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Professor Mansfield Is In · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

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Hello everyone and welcome to Q&A I'm Jay Nordlinger and our
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guest today is a
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SPEAKER_01: return guest and a favorite of this program Harvey Mansfield Harvey C.
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SPEAKER_01: Mansfield Jr.
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the scholar of political theory or philosophy he has taught at
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Harvard his alma
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SPEAKER_01: mater since 1962 his new book is the rise and fall of rational control
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SPEAKER_01: The book's subtitle is The History of Modern Political Philosophy.
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SPEAKER_01: Harvey Mansfield, so nice to see you.
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SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining me.
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's a pleasure.
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SPEAKER_00: As always, Jay, thank you for having me.
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You have taught for so many years the ancients,
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the medievals,
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and the moderns.
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SPEAKER_01: You do the whole sweep.
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SPEAKER_01: A Survey.
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And I wonder,
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I'm thinking about this subtitle,
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The History of Modern Political Philosophy.
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SPEAKER_01: When does that begin?
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SPEAKER_01: When does the modern begin, just roughly?
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SPEAKER_00: I say it begins pretty exactly with the writing of Nick Machiavelli.
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So not so much a date or a historical event,
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some kind of happening,
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but a thought.
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because modernity is mainly a thought,
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a thought which I call rational control.
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So I go from one version of rational control to another and
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finally to the end of
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SPEAKER_00: it,
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SPEAKER_00: you might say,
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SPEAKER_00: under which we presently live in the thought of Nietzsche.
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SPEAKER_00: So it's a kind of history but not the kind an historian would recognize.
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because I don't talk about historical facts unless they're
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referred to or important
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for the writers that I study and in this book I study eight
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political philosophers
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SPEAKER_00: is what they are Machiavelli,
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SPEAKER_00: Hobbes,
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SPEAKER_00: Locke,
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Rousseau where there's a kind of shift or turn and the next
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four the last four are
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SPEAKER_00: all Germans
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SPEAKER_00: Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.
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Harvey,
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this phrase,
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rational control,
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it makes me think of rationalism and Oakshot.
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SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're not quite, are they related?
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SPEAKER_01: What is rational control?
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SPEAKER_01: Just what it means on the surface?
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SPEAKER_01: Control from reason?
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SPEAKER_00: Not quite.
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SPEAKER_00: It's more elaborate than that.
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And it is something that Michael Oakeshott would not have liked
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or did not like.
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SPEAKER_00: But what it is is a replacement of control by irrational control.
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SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't start from nothing.
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SPEAKER_00: It starts from being against something.
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And it's against the main institution of irrational control,
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which was the church.
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SPEAKER_00: And it was against prejudice, superstition, and tradition.
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SPEAKER_00: And these three things were to be replaced by reason.
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SPEAKER_00: But what kind of reason?
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SPEAKER_00: So it's not a reason which reasons with other reasons.
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SPEAKER_00: If I can put it that way,
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it's a reason that works through unreason or irrational means
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that provide an
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SPEAKER_00: incentive or a motive to be reasonable.
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So my example is kind of a low form of rational control that we
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see today in cities
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SPEAKER_00: City of Cambridge has installed these speed bumps.
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SPEAKER_00: It wants its citizens to drive more slowly, more carefully.
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But instead of getting them together or talking to them and
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giving reasons why they
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SPEAKER_00: should drive more slowly and more carefully,
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SPEAKER_00: they install speed bumps which require you to do that.
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SPEAKER_00: So what it requires you to do is rational,
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but it's not by rational means or rational persuasion that it
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gets to you.
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SPEAKER_00: Another example would be,
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SPEAKER_00: well I was just in a hospital for a few days,
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SPEAKER_00: and a hospital sort of takes you over
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SPEAKER_00: It dresses you up,
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SPEAKER_00: takes your clothes off,
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dresses you up its way and forces you to lie where it puts you
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and to submit to all
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these various nurses who come around and wake you up and
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disturb you and do
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SPEAKER_00: everything their way.
