YouSaid · the spoken record

Harvey Mansfield

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38
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2026-03-18
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2026-03-18
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  1. “The old age perspective is probably not more correct. It's probably too short-term. And it also can induce you to try to prescribe too much for your successors, your family, and so on, and impose yourself on them. Unwelcome way”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It does Aristotle makes a remark about the old age and the young that old age has a long past and a short future, and the young are the reverse a short past and a long future, getting old dung. Makes you reminisce, I find. Perhaps to an exaggerated extent. And at the same time, it sharpens your concern for the present. So I wouldn't worry about it”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “No, I don't think Manlius is in decline. It's in eclipse. So you don't see it as much as you did except in bad versions such as the Bronze Age pervert. And at the end of my book on manliness, I had a chapter called Unemployed Manliness. That is the danger now that this part of human nature that men are different from women and want to be and need to express that. Is something We need to hold on to. That can't be repressed Trouble arising. So the decline in manliness is also Rise Bad manliness, the assassinations, for example, that you mentioned before, can be accounted for by the bad education that we get. And to some extent, the influence of points of view that deny manliness, particularly feminism.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Do something that you can be proud of. That's a pretty general advice. But I think it enables. Young man or woman His or her own thinking. And yet come out with something that Is solid and objective And Praise”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I have, they're not all that different. I don't think that the students in my classes have been that different through the 61 years I taught in character. And in interest and in ambition, women came along. Black students came along, Asian students came along. Those were all differences of ethnicity. But in character. I find them remarkable and easily attracted in a way. See the books that I assign. Answer to my remarks. And try to Their own lives In some kind of relationship to those. Great books. They don't all become professors. Most of them lawyers and businessmen. But they've found something that is valuable. And will serve them the rest of their life. Give them something to do in their spare time. Give them a kind of guide for what they're working at. I always say to them.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Churchill understood the character of liberal democracy, that it had a certain character. It needed to be guided. He was not from an aristocratic family. It was from a very high lane. Of people. And he was from High Society. And he saw that radical forces of socialism On the march But that the aristocracy couldn't sustain a battle against them or a kind of comfortable reception of them. So he took the country Out of aristocracy into democracy. In a way that preserves its dignity and gave himself great deserved fame. So that's what I would say he understood and accomplished.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So he was likening an election to taking the temperature of a patient's body. and say it wasn't needed. That stuck in my mind. It was a nice analogy, one that gives room for thought.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That was one of the thrills of my life. I knew it then. I was in England in 1953. And I went to the conservative party conference I was held in Margate, a seaside resort. And was able to Get into here, Churchill, thanks to my professor Sam Beard, who is a great student of British politics, and whom I was sort of accompanying in England as a student that year, and Churchill. Was back in power, and towards the end of his term and his faculties, going But he began with a greeting to his friend Anthony Eden, who was the foreign minister who had been in the hospital and had just gotten out. And the question of the day was whether Churchill would call an election before his time ran out. Or not. And Churchill said it's very good to be in the hospital when you're sick, but when you're well, it's not necessary to take your temperature so often.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Spontaneous order always presents itself as not spontaneous, as covered over in sludge and spoiled, prevented, inhibited. So it's something that needs to come to pass, but also if that's to be the case, needs to be liberated. I would say he overlooks the Hayekian view, overlooks the necessity of liberating spontaneity. That doesn't happen spontaneously.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Negative. I think that their idea of spontaneous order is an idea. Which is intended to be a kind of form of rational control and which can be seen in the original author of rational control, namely the Machiavelli. The Machiavelli wanted to let things ride, take the leash off humanity, especially the Christian leash. And let the nobles and plebs fight it out, as happened in Rome. That's how he begins his discourses. The kind of spontaneous order that arises from liberated human beings with all their powers and energies and attempts, the way in which modern order originally began, that order comes out of liberation, not out of imposition. So Hayek is just an advanced version of What was originally intended. But what was originally intended also included the imposition of That is required to liberate spontaneous order.