A parallel argument might well be made in favor of political history, as opposed to formal political philosophy, as a means of addressing the fundamental question of politics, namely the problems of morality and justice, or even more fundamentally the problems of people and communities in managing to live together. The classical political philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, posited hypothetical ideal states, existing in no actual time or place, subjected to no real challenges. Their work, like allegory, forces itself on the reader, allowing little scope for the reader's independent interpretation.
In contrast, history offers not only analysis but evidence. Inevitably, the evidence is itself colored by the author's presentation, yet the evidence is still there, and the reader thus has much greater freedom to reach his or her own conclusions, which may differ from those found by other readers of the same work. It happens that classical Greek political philosophy expressed itself through history, to some degree in Herodotus, but much more comprehensively in Thucydides' Pelopponesian War (1972), a generation or two before Plato launched formal political philosophy.
Moreover, consistently with the above argument, Thucydides has offered his readers a scope for re-evaluation and re-interpretation that is denied to the reader of Plato or Aristotle. Thus, for example, Leo Strauss notes (1964, p. 144) that the English political philosopher Hobbes found in Thucydides an argument for monarchy as the best form of government, superior above all to democracy. As Strauss observes, "hardly anyone living today would agree with this judgment" (1964, p. 145). In short, different readers of Thucydides are capable of reaching quite different conclusions as to the lessons that he has to teach regarding the consequences of the Pelopponesian War, and hence by extension of the experience of political life.
The remainder of this essay will ...