Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy

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Bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems, learn more at Mercadis.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit Conversations with Tyler.com. Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm speaking with the great Harvey Mansfield and Harvey has a new and excellent book

out, called The Rise and Fall of Rational Control. Harvey, welcome. Thank you for having me, pleasure to be here. Now given that Machiavelli had no real sense of modern science and its fruits, what ends up being missing from his political thought?

Well, he didn't have no idea of modern science. In fact, I would say that his notion of "effectual truth" is the beginning of modern science. The official truth he says is what comes out of the truth, or what is the effect, if you say to somebody I love you, the effectual truth of that is I want something from you. So the effectual truth is the upshot sometimes not necessarily the intent of the statement.

“So you must judge then from cause to effect.”

The word "effectual" was brand new and actually invented by Machiavelli. It comes from the Latin Fakarei which has to do with "fact". Today we use the word "fact" all the time, as if it were something that all is existed. But it was Machiavelli and some later thinkers who developed that notion of "fact". So the fact of a thing is what it is without any wish or intent attached to it.

So that means you can go from cause to effect. And that I think is the fundamental notion behind modern science. And science isn't based on wish or speech as with Plato and Aristotle. It's based on fact, Galileo didn't go around asking people does the earth move or not. He looks for the fact that it was not a matter of public opinion or philosophers opinion,

but for the "effectual" truth. But say when it comes to technology Machiavelli understood gunpowder. But the idea that our lives could be so safe, nuclear weapons, modern effective birth control, modern media, don't all those things mean that modernity is in fact quite irreversible. Not so much those things, but the first thing you mentioned, gunpowder.

Gunpowder means the defense of the state, especially what's involved. And it seems that technology must continue, can't really be stopped or reversed, because

one country always needs to protect itself against another country.

So it's that need for national defense that I think especially drives technology. Whether or not other new developments come is good.

“But it's not necessary it's not something that you must have.”

But once somebody has gunpowder, then others must have it. And that applies, of course, to all the modern military technology. Did Strauss think modernity was reversible? Yes, what I just said, I think, came from Strauss. There wasn't any possibility of reversing it. There might be possibility of improving

it, of making it better than it might be otherwise.

the modern state.

“You could understand things better if you begin with an approach from Plato and Aristotle”

as what he thought. Yes, it's not reversible, but it's improvable. So is it a mistake for me to read Strauss as actually a modernist, but who wants to marginally improve the current world with virtue ethics? It wouldn't be a marginal improvement.

He doesn't begin from the modern world, but he begins from the ancient world, but produced the revolution led by Backevelli, the modern world, against the ancient. I don't think it should look at it simply as an approach to or even at first glance as an approach to the modern world. Machiavelli and his notion of indirect rule, does that lead people to excess attachment to

conspiracy theories, which is something we seem to see today, especially on the political right? Yes, it does. That's right. I think Backevelli's notion of conspiracy doesn't indeed have that effect.

He makes, he wants you to think of politics in terms of conspiracy.

Politics isn't what it looks to be, but it's always what's going on behind the scenes.

What is behind the scenes is more important. That is the effectual truth you would say. Whereas the principles, the talk, the justification, the rationalization, that's not worth

“paying attention to, or if it is, you have to take it with a grain of salt.”

Yes, it's conspiratorial. The longest chapter in Machiavelli's two great works, the prince, and the discourses on living is the chapter on conspiracy. The conspiracy had been considered by previous thinkers as to whether tyrants should be killed or not.

Whether that's a just thing for citizen to undertake, but it never been actually explained

and how to do it, or account, given, but that's what Backevelli does, especially in the long chapter, which is a book through chapter six in the discourses on living by far the longest chapter. And he tells you how to do it before and do rake and after. So there's three stages of conspiracy, and the things to watch out for.

If we look at America since the beginning of the 20th century, this Machiavelli right are wrong. Is it a conspiratorial politics? I don't think he's right. So what did he get wrong?

What did he got wrong was our frankness, our openness, behavior, the great wars we fought were not undertaken by us. They were not intended. They were wars of defense, he talked about the 20th century, when America sort of saved the world, or if not Europe, and at least America saved the world from three great invasions

that was a considerable accomplishment which wasn't intended or conspired for by us. But say even after the Cold War ends, there's plenty of years since then, do you think of current politics in terms of conspiracies?

Current politics, yes, because it's always possible.

It is always necessary for a 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 baby sitter can't say everything to the baby.

“You have to say something which is understandable and won't cause grief for trouble.”

Or trouble. So all politics has that kind of need for equivocation in addition, anything that you're doing you need to plan to first. But if you make all your plans open in public, whoever it is that you're acting on, even if it's 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

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's succeeded so well it must have been right. You could even say maybe God intended it and justify it. 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 it always justifiable.

But my Americanism are my American principles, my liberal principles rebel against that. And I do think that America can be seen to have gone good things in a very major way throughout the 20th century. Are we entering a new age of political assassination and if so, what insights can we get from earlier political theorists?

Political assassination, I see what you mean is real, especially against the G. But also attempt against Trump, Charlie Kirk is killed. That's right. The yellow was killed right, a lot of cases right here in America. You're right.

Well, political theory, at least that's 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. A Peter T. L. S. you probably know his great admiration and respect for a renaiderard and the idea of mimetic desire.

What is your view on Gerard? I don't have a view on Gerard. I'm sorry. Haven't read him. But that's endogenous, right?

