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AbstractPopulism has lately become a matter of concern in both popular and academic circles. Yet contemporary writers have had difficulty parsing populism's relationship to democracy, partly because they are universally committed to the latter. It is worth turning to a thinker like Aristotle, who—despite not explicitly addressing populism itself—is able to reflect clearly on various democratic phenomena that we tend to consider populist, because he does not share our normative or analytical assumptions about democracy. Aristotle's discussions in books 3 and 4 of the Politics allow us to see that what we call populism is a function of a broader problem of class conflict in democracies. In light of this analysis, we can see populist movements not as an external challenge to the democratic regime, but rather as a characteristic expression of a recurring dispute over the contours and prerogatives of the people.

AbstractIt is now conventional in both pedagogical and scholarly venues to characterize Thucydides as a "realist." Few, however, have noted that the first major writer to describe him in these terms is not Machiavelli or Hobbes (alongside whom he is frequently placed), but Friedrich Nietzsche. This article seeks to investigate the particular character of Thucydides's realism through a close reading of Nietzsche's discussions of Thucydides and hisHistory. Three interpretations are explored: realism as a mode of investigating or understanding the world, realism as a set of ideas about the possibilities of establishing grounds for justice in the world, and realism as a matter of character.