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SPEAKER_00: They feed you too.
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SPEAKER_00: So
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SPEAKER_00: That would be a huge example of rational control.
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And you can see there's a kind of totalitarian aspect to this
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that we see later,
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SPEAKER_00: but not yet in Machiavelli.
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So Machiavelli speaks of necessity,
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and he has a term that he calls effectual truth.
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SPEAKER_00: The effectual truth is not the truth that he persuades you of,
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SPEAKER_00: but it's the truth that you discover from the outcome or the effect.
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SPEAKER_00: So if someone says to you,
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SPEAKER_00: I love you,
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SPEAKER_00: the effectual truth of that is,
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SPEAKER_00: I want something from you.
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So the effectual truth is a kind of comedown from the goodness
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or the imagined
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SPEAKER_00: goodness of I love you Knowing the effectual truth,
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SPEAKER_00: that makes you a Machiavellian
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You used Machiavellian as a noun,
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a person is a Machiavellian and it's also an adjective.
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SPEAKER_01: Is there an injustice to this adjective or do you accept it?
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SPEAKER_01: Machiavellian means
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SPEAKER_01: crafty and also deceitful, I think.
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But maybe I know some people who are devoted to the Middle Ages
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object to the way
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SPEAKER_01: in which people use medieval to mean barbaric or savage.
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SPEAKER_01: And they say, oh, no, no, they say.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: But I don't think you can say, oh, no, no, to Machiavellianism.
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SPEAKER_00: He does want or doesn't care.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe he does even want to have a bad reputation.
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SPEAKER_00: He's the only philosopher who's known for any bad quality.
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SPEAKER_00: Platonic is a certain kind of platonic love, they say, or Aristotelian.
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SPEAKER_00: But Machiavelli is much better known and much more widely used.
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and it does mean something like a dirty trick of some kind and
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I think Machiavelli
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was willing to accept the reputation ordinary reputation that
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comes from that
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because I think he thought that people who were good at dirty
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tricks would be
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impressed by that term and would read his books and learn how
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to do it really
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because Machiavelli thinks that there are these people who are
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sort of natural
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Machiavellians who have an evil temperament and people who have
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talent for the job
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but they don't know how to be altogether bad and that's a
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wonderful phrase that he
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uses knowing how to be altogether bad and that means that you
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have to look at
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SPEAKER_00: everything as if it were necessary
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So you can justify your dirty trick because it was necessary
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for some reason you can explain.
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SPEAKER_00: And necessary replaces good.
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So Machiavelli says he's replacing the notion of imagined good
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with actual
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SPEAKER_00: Necessity.
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Necessity becomes the guide and purpose that you must use to
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succeed in life.
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SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you find your own ruin, he says, if you try to be good.
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If you try to be good among so many who are not good,
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so you'll come to grief.
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SPEAKER_01: Harvey,
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SPEAKER_01: I think you said on this program,
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SPEAKER_01: one of our conversations some years ago,
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SPEAKER_01: that your big four,
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SPEAKER_01: your top four are Aristotle,
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SPEAKER_01: I'm going in chronological order,
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SPEAKER_01: Aristotle,
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SPEAKER_01: Machiavelli,
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SPEAKER_01: Tocqueville,
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SPEAKER_01: and Strauss.
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SPEAKER_01: Would you stick with that?
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SPEAKER_01: Do you have additions?
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SPEAKER_01: Do you have subtractions?
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SPEAKER_00: No, I still think that...
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SPEAKER_00: That's a good number.
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SPEAKER_01: That's not a bad quartet.
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SPEAKER_00: That's not a bad quartet.
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SPEAKER_00: You could take Machiavelli out of it and still perhaps go right,
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but you wouldn't have a full sense of what modernity or what
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the modern world
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SPEAKER_00: stands for.
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SPEAKER_00: So I'll stay with those four.