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It's a help. It doesn't matter much. I took my family twice to Italy when I was working on Machiavelli. Florence and a year in Rome. And read pretty much and wrote pretty much as I would have done back in Cambridge. But the flavor of Italy comes out in Machiavelli. There was a joy and a pleasure to become acquainted with. It's a value of being a professor that you Get time off for such excursions, and also that you see a lot of different people come through the university so that you can sort of do what you're traveling by staying at home. and seeing them and their differences. They carry their country and their context along with them.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I'm not sure that there has been a change. I'm not sure that that is a useful speculation. It's better to not expect a great book. I'll say this. Philosophy has declined. Since the beginning of the 19th century, it's been historicized. Such that People doubt that a great book is possible. Because it's not. Easier or possible for a thinker to think outside his time. A great book is always one that is written in a time, but for the sake of the future and the possibilities of what will happen. For other times So I think maybe that ambition to write for other times, or Thucydides said, to write a book, which is a possession for all times, has left us. And that the authors Trying as they might have done Write that kind of book.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And the level of canon of great books, guess I would say in the 20th century, Heidegger, and I would add Strauss to Heidegger, though I know that that's a controversial statement.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “What God is going to bring to us, or what Machiavelli says, he substitutes this, what fortune is going to bring to us. And you can deify fortune if you like, call it lady fortune as he does in the prince. But fortune is making something happen, reducing the possibilities of chance, a bad outcome. So that depends on what we would call an empirical or a factual account. So, if you understand how People act in a way different from what they say or what they wish, then you can reduce the effect or the power of fortune or chance and make as a fact what you hope for in defiance of fortune. So reducing the realm of fortune or of chance comes about through what we might call empirical analysis. I'm trying to say that exaggeration is the requirement of empirical analysis, not the enemy of it.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “A small percentage because he exaggerates. He exaggerates. At the same time, you could say he's the author of making empirical propositions, something of what I've said earlier, the effectual truth. He tries to predict What can happen? He has in view a path toward greater Liberty and greater virtue that we now call modernity. Knowledge as prediction really begins, I would say, with him. So that what we call empirical, which Understanding based on fact is really a new way of knowing things in such a way that we can protect ourselves And predict what may happen or occur to us. Machiavelli religion is most important as a form of providence or prediction because most people don't want to know so much know God as they want to know what's going to happen to them. So they want to know what is going to”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “The context of the time is very important, but it must be got from the author himself and not from an historian's backward view, an anachronistic view from today So, for example, Machiavelli, his context is what he saw as his context. And he tells you what that is. So it tells you that the troubles of Europe or Italy. Can be put in the phrase ambitious idleness, a leisure that is unoccupied, leaves you nothing to do. So that's his picture of the Christian world that he lived under and which he opposed. to say he was some kind of Christian, as some scholars do Because he makes statements that indicate a friendly view toward it to overlook this view that Machiavelli himself offers of his context. But the main point is get the author's view of his context first.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “The authors, what I'm describing is irony, what distinguishes analytic philosophy from Strauss is the lack of irony in analytic philosophy. Philosophy must always take account of non-philosophy or Philosophers and not simply speaks straight out. And give a flat statement of what you think is true. To go back to Rawls based his philosophy on what he called public reason Which meant that the reason that convinces Rawls is no different from the reason that he gives out to the public. Whereas Strauss's reason is never public or universal in this way because it has to take account of the character of the audience. Is usually Less reasonable than the author.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “That argument, especially in a platonic dialogue, can deliberately be inferior, easily or too easily refutes. The argument which you are supposed to take out of a platonic dialogue and understand for yourself. Socrates always speaks down to people. He is better than his interlocutors. So, what you, as an observer or reader, are supposed to do is to take the argument that's going down, that's intended for somebody who doesn't understand very well. And raise it to the level of the argument that Socrates would want to accept. So to the extent that all great books have the character of downward shift, all great books have the character of speaking down to someone and presenting them. Truth inferior, but still attractive way. The reader has to take that shifter in view and raise it to the level that the author had.