NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORICISM: FROM THUCYDIDES TO MARX
NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORICISM: FROM THUCYDIDES TO MARX

Summary/Abstract: Although the origins of Thucydides’ thought are scientific, its outcome does not avoid intersecting with historicism. Thucydides, while starting from the solid basis of human nature, which justifies the periodic repetition of historical events, since human nature is immutable, culminates in absolute relativism as to the purpose of his endeavor, the justice exists only in the intermediate of equal opposing forces. Thucydides’ ending of the story is relevant, subjective and clearly historicistic. On the other hand, Marx who does not recognize a fixed human essence, which determines human action and includes the ultimate human purpose, is even closer to Thucydides in historicism. While Thucydides assumes the eternity of human substance and embraces the relativism of the imposition of power in the historical field, Marx considers that the human substance is the product of this very class struggle, which is obviously governed by power relations in history.

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