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I want to tell our listeners and viewers that Harvey Mansfield
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is known not only as
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SPEAKER_01: a sharp thinker,
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SPEAKER_01: but also as a sharp dresser and with a distinct sense of style.
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SPEAKER_01: And I thought,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: I'm looking kind of schlubby today with my sweater,
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SPEAKER_01: but I thought maybe I should dress up for Harvey and didn't.
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But I was thinking about rational control and you were talking
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about your stay in
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SPEAKER_01: the hospital and how other people dress you.
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SPEAKER_01: For an individual like you and a stylish person like you,
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SPEAKER_01: that must have been especially offensive.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, you dress yourself and have an array of hats.
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That was a rather painful example of the wrong kind of rational
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control,
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I think.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, but you could say it's also an example of necessity.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm
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SPEAKER_01: I assume that you've sort of read everything in your field.
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SPEAKER_01: You've read the ancients, the medievals, the moderns.
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SPEAKER_01: You know the field of political philosophy.
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SPEAKER_01: But I wonder, to use a Bill Buckley word, is there a lacuna?
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Is there something you haven't read that you want to read or
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need to read?
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SPEAKER_01: Anything at all?
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, look, I'm not as widely read as some other people.
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I try to go deep and to read some books more carefully rather
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than try to get a
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SPEAKER_00: quick glimpse at everything.
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SPEAKER_00: So right now, I've just started to work on Gulliver's Travels.
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On Jonathan Swift It's a satire So there are other satires Say
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Rabelais Which I
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haven't read I'm not sure how much I'll get to And there's a
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whole raft of books I
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wish I could read Which I now realize I won't have time for And
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that's partly the
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SPEAKER_00: way I organize this book too
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SPEAKER_00: on the Rise and Fall of Rational Control.
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SPEAKER_00: Just eight figures,
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SPEAKER_00: eight philosophers,
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that's enough to give you a notion of all the changes that
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occurred to modern
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philosophy and the challenges it faced and the versions that it
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came up with.
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SPEAKER_00: But you could include a lot more people as well.
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Harvey um tell us a little about your routine do you read at a
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particular time do
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you read in the morning in the evening or whenever the spirit
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moves you um do you
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have a schedule or is it just kind of day by day I do and I I'm
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I do have a
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schedule I'm retired now so I'm not teaching in the morning as
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I or sort of late
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SPEAKER_00: morning as I usually would um
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SPEAKER_00: So I get up to do my exercises and I work in the morning,
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SPEAKER_00: mostly,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: from nine to about one o'clock,
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SPEAKER_00: then lunch.
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SPEAKER_00: Then I have a nap because I'm 94 years old.
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SPEAKER_00: And then I work from about four o'clock to seven.
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SPEAKER_00: And my wife and I usually watch some episode of TV or
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SPEAKER_00: some show after dinner.
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SPEAKER_01: Is there a series you're enjoying now?
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SPEAKER_00: Engrenage.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a French show.
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SPEAKER_00: That's very good.
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SPEAKER_00: But we used to watch The Wire and Breaking Bad and Sopranos.
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SPEAKER_00: All these normal things like that.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Harvey, when
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SPEAKER_01: When we're young,
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SPEAKER_01: we have sort of clear opinions,
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SPEAKER_01: strong opinions,
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SPEAKER_01: favorites about politics,
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SPEAKER_01: philosophy,
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SPEAKER_01: literature,
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SPEAKER_01: music,
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SPEAKER_01: and then our views may shift as we ripen.
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SPEAKER_01: And I wonder,
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SPEAKER_01: sticking with political philosophers,
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SPEAKER_01: political theorists,
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SPEAKER_01: are there some people who have risen in your estimation over the years,
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SPEAKER_01: or maybe some people who have fallen?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, I would say that's probably correct.
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SPEAKER_00: John Rawls,
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SPEAKER_00: for example,
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SPEAKER_00: is the famous Harvard philosopher whose book,
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SPEAKER_00: A Theory of Justice,
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SPEAKER_00: sort of took the profession by storm.