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I seen. I wouldn't say compliments, no. Strauss's approach, I think, is look at the context of an argument rather than to take it out of its context. To take it out of its context means to deprive it of the story that it represents. Analytic philosophy takes arguments out of their context and arranges them in an array. It then tries to compare those sort of abstracted arguments. Strauss doesn't try to abstract, but he looks to the context. And the context is always something. So every platonic dialogue Leaves something out The Republic, for example, doesn't tell you about What people love. Instead of How people defend things. Since that's the case, every argument in such a dialogue is intentionally a bad argument. It's meant for a particular person and it's set to him. So the analytic philosopher doesn't understand.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Analytic philosophers look for arguments and isolate them. Strauss looks for arguments and puts them in the context of a dialogue or the dialogue or the implicit dialogue. So instead of counting up one, two, three, four meanings of a word as analytic philosophers do, he says, why is this argument appropriate for this audience and in this text and why is it put where it was and not earlier or later? Strauss treats an argument as if it were in a play, a play which has a plot and a background and a context. Withdraw the argument from where it was in Plato to see what would we think of it today. And what other arguments can be said against it without really wanting to choose which is the truth?”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “That's no just appropriation. The labor theory of value is not understood or appreciated by Rawls. The good life is a life which must be earned. Think that's a fundamental principle of liberalism, which today is set forth more by conservatives than by liberals, that needs to be remembered.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Now Rawls is kind of slightly decayed liberalism. So I think Strauss would have liked to introduce John Locke to Rawls and show him how Locke set up things better than he had. Locke's state of nature was a better picture of the fundamental principle of liberalism than Rawls' original position. Rawls is much closer to Locke than of course than Quine to nature.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I was at a meeting of people and somebody asked about Nisha Nassau. And so I discoursed for a while and he sat there listening with a smile and never commented. I was actually pretty good friends with him on a political basis because we both had conservative political opinions and we belonged to senior common room at Elliott House. So I would fairly frequently have lunch with him. And then on a later occasion, I once invited Tom Stoppard, the playwright, to come give a talk at Harvard, and afterwards we had a dinner to which I invited Quine and he came because Quine had figured in one of Stoppard's plays. So that's Quine.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Regards to Quine, Quine famously said philosophy of science is philosophy enough. Strauss would certainly oppose that and try to introduce Nietzsche to Professor Quine as I once attempted to do when I was younger.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Look for a Straussian. Look at Strauss' books, especially natural rite and history, that, at the most easy one to begin with, but also at persecution and the art of writing, which is his explanation of esoteric writing, read what others have tried to do before you. Look for somebody. Somebody to help. I get a number of emails when people write to ask about things they have seen and ways they would like to go.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “You want the best. You want the best. And the best is in the original text. I don't think you want to substitute for that original text trying to understand it. So you need to pay careful attention to everything that is said in the way that it's said and in the place that it said. Strauss had this concept of what he called logographic necessity. Logographic, meaning where a thing was, what a thing was said. By a great books author had to be there. It isn't an accident. There are no accidents in a great book. Everything is as it should be, so to understand it, you don't want to go to some second rate explanation doesn't take account or that departs from the text.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “That matters fundamentally because people can always find it. If I just meet someone and introduce this, some of his ideas, they're always attractive. But it's true that there are many ways in which Strauss is not attractive to scholars and Democrats, by which I mean all of us Democratic citizens these days.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I think the future is, if not assured, pretty good. The basis for my thinking, that is the great books. I think Strauss emphasizes the great books, is that that's sort of the center of his teaching. And those books are so superior that they, in a way, guarantee their own future. Why is it that we still read Plato's Republic? said 2,500 years ago. I think the books will always be there, and therefore the basis for Strauss will always be there. I think that will continue. Whether it's true that in recent years, Straussian professors at the most prestigious universities have died retired and not been replaced.