonstrate that Arendt urges us to fully embrace our struggle with what she calls a “protean universe”—taking the modern primacy of the phenomenological seriously. In the face of “the loss of the groundwork of the world,” I contend that for the political sphere to be properly aseismic, we must accept that an authoritative reliance on tradition or religion is no longer viable. Crucially, I demonstrate that for Arendt, this necessary transition does not (and indeed must not) entail the loss of a shared past, which remains vital for grounding a stable, pluralistic political reality 

"On a Science of the Political: Hans Morgenthau, International Relations Theory, and the Arendtian Alternative"

The paper investigates Hans Morgenthau’s turn to social science following his move to the United States and Arendt’s considered disagreement with it. It provides an overview of the intellectual context in which the discipline of IR and “Realism” were born by discussing the interlocutors and inheritors of Morgenthau and his work in Politics Among Nations. Even though he was influenced by Max Weber (who proclaimed in his Vocation Lectures that the rigidity of Wissenschaft made it incapable of capturing politics in its entirety), Morgenthau helped shape the popular perception that the political could be understood scientifically. The paper avers that while social science has its applications, painting a full picture of political reality requires us to be able to talk in non-scientific ways. To demonstrate this, I consider the realism of Hannah Arendt, who disagreed with Morgenthau’s decision to hide his moral commitments behind a scientific façade. Arendt believed that riding the rising wave of the epistemic authority of science in the postwar period was unsustainable in a world that was pluralistic as a matter of fact.

"Rethinking the Legitimation Crisis via two textbooks on Conspiracy: Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and Kautilya's Arthashastra" (coauthored with Emma Schmidt)

We argue that the authors’ contrasting views of fortune and their practical depictions of conspiracies reveal a fundamental theoretical divergence: while Kautilya assumes political legitimacy to be fixed and independent of public opinion, Machiavelli views it as highly contingent, secured only when the general citizenry possesses a stable, recognized modicum of power and safety 

"Aristotle’s Politics on Justly Disputing Fellow Citizens"

The word ἀμφισβήτησις (dispute, controversy) makes at least thirty appearances in Aristotle’s Politics. Three of these appearances concern themselves with things that are indisputable: the necessity of good laws, the balanced nature of the blessed, and the primacy of education. The remaining identify popular disagreements either about how justice ought to be manifested or about whether it ought to be a salient criterion at all. Aristotle claims that political dispute is eternal because citizens are always making justice claims, but their vision of a just community varies. He differentiates dispute from στάσις (civic disorder) which occurs when arrogance, fear, and contempt come to dominate citizen engagement; civic disorder follows the corruption of the regime. In this article, I establish the distinct significance of disputes in politics by proposing that Aristotle understands citizenship to be a function of active engagement in dispute to direct the city in the direction of one’s conception of justice. 

PUBLIC FACING

What is means to love a city: Niccolò Machiavelli and his Florence
The tradition of political realism has a reputation for being pessimistic—that is, for seeing and expecting the worst from the world, its individuals, and its states. Yet, despite all his realism, Niccolò Machiavelli was a romantic about his city. He famously said in a letter to his friend, diplomat Francesco Vettori, “I love my city more than my own soul” (amo la patria piu dell’ anima). In this short piece I make the case that proficient realists acknowledge and affirm their reality and attempt to better it even when the odds are not in their favour, even when they themselves are not optimistic.

Decolonizing Truth with Lewis R. Gordon
In February 2023, Lewis R. Gordon, professor and department head of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, delivered the lecture “Decolonizing Philosophy, Decolonizing Theory” at the University of Notre Dame. In this piece, I provide an overview of this lecture in which Gordon argued that truth does not exist “out there”; he holds that the pursuit of reality should not be preoccupied by substance metaphysics, and that the idea of the non-relational human being is completely incomprehensible. Gordon underscores that nobody can reasonably claim reality for their own singular use.