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't like so much when it came out, but I now think better of it.
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SPEAKER_00: And also,
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SPEAKER_00: works that came after that,
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SPEAKER_00: that he wrote,
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seemed to me to show that he was more comprehensive and less
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dogmatic than I first
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SPEAKER_00: thought.
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SPEAKER_00: So that would be an example of my view going up.
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SPEAKER_00: My view going down, I forget that.
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SPEAKER_00: Probably wise.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: And this question,
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SPEAKER_01: Bill Buckley used to say,
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SPEAKER_01: that question's like,
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SPEAKER_01: peeking duck requires 24 hours notice.
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SPEAKER_01: But I'm giving you notice at all.
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SPEAKER_01: I have on my list for you here the word sleepers.
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People,
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political thinkers who are underrated,
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ought to be better known,
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unsung.
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SPEAKER_01: Do you have any like that?
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Yes well that's the one I learned from Leo Strauss and that
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would be Xenophon
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Xenophon who was a friend of Socrates like Plato and sort of
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but he wrote dialogues
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that were less attractive less sensational less brilliant than
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Plato's so he stands
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SPEAKER_00: in Plato's shadow and people think that
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SPEAKER_00: He was kind of dull,
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a country gentleman who didn't have anything much of
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originality to propose,
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SPEAKER_00: and all that is wrong.
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SPEAKER_01: Good to know.
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SPEAKER_01: Harvey,
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SPEAKER_01: we had recently on this program Cass Sunstein,
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SPEAKER_01: and he is a little sunnier than I am about
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politics right now I'm in kind of a cynical stage or you might
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call it a realistic
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one I don't know but on my darker days Harvey I wonder whether
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man is naturally
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authoritarian or inclined to the authoritarian inclined to the
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dictatorial and Cass
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SPEAKER_01: says no he thinks better of man right now than I do
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You wrote a book I love called The Spirit of Liberalism And I
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wonder whether This
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is such an old subject I hope it's okay that I bring it up It's
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something that
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people have debated for centuries Discussed for centuries Does
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liberalism contain
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SPEAKER_01: within it the seeds of its own destruction In other words,
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bad guys use liberalism to undermine and defeat liberalism And
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I sometimes think
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SPEAKER_01: Liberalism is just so fragile, so exceptional, and indeed unnatural.
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SPEAKER_01: And then other voices say, no, it's more resilient than you think.
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Well,
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I think liberalism is a philosophy that always stops short of
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completion.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's because liberalism lets you be
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SPEAKER_00: Have your say and have it your way.
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SPEAKER_00: So liberalism has this empty center,
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SPEAKER_00: I call it,
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SPEAKER_00: that it says you have a right to say what you want,
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SPEAKER_00: but it doesn't tell you what to say.
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And that you have a right to behave the way you want,
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except it doesn't tell you how to behave.
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So it doesn't give you the good and that's its incompleteness
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and that's its formality.
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It's always possible for the bad guys to capture liberalism
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because they take
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SPEAKER_00: advantage of the rights that liberalism offers even to its enemies.
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The spirit of liberalism is the enthusiasm that it gives to
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people who get to live
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SPEAKER_00: according to a right.
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SPEAKER_00: So, economically, you get to live a life of getting ahead.
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SPEAKER_00: That's typical liberal.
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You're not satisfied with what your parents were,
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or you're not satisfied with just,
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well,
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ordinary expectations or you are but you just want to do what
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an American tries to
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do you get a job and get married and have a family that's all
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getting ahead and
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that's the kind of spirit or energy of taking responsibility
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for your life because
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SPEAKER_00: you have a right and that right
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turns into duties when you see the things that you have to do
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in order to succeed
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SPEAKER_00: in fulfilling your right.
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SPEAKER_00: So that would be the spirit of liberalism.
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And then the danger is that,
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well,
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see,
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liberalism is about self-preservation.
