The Return of the Theorists ― Dialogues With Great Thinkers in International Relations

Contemporary International Relations is as much a conversation between the living and the dead as it is among the living. Its debates are thoroughly rooted in and shaped by the thought of many bygone minds, both ancient and modern. With this in mind, The Return of the Theorists presents forty imagined dialogues with foundational theorists. They run the gamut from Homer and Confucius to Hedley Bull and Jean Bethke Elshtain, and span almost three millennia of human history, comprising representatives of a variety of cultures. The interviewers consist of more than forty international relations scholars and political theorists. They too cut across cultures, continents and almost three generations, and each is an expert on the work of the thinker invited. The Return of the Theorists will be of interest to anyone who has tried to enter the mind of bygone thinkers in political thought and International Relations.

Richard Ned Lebow is Professor of International Political Theory in the War Studies Department of King's College London, Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge and the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor (Emeritus) of Government at Dartmouth College. His most recent publications are Franz Ferdinand Lives: A World Without World War I, Constructing Cause in International Relations and, co-authored with Simon Reich, Goodbye Hegemony! Rethinking America's Role in the World (all titles published in 2014).

Peer Schouten is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and editor-in-chief of Theory Talks. He works on issues ranging from International Relations Theory to mining-related conflicts in Central Africa.

Hidemi Suganami was Professor of the Philosophy of International Relations at Keele before joining Aberystwyth University in 2004. His major works include The Domestic Analogy and Word Order Proposals (1989); On the Causes of War (1996); and, with Andrew Linklater, The English School of International Relations (2006).