Garry W. Runciman

On his book Great Books, Bad Arguments: Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto

Cover Interview of June 20, 2010

A close-up

I would hope that potential readers who come across the book in their local or campus bookstore will either, having glanced at the opening pages, be sufficiently intrigued to glance at the concluding ones, or vice versa. Even a casual glance at either should be enough to make the potential reader aware that the book is deliberately intended to be provocative.

I have little doubt that there will be specialists in Platonic, Hobbesian, and Marxian studies who will regard some of my criticisms as exaggerated, misconceived, or fallacious. But I believe that the attempts to rebut my criticisms, whether successful or not, will in themselves contribute to the understanding of how and why the three texts have sustained their enduring reputation.

If, accordingly, there is a single aspect of the book on which I would like prospective readers to focus it is its combination of provocative questioning with underlying seriousness of purpose.

Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto are great books. Their themes are as relevant in the 21st century world as they were in the worlds of Plato, Hobbes, or Marx. But that should not lead them to be exempted from criticism with the benefit of hindsight from a perspective inevitably different from their own.

philosophy / government / power / justice / sociology / political science / plato / ostrom elinor / marx karl / hobbes thomas /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009