ABSTRACT
In 2003 Ned Lebow produced one of the most arresting books that had appeared in politics or international relations scholarship for a good long while. The Tragic Vision of Politics 2 deployed an understanding of classical tragedy as a backdrop against which to read Thucydides, Clausewitz and Morgenthau’s contribution to political realism in particular and to politics and international relations more generally. The result was a tour de force of interpretive and analytical scholarship that was rightly lauded and which has played a significant role in the revival of certain forms of what is now routinely (though I think rather problematically) called ‘classical’ realism.
