Moral Chaos

the world “is not, if ever it was, governed by social forces; it is governed by governments”

For Thucydides, as for Hawthorn, practical politics decides the fates of nations, and political actors are subject to all “the limits of mind and body, the fallibilities of character and agency, the force of habit, the unforeseen and unforeseeable, and other people”. 

From Enlightenment and Despair