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SPEAKER_00: And self-preservation can be attacked from the left
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SPEAKER_00: When you say that's too selfish,
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SPEAKER_00: you've got to worry more about the community or what is common to us.
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SPEAKER_00: Or the right can say self-preservation,
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SPEAKER_00: that's too ignoble,
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SPEAKER_00: that's base,
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SPEAKER_00: that's stifling,
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SPEAKER_00: it doesn't give you anything to strive for.
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So those two sort of enemies of liberalism are always on the
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perimeter of it.
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So that means that America is not a country that's safe because
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it's liberal,
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SPEAKER_00: but it's a country that has,
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SPEAKER_00: you use the word resilience,
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SPEAKER_00: it can come back from mistakes.
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in a way that otherwise wouldn't be possible because it has
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this freedom that other
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SPEAKER_00: more complete philosophies don't have.
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you've awakened so many things in me in those words I want to
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read you something a
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passage that I've been reading on this program my regular
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listeners will forgive me
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you spoke of enemies and living with them and I've been quoting
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Ortega y Gasset in
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his Revolt of the Masses this is the passage liberalism it is
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well to recall this
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SPEAKER_01: is the supreme form of generosity
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it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and
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hence it is the
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noblest cry that has ever resounded on this planet it announces
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the determination
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to share existence with the enemy more than that with an enemy
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that is weak it was
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incredible that the human species should have arrived at so
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noble an attitude
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so paradoxical so refined so acrobatic and this is what kills
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me Harvey so
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anti-natural hence it is not to be wondered at that this same
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humanity should soon
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appear eager to get rid of it it is a discipline too difficult
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and complex to take
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SPEAKER_01: firm root on earth Sunstein didn't buy that I
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In My Darker Moments I Buy It And I Hope It's Not True Well
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That Is A Noble
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Statement Of Liberalism One Might Want To Introduce A
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Distinction Between Enemy And
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Opponent That You've Got An Opponent If You're Liberal You've
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Got An Opponent And A
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SPEAKER_00: Conservative But Then You've Got An Enemy In China Russia And Iran Where
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SPEAKER_00: freedom and rights are unknown.
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So you need to make that distinction between liberalism as a
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system and the
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SPEAKER_00: liberalism of liberals today,
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SPEAKER_00: the people called liberals,
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SPEAKER_00: who are distinct from conservatives.
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So conservatives are liberal in the older sense,
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the 17th century sense of liberalism.
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SPEAKER_00: about liberalism of Locke and Montesquieu.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think many of them,
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SPEAKER_00: or even most of them,
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realize that they have this sort of common background where the
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empty center of
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SPEAKER_00: liberalism is contested and filled up left and by right,
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SPEAKER_00: but not in such a way as to
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SPEAKER_00: Annihilate the other side.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what's been happening at the universities.
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Let me ask you,
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our friend Edmund Burke,
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was he a conservative or a liberal or both?
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SPEAKER_00: Both, yes.
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He didn't ever use the word conservative because it hadn't been
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invented yet.
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SPEAKER_00: He died just before people like him started to be called conservative.
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SPEAKER_00: But he did speak of conserving.
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SPEAKER_00: Some people define him as a liberal because they think of him as a Whig,
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SPEAKER_00: a kind of old-style Whig,
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and others want to call him conservative because they want to
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look ahead to the
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SPEAKER_00: conservatism that came after.
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SPEAKER_00: But he's a conservative.
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SPEAKER_00: has a certain view of society that lifts him above the conservatives,
26:59
SPEAKER_00: many of the conservatives today.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: He believes in gradualism,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: that things do change,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: but when they change properly,
27:13
SPEAKER_00: they change gradually by increments.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: Harvey, here's a funny question for you, almost a whimsical question.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: I said to George Will on this program, have you ever been starstruck?
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Many have been starstruck by him.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: I said, have you ever been starstruck?
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And I thought he knew Johnny Carson and so on.
