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Thomas Hobbes has recently been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism. This article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legitimacy over justice, the relation between ethics and politics, and the place of imagination in politics. The thread uniting these themes is the importance Hobbes placed on achieving a moral consensus around peaceful coexistence, a point which distances him from realists who view the two as competing goals of politics. The article maintains that only a qualified version of the autonomy of the political position can be attributed to Hobbes, while arguing more generally that attending to the relation between ethics and politics is central to assessing his liberal credentials from a realist perspective. Against the prevalent reading of Hobbes as a hypothetical contract theorist, the article proceeds to show that the place of consent in his theory is better understood as part of his wider goal of transforming the imagination of his audience; a goal which is animated by concerns that realists share.

In European-American culture the tension between "what there is" and "what there should be" has been a constant source of political action. In the interest of becoming more "scientific," modern political science increasingly fails to recognize that power is interpersonal, not institutional. Arguing against the current mainstream thought, Andr̀s L̀nczi contributes to the recently renewed interest in political realism by suggesting we return to the basic understanding of politics: power and political action. The modern bias towards democracy has become fundamental, or to put it differently, democracy is a political religion today. This result from the confusion of two different realms of life: the realm of manners, the written and unwritten rules how we should live our lives, and the methods we apply when we wish to understand political matters scientifically. L̀nczi shows how the distinction must be sharply drawn between norms of morals and manners, and those of scholarly inquiries.

From climate change to nuclear war to the rise of demagogic populists, our world is shaped by doomsday expectations. In this path-breaking book, Alison McQueen shows why three of history's greatest political realists feared apocalyptic politics. Niccolò Machiavelli in the midst of Italy's vicious power struggles, Thomas Hobbes during England's bloody civil war, and Hans Morgenthau at the dawn of the thermonuclear age all saw the temptation to prophesy the end of days. Each engaged in subtle and surprising strategies to oppose apocalypticism, from using its own rhetoric to neutralize its worst effects to insisting on a clear-eyed, tragic acceptance of the human condition. Scholarly yet accessible, this book is at once an ambitious contribution to the history of political thought and a work that speaks to our times

Thomas Hobbes has recently been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism. This article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legitimacy over justice, the relation between ethics and politics, and the place of imagination in politics. The thread uniting these themes is the importance Hobbes placed on achieving a moral consensus around peaceful coexistence, a point which distances him from realists who view the two as competing goals of politics. The article maintains that only a qualified version of the autonomy of the political position can be attributed to Hobbes, while arguing more generally that attending to the relation between ethics and politics is central to assessing his liberal credentials from a realist perspective. Against the prevalent reading of Hobbes as a hypothetical contract theorist, the article proceeds to show that the place of consent in his theory is better understood as part of his wider goal of transforming the imagination of his audience: a goal which is animated by concerns that realists share.

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. We defend the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory's groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem, we combine insights from theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams and other realists, Critical Theory, and analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology and social construction. The upshot is an account of realism as empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena. We reject a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so provide an alternative to the anti-empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise.

This project responds to and expands upon Sheldon Wolin's magnum opus, "Politics and Vision." It critiques Wolin's unnecessarily fragile conception of democracy, as being by nature "ephemeral," and thus fundamentally non-institutional, by comparing it with the more pragmatic, realist approaches of two historical organizers, Saul Alinsky and V.I. Lenin. The project uses Wolin's insightful analysis of the state of American politics under late capitalism, to ask, "What is to be done?" exploring the possibilities of organizing and political realism for the Left in the current day.

Political realism is frequently criticised as a theoretical tradition that amounts to little more than a rationalisation of the status quo and an apology for power. This paper responds to this criticism by defending three connected claims. First, it acknowledges the moral seriousness of rationalisation, but argues that the problem is hardly particular to political realists. Second, it argues that classical International Relations realists like EH Carr and Hans Morgenthau have a profound awareness of the corrupting effects of rationalisation and see realism as an antidote to this problem. Third, it proposes that Carr and Morgenthau can help us to recognise the particular ways in which realist arguments may nonetheless rationalise existing power relations and affirm the status quo by default, if not by design.

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. We defend the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory's groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem, we combine insights from theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams and other realists, Critical Theory, and analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology and social construction. The upshot is an account of realism as empirically informed critique of social and political phenomena. We reject a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so provide an alternative to the anti-empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise.

Abstract
Despite often being condemned for having a paradigmatically unrealistic or dangerous conception of power, Plato expends much effort in constructing his distinctive conception of power. In the wake of Socrates' trial and execution, Plato writes (in Gorgias and Republic I) about conventional (Polus', Polemarchus'), elitist (Callicles'), and radically unethical (Thrasymachus') conceptions of power only to 'refute' them on behalf of a favoured conception of power allied with justice. Are his arguments as pathetic or wrong-headed as many theorists make them out to be – from Machiavelli to contemporary political realists, from 'political' critics of Plato ranging from Popper to Arendt? And if not, has our understanding of power been impoverished? This question has been surprisingly unasked, and it is one I address by asking Plato and his critics: What are the dialectical moves Plato makes in refuting Socrates's opponents and constructing his own conception of legitimate (i.e., just) power? Exactly how does he interweave his conception of power with a kind of ethics? How does it compare to recent conceptions of political realism and the power-politics/ethics relationship – e.g., after Marx and Foucault? While addressing these questions I also attend to the issue of Plato's historicity: to what extent do the limits of his language and world affect our reading of Plato and his political critics? Ultimately, I argue that and how Plato's conception of power and its political dimensions realistically have much to teach us that we have not learned.