The contributors to this volume straddle the divide between the subfields of political theory and international relations through an engagement with political realism. As editor, Duncan Bell states in his introduction, “Realism is a term with multiple meanings” (p. 1). The volume is at its best when showing readers the many different aspects of realist political thought. Some pieces make compelling cases for including new thinkers such as Hannah Arendt in the realist canon, while others reveal hidden aspects of the thought of classical realist thinkers such as Hans Morgenthau. Yet, because realism is an essentially contested term, I occasionally felt that contributors were stretching the meaning of the term in ways that no self-identified realist would ever recognize.

The most compelling chapters are by political theorists who offer interpretations of classical realists such as Hans Morgenthau. One of the great tragedies of the high disciplinary walls between political theory and international relations is that theoretically sophisticated thinkers such as Morgenthau and E. H. Carr are rarely read in contemporary political theory. William Scheuerman, Stephen Turner, and Seán Molloy consider various aspects of Morgenthau's thought. Scheuerman argues that prior to World War II, Morgenthau engaged in a period of theoretical experimentalism where he tried many different approaches to make sense of world politics. One of these underdeveloped strands in Morgenthau's thought was his engagement with critical realism. Scheuerman's piece is a model of this volume at its best. It combines a rigorous history of political thought with a persuasive argument about how we can recover a distinct critical realist understanding of international politics that would complement the classical realist and neorealist traditions that dominate the discipline today. In a similar vein, Molloy discusses the role of ethics in the writings of Morgenthau and Carr. Contra the commonplace assumption that realism is an amoral theory, Molloy argues that at the core of Morgenthau's project was an ethical commitment to the lesser evil. He contrasts Morgenthau's view that the statesman must occasionally use evil in order to prevent the greater evil to Carr's more pragmatic view that there is a specific morality to the modern state system based upon sovereignty and recognition. Finally, Turner offers a different interpretation of Morgenthau as a consistent Weberian. In particular, Turner maintains that Morgenthau's focus on leadership was influenced by his reliance upon a Weberian conception of politics. Each of these pieces makes a compelling case that Morgenthau's work deserves sustained engagement by political theorists, and each proposes interesting areas for future research.

A second group of chapters consider classical political philosophers who influenced twentieth-century realism. Richard Ned Lebow argues that the conventional interpretations of the Ancients in contemporary IR theory miss the most important lessons that the Ancients might provide us about power, persuasion, and community. Lebow recovers two ancient Greek concepts: persuasion by deceit (dolos) and persuasion by strengthening friendships (peithõ). In terms of international politics, Lebow contends that peithõ is a more effective strategy for states because it fosters community, whereas states that used dolos to augment their foreign policies tend toward hegemony and empire. The author then uses this analysis to consider the consequences of rhetorical deceit by the Bush administration for the structure of the international community. Lebow's work should be of considerable interest to constructivist scholars who focus on the power of moral argumentation in world politics.

Nicholas Rengger considers the “hidden dialogue” between Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt on the relationship between war and politics. Whereas Schmitt felt that the friend/enemy distinction was decisive for the political, Strauss argued that the character of political regimes accounts for the permanent possibility of war in the world. While Rengger dissents from Strauss's view that war is a fundamental feature of world politics, he does think that Strauss's analysis of the liberal regime is useful for contemporary analysis of how states will behave in war. Rengger's chapter offers an important intervention into recent debates over the influence of Strauss's political philosophy on neoconservative foreign policy, and makes the surprising (yet compelling case) that Strauss's work contributes to current debates over the democratic peace.

A less successful attempt to bring traditional philosophers into the realist conversation is Roger Spegele's chapter. Spegele begins with a premise that I do not accept: “In international political theory as currently conceived each contending discourse … insists that it is the only valid conception of international relations, leading to inevitable despair at the self-evident unreasonableness of any such claim” (p. 122). This interpretation of IR theory ignores the many important ways in which different traditions borrow from each other and share fundamental assumptions. He then proceeds to engage in a textual exegesis of Martin Heidegger's work, and concludes that Heidegger's philosophy could formulate “a version of realism [that] makes space for poetry (in the larger sense), classical political thought, history, and commonsense” (p. 123). While these are all things that I would heartily endorse, I was unclear how his exegesis of Heidegger on questions of technology and poetry could help make sense of world politics in ways that the existing traditions of IR do not. The chapter would have been strengthened by grounding the argument in a phenomenon in world politics, or an illustration of what international relations that did have space for poetry would look like.

A third set of chapters draw upon nonrealist political theories to make arguments about what realism should be. Patricia Owen argues that an “ethic of reality” guided Arendt's normative commitments. Owen contends that it was this ethic that led Arendt to conclude that wars of annihilation are crimes against humanity because they do not acknowledge the reality of human plurality. Similarly, Joshua Foa Dienstag's chapter makes the case for the importance of pessimistic thinking—which he defines as “linear temporality, without the assumption of natural progress” (p. 161)—as a useful corrective to Whiggish interpretations of international politics. Finally, Vibeke Schou Tjalve argues that while the secular politics of the Enlightenment won the battle against totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century, this ideology is now vulnerable to the very politics of enmity that it vanquished. The Enlightenment project of critique must disentangle itself from the politics of disenchantment by authentic forms of meaningfulness that can grapple with contemporary political ambiguity. Each of these chapters offers compelling arguments for why contemporary political theorists should engage in the questions with which classical realists grappled.

This volume is an important contribution for the number of conversations in both international relations and political theory that it will begin. The contributors demonstrate the variety of different political philosophies that fit under the rubric of realism. This should, it is hoped, push realist IR scholars to question both their relation to the tradition that they claim as their own and to interrogate some of their core assumptions about the role of enmity, ethics, law, and persuasion. Yet, the volume's ability to stretch the bounds of what fits under the heading of realism stretches that notion so far in certain places that I am concerned that many realists will not recognize their theory within this work. From the perspective of political theory, Political Thought and International Relations makes the compelling case that the IR tradition of realism deserves to be taken seriously as a variety of political theory. Engaging in conversations across subfields can be tricky. Many of the fundamental debates and commitments in one field can be at cross-purposes with the commitments and debates in other fields. This volume, however, manages to stake out a space that will engage scholars in both IR and political theory.