27:35
He said only once by Isaiah Berlin,
27:41
whom he saw when George was a student at Oxford.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder,
27:47
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been starstruck?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, by Leo Strauss.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Certainly by Leo Strauss.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: When I met him and attended a seminar of his for a year,
28:00
SPEAKER_00: a weekly seminar,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: that was astonishing for me.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen anyone so smart and so knowing.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: and so impressive.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: It took all my powers to keep up with them or try to keep up with them.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: So...
28:22
SPEAKER_01: I thought you might say that, but I wanted to hear it from you.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: All right.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: That was the experience of my life, I would say.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, I've got three more quick ones for you, Harvey Mansfield.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: I wonder whether you...
28:39
SPEAKER_01: This is in two parts.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: Do you enjoy novels and can novels elucidate politics?
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I do enjoy novels.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Say the Jane Austen novels.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And then I think they do solicit or contain political advice.
29:11
And they do this using characters instead of using principles
29:24
explicitly stated.
29:27
So you get to see how things might turn out if the characters
29:34
behave in a certain direction.
29:38
I also read a lot of mysteries Love of mysteries tells you
29:45
something about
29:48
liberalism that the fear of violent death and the way in which
29:59
justice comes to
30:03
SPEAKER_00: punish those or reward those but especially punish
30:09
SPEAKER_00: the Importance of Punishment.
30:12
That's a fact which you don't get in political science courses,
30:17
but you do get in mysteries.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: Who are a couple of your favorite mystery writers?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, Agatha Christie.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: And I like J.K. Rowling as her wonderful things.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: There's a Japanese writer named Joe Hide.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: IDE, who's very good.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: I've been reading recently.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Is there much room or time in your life for poetry?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: There's much room, but I don't use it.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: I've not been attracted to poetry in the way that I should be.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: I think that's probably a
31:06
SPEAKER_00: criticism one could make, or I will make, of my thinking and studies.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: But poetry is close to rhetoric,
31:22
SPEAKER_00: and rhetoric is close to dialogue,
31:25
SPEAKER_00: and dialogue comes from Plato.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: So in that way, I'm close to poetry.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's not so distant.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: That's not so distant.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: Finally,
31:40
SPEAKER_01: I want to ask you,
31:43
SPEAKER_01: you had a charming expression,
31:46
SPEAKER_01: charming statement in one of our podcasts.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: You said, well, you know what's great?
31:52
SPEAKER_01: The founders, plus Lincoln, plus Frederick Douglass.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: I like that plus plus.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:02
do you it's kind of a dumb question from me because I don't
32:06
have a favorite founder
32:08
American founder I think of them as a family I like all of
32:11
their strains I think I
32:14
contain those strains and I'm certain you agree but that aside
32:19
do you have a
32:20
favorite founder or are you unable to think of them singly and
32:25
you think of them
32:25
SPEAKER_01: more as a righteous gang yeah
32:31
SPEAKER_00: I suppose if I had to choose one,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: it would be James Madison,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: but I like to think of him more as a pair.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: He and Alexander Hamilton, the two main authors of The Federalist.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: And that book is just so wonderful.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a joy to read.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: It makes you read better things.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: It lifts your mind.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: It's such a contrast to the political writing that we have today.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, Harvey Mansfield, I will let you get on with it.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: I know you have things to read and think about and write.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that you become an adjective, Mansfieldian?
33:16
SPEAKER_01: I sometimes hear this and use it.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: It's wonderful to have an adjective.
33:22
I see I didn't realize no all right I think it's wonderful to
33:28
have a Mansfieldian
33:29
cast of mind so thank you so much and I'll remind our audience
33:34
I'm Jay Nordlinger
33:35
and we've spoken with Harvey Mansfield whose new book is The
33:39
Rise and Fall of
33:40
Rational Control the History of Modern Political Philosophy
33:45
what a teacher you are
33:46
SPEAKER_00: sir and I thank you thank you Jay good to be with you