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The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra
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.
142 pages, Paperback
First published August 6, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 14, 2024
This book seeks to present readers to Kautilya’s social and political thought and tries to put Kautilya’s political theory into the cultural and historical context of his times. Just as students of literature are exploring writings from around the world and not just English literature, so must political theorists recognize that serious political thought has taken place beyond the borders of the United States and Europe.
Six chapters make this book up:
1 – Historical Background
2 - A Science of Politics For A Wise King
3 – Kautilya’s Spy State
4 – The Economy: A Socialist Monarchy
5 – Foreign Policy and War
6 – Power, Advancement, And a Theory of History
The reader of this book would discover a Kautilya in the milieu of the politics in which the man subsisted. And that would be unlike anything found in the West.
Kautilya sought rule by a ‘wise king’, and he noted continually that it was in the king’s self-interest to be unstinting to the people, to create something like a welfare state to provide work for all who needed it, to care for those unable to work, to keep taxes low, to provide for the public good by building roads and harbors and parks, and to discover objections of the people and address them rapidly.
In a word, social justice is in the king’s self-interest, as reasonable treatment of the people stops revolts from within and lends to eager support of the king in case of an attack from without.
Both Machiavelli and Kautilya judged political actions by results; the ends sometimes validate the means. They maintained that sometimes one needed to act in a conventionally evil manner to bring about the general good for one’s people. By the same token, quite often acting in a socially just manner brings the best results.
Kautilya was a legend at many levels, who did not care for recognition, yet left a legacy that remains unparalleled. His works provide an accurate record of his unique genius. One cannot understand Kautilya ’s ideas and ideals without understanding the Vedic philosophy and wisdom underlying their very foundation.
If you give a thorough reading of this tome, you’d get the point that the objective of the author is neither to worship Kautilya not to intend to be his hagiography or biography. It is hard to write one in the absence of historical records. Over 2,000 years have passed since Kautilya, and a great many books have tried, some even by fabricating or misrepresenting his teachings; doing more harm than good.
What this tome does is that it places Kautilya in his historical perspective while at the same time compares and contrasts his models with the archetypes of the contemporary world.
The reader of this book is fascinated to know how ‘Arthashastra’ depicts a bureaucratic welfare state, in fact some kind of socialized monarchy, in which the central government administers the details of the economy for the common good, indeed, to some extent, on behalf of classes that had historically suffered.
While watching Kautilya advise a monarch on how to balance the interests of Brahmin priests, powerful merchants, ambitious generals, and his own advisors, the reader is witnessing a timeless rendition, something like a virtuoso performance, by a genius of political realism. Kautilya’s political thought, nevertheless, leaves no room for confidentiality and individual rights because Kautilya advocates a ‘spy state’, a system of reconnaissance, each watching each, that history has undoubtedly only found in the 20th century totalitarian states of the Soviet Union and China.
In addition, Kautilya offers a work of genius in matters of foreign policy and warfare, including key principles of international relations from a realist perpsective and a debate of when an army must use cruel violence and when it is more advantageous to be humane.
We read Kautilya for the same reasons we read any brilliant political theorist -- He makes us see the political world with new eyes, and he forces us to broaden our categories of political thinking.
A brilliant tome. Recommended.
Six chapters make this book up:
1 – Historical Background
2 - A Science of Politics For A Wise King
3 – Kautilya’s Spy State
4 – The Economy: A Socialist Monarchy
5 – Foreign Policy and War
6 – Power, Advancement, And a Theory of History
The reader of this book would discover a Kautilya in the milieu of the politics in which the man subsisted. And that would be unlike anything found in the West.
Kautilya sought rule by a ‘wise king’, and he noted continually that it was in the king’s self-interest to be unstinting to the people, to create something like a welfare state to provide work for all who needed it, to care for those unable to work, to keep taxes low, to provide for the public good by building roads and harbors and parks, and to discover objections of the people and address them rapidly.
In a word, social justice is in the king’s self-interest, as reasonable treatment of the people stops revolts from within and lends to eager support of the king in case of an attack from without.
Both Machiavelli and Kautilya judged political actions by results; the ends sometimes validate the means. They maintained that sometimes one needed to act in a conventionally evil manner to bring about the general good for one’s people. By the same token, quite often acting in a socially just manner brings the best results.
Kautilya was a legend at many levels, who did not care for recognition, yet left a legacy that remains unparalleled. His works provide an accurate record of his unique genius. One cannot understand Kautilya ’s ideas and ideals without understanding the Vedic philosophy and wisdom underlying their very foundation.
If you give a thorough reading of this tome, you’d get the point that the objective of the author is neither to worship Kautilya not to intend to be his hagiography or biography. It is hard to write one in the absence of historical records. Over 2,000 years have passed since Kautilya, and a great many books have tried, some even by fabricating or misrepresenting his teachings; doing more harm than good.
What this tome does is that it places Kautilya in his historical perspective while at the same time compares and contrasts his models with the archetypes of the contemporary world.
The reader of this book is fascinated to know how ‘Arthashastra’ depicts a bureaucratic welfare state, in fact some kind of socialized monarchy, in which the central government administers the details of the economy for the common good, indeed, to some extent, on behalf of classes that had historically suffered.
While watching Kautilya advise a monarch on how to balance the interests of Brahmin priests, powerful merchants, ambitious generals, and his own advisors, the reader is witnessing a timeless rendition, something like a virtuoso performance, by a genius of political realism. Kautilya’s political thought, nevertheless, leaves no room for confidentiality and individual rights because Kautilya advocates a ‘spy state’, a system of reconnaissance, each watching each, that history has undoubtedly only found in the 20th century totalitarian states of the Soviet Union and China.
In addition, Kautilya offers a work of genius in matters of foreign policy and warfare, including key principles of international relations from a realist perpsective and a debate of when an army must use cruel violence and when it is more advantageous to be humane.
We read Kautilya for the same reasons we read any brilliant political theorist -- He makes us see the political world with new eyes, and he forces us to broaden our categories of political thinking.
A brilliant tome. Recommended.
December 21, 2022
Fantastic and fascinating read.
September 29, 2019
This book is an eyeopener about the Vastness of Mauryan Empire. With a population of about fifty million people, the Mauryan Empire was larger than the Mughal Empire two thousand years later and even larger than the British Empire in India, extending in fact all the way to the border of Persia and from Afghanistan to Bengal. Their capital, Pataliputra was probably the largest city in the world at that time, a city eight miles long and a mile and one-half wide, with 570 towers and sixty-four gates, all surrounded by a moat six hundred feet wide and forty-five feet deep. Also protecting the city were wooden walls—stone was very scarce—with slits to be used by archers. Pataliputra "was about twice as large as Rome under Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Amazing work. Thank you sir. Now I know why you were the favorite professor of Mr Barack Obama during his college days.
August 20, 2014
history and political theory
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews