The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra

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Lexington Books, 2002 - History - 127 pages
The First Great Political Realist is a succinct and penetrating analysis of one of the ancient world's foremost political realists, Kautilya. Kautilya's treatise Arthashastra stands as one of the great political books of the ancient world, its ideas on the science of politics strikingly similar to those of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and even Sun Tsu. Roger Boesche's excellent commentary on Kautilya's voluminous text draws out the essential realist arguments for modern political analysis and demonstrates the continued relevance of Kautilya's work to modern Indian strategic thinking and our understanding of the relationship between politics and economics. Striking a balance between textual analysis and secondary scholarship, Boesche's work will be an enduring contribution to the study of ancient Indian history, Eastern political thought, and international relations.

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Contents

Historical Background
7
A Science of Politics for a Wise King
21
Kautilyas Spy State
45
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

Roger Boesche was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on January 24, 1948. He received a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University. He began teaching at Occidental College in 1977 and retired in 2017. An expert on political theory and history, he wrote several books including Theories of Tyranny: From Plato to Arendt and The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville. He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 15. After more than a dozen surgeries, he was told by one doctor not to expect to live past 60. He died in his sleep on May 23, 2017 at the age of 69.

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