Thucydides Philosophy

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Introductory statement: When looking at history as a whole, often times audiences wonder what people were thinking when blindingly obeying certain dictators, laws, people, etc. Many people to some extent say, “I would never do something like that. If that were me, I would have just said no.” It is a lot harder to just “say no” than people think. The movie The Wave is based on a true experiment in 1967, where a California high school teacher used students as subjects. The goal of the experiment was to show students that, under certain circumstances, obedience is inevitable. Meanwhile, Thucydides discusses his beliefs on history and the inherent nature of human beings in On Justice and Power and Human Nature. The movie The Wave correlates with Thucydides’ account of history and …show more content…
He calls this conduct the human condition (Thucydides 13). Thucydides notes that humans are inclined to act a certain way, and have a habit of repeating what they do (Thucydides 13). First, Thucydides’ accounting of history is reliable. His account is fundamentally evidential and testable. Thucydides’ account of history is based on facts (Thucydides 12). Thucydides claims that the past will recur in the future because of the human condition (Thucydides 13). Because humans are inclined to act a certain way, their behavior will repeat, ultimately impacting the outcome of future events (Thucydides 13). Thucydides identifies the human condition as an impulsive response when there is no fear of punishment restricting people (Thucydides 49-50). This egotistic reaction is to satisfy pleasure without the underlining concern of penalty. In On Justice and Power and Human Nature, Thucydides outlines the story of a plague. While during the plague, people began to disobey the law and stopped worshiping gods because a fear of punishment was inexistent (Thucydides 50). In the same way, Thucydides implies obedience in the presence of
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