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Even to call him a Straussian is not correct. I don't think he picked things out of Strauss, especially from Nietzsche. He presented them to me. He was not the kind of student who was a patient, respectful listener. He had his own ideas. But he was interesting and he's smart.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “He's a deliberate seeker of what is vulgar and what is uncivilized, or say, on the edge of civilization, he wants to make a point of the dirty necessities of politics and of founding so that he doesn't start with the Stone Age or even the Iron Age, but all the way to the Bronze Age, but still just as people are on the edge of beginning civilization. And that might be where the greatest truth or the greatest insight into the need for violence is most obvious. So I read his dissertation that it was done at Yale. I've had not much contact with him since, but we left on good terms.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “He fits in the Vulgarian quality of Shakespeare's characters. I've written on that to some extent. President Trump is not a gentleman. He works at A level of discordant impulse. And he's always looking to say something that will Strike people Rather than persuade them, that led me to think of the vulgarity of democracy. President Trump is in his way more democratic than the rest of us because he's able to understand and to impress people who are not refined in their thinking and in their ways. He's not a man of courtesy. Some of the vulgar people in Shakespeare around Falstaff, for example, could be understood as Vulgarian Democrats that Shakespeare wants to present to us.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “You could think of Macbeth, nature of ambition, and the character of it. The way in which it is treated by pacifists or by victorious mastermen, the question of Macbeth is debate between the pre-Christian view of revenge and the Christian view of God's peace, the power. Ambition, the role of women, Lady Macbeth, urging on her. Less eager husband. This is a reminder of something that our political science, especially overlooks, the importance and the power of human ambition. Country is really based on. Kind of ambition that's reflected in the separation of powers. I don't mean to be wandering back and forth, but I think you could learn something about American politics by reading Shakespeare and especially Macbeth. Any number of lessons to be learned from Shakespeare. I just pick up this one that comes to mind.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Endogenous. Yeah, yeah, there's something to do with violence in there, but I haven't, no, I've read plenty of things and not read plenty of things that I ought to have done as well. So I can't defend myself out there.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Right. Well, political theory, at least as regards Machiavelli, comes to the fore. I don't see anything more to add to what I said on Machiavelli. If there's a trend to it, people copy it. I don't think inspired by reading political theory.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “So, in this way, I'm coming back to the other side of. For the question you raised on Machiavelli, that maybe conspiracy is always there and always justifiable. But my Americanism or my American principles, my liberal principles. Rebel against that And I do think that America can be seen to have done good things in a very major way throughout the 20th century.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “But if you make all your plans open and public, whoever it is that you're acting on, even if it's a friend or a friendly power, will react and perhaps foil what you plan to do. So execution requires secrecy and secrecy includes conspiracy. In the end, you can say the truth comes out after the plan has been executed, then people see what was underway the whole time. And at that time, you've got to show that what you did was according to your principles. Now, Machiavelli would say people can be impressed by power or by the fact of a display of power, especially a sensational use of it, as we just had with the capture of Maduro in Venezuela. That impresses people regardless of principle, and they begin to think that because it succeeded so well, it must have been right. You could even say maybe God intended it and justifies it.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Current politics, yes, because it's always possible. It is always necessary for government to be secret. Some of the work I did on executive power had that for a thesis. You can't ever speak without holding back something. So to this extent, Machiavelli is right. If you've ever been in charge of someone or something, you know that you can't say everything, that you know, so even a babysitter can't say everything to the baby. You have to say something which is understandable and won't cause grief or trouble. So all politics has that kind of need for equivocation. In addition, anything that you're doing, you need to plan. First.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Our openness, behavior, the great wars we fought, Not undertaken by us. They were not intended. They were wars of defense. He talked about the 20th century when America has sort of saved the world, or if not Europe, at least America saved the world from three great invasions. That was a considerable accomplishment which wasn't intended or conspired for by us.”

    2026-03-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source