Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times

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.

1. Introduction; 2. Understanding the apocalypse; 3. Machiavelli's Savonarolan moment; 4. Hobbes 'At the Edge of Promises and Prophecies'; 5. Morgenthau and the postwar apocalypse; 6. Conclusion.

Alison McQueen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, California. She writes on the history of political thought, religion in early modern political thought, and political realism. Her work has been published in the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, European Journal of Political Theory, Political Theory, and Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy. She is the recipient of the American Political Science Association's Leo Strauss Award for the best dissertation in political philosophy (2012). She has held fellowships at Princeton's University Center for Human Values and the Stanford Humanities Center.