You don't find it. That interesting then. Endogenous. Yeah. Yeah, there's something to do with violence in there, but I haven't done.

No, I've read plenty of things and not read plenty of things that I ought to have done as well. So I can defend myself on that.

“What in Shakespeare gives you the most insight into leadership and politics?”

You could think of an at Beth nature of ambition and the character of it. And the way in which it is treated by pacifists or by victorious masterman, the question of him and Macbeth is debate between the pre-Christian view of revenge and the Christian view of God's peace, the power of ambition, the role of women, Lady Macbeth, Urgian, her less eager husband.

This is a reminder of something that our political science, especially overlooks the importance and the power of human ambition. Our country is really based on a 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, especially Macbeth. But there's any number of lessons to be learned from Shakespeare. I just pick out this one that comes to mind.

“If you think of President Trump, where to you does he fit on the Shakespearean map?”

Tragic comic, ambition, all of the above, 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 folkarity 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.

as vulgarian Democrats that Shakespeare wants to present to us.

Have you read Bronze Age Pervort? Also known as Costine, Alamario? I've read his dissertation, which I guess is the basis of his book. Is he a vulgarian?

“I mean, if his name is Bronze Age Pervort, should I think of him as another vulgarian?”

He's a deliberate seeker of what is vulgar. And what is uncivilized, or is he on the edge of civilization? He wants to make a point of the dirty necessities of politics and of founding it, so that he doesn't start with a 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. I insight into the need for violence is most obvious, so I read his dissertation at him. It was done at Yale, I've had not much contact with him since, but we left on good terms. It seems he's by far the best known young Straussian. Should we take what he's doing as a model for what Straussianism is evolving into?

No, he shouldn't, please don't. What is the model then? Even to call him a Straussian, it's not correct. I don't think. He picks things out of Strauss, especially from nature.

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. So what is Straussianism evolving into? So Strauss himself is gone, his students are now typically older or they've passed away,

like Seth Bernardetti. What's the future for the movement? I think the future is odd. If not assured, pretty good. The basis for my thinking that is the great books.

“I think the Strauss emphasizes the great books.”

Is that the center of his teaching and those books are so superior? That they, in a way, guarantee their own future? Why is it that way still read Plato's Republic? Said it's 2500 years ago.

But I think the books will always be there.

And therefore the basis for Strauss will always be there. And since Strauss has shown what can be seen in those books, I think that will continue. Whether it's true that in recent years Straussian professors at the most prestigious universities have died or retired and not been replaced, I don't think that matters fundamentally.

Because people can always find it. If I just meet someone and introduce this idea, 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. Democrats, by which I mean all of us, Democratic citizens, these days.

“But these days, what's the best way to learn Straussian methods of reading a text?”

You sit down with the AI? I haven't tried that. It works pretty well. Really? Does it AI wouldn't substitute the words for the original that would try to explain it?

It's not as good as Strauss or you, but it's better than most of what's out there. All right, that's not good enough though. What's the best we've got? 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's said. Strauss had this concept of what he called "local graphic necessity." "local graphic," meaning where a thing was, what a thing was said.

By a great book's author had to be there. It isn't an accident. There are no accidents. In a right 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 error that departs from the text.

Not all of these people are stupid.

“Coral popper was not stupid, but I think he read the book completely wrongly.”

How is it one learns how not to do that? Today, you can't study with Strauss. You're not teaching it Harvard anymore. What does one do? Look for a Straussian.

Look at Strauss' books, partially natural right in history. That's the most easy one to begin with. But also a persecution on the art of writing, which is 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 on people right to ask about things they have seen and ways they would like to go. How would you put your finger on what Strauss had and say, "Quine in roles, both brilliant people?" But Quine in roles did not have. What is that difference?

Regarding 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. How did that go? Yeah. I was at a meeting of people and somebody asked about Nietzsche and so I discourse for a while.

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

But there's no just appropriation in Rolls in the same sense, right? That's no just appropriation. The labor theory of value is not understood or appreciated by Rolls.

“The good life is a life which must be earned.”

I think that's a fundamental principle of liberalism which today is set forth more by conservatives than by liberals that needs to be remembered. From a Straussian perspective, where is the role for the skills of a good analytic philosopher? How does that fit into Straussianism?

I've never quite understood that.

They seem to be very separate approaches, at least sociologically 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 E.L. Says, why is this argument appropriate for this audience and in this text? And why is it put where it was 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.

“Where does analytic philosophy tries to withdraw the argument from where it was in Plato to see what would we think of it today?”

And what other arguments or what other arguments can be set against it without really wanting to choose which is the truth? Are they compliments or substitutes the analytic approach in the Straussian approach? I see. I wouldn't say compliments now. Strauss's approach, I think, is look at the context of an argument rather than to take it out of its context.

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 doubtful.

So every apostonic 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 that arguments, especially in a pathetic 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. So what you as an observer, a reader, as 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 sacrities 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 truth, inferior, but still attractive way.

The reader has to take that shift of in view and raise it to the level that the author had. So 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 budding philosophers, and not simply speaks straight out and give a flat statement of what you think is true.

To go back to roles based as philosophy on what he called public reason, which meant that the reason that convinces roles is no different from the reason that he gives out to the public. Whereas Strauss, reason as never public or universal in this way, because it has to take account of the character of the audience, which is usually less reasonable than the author. What would a Straussian view be of same materialist approaches, which seek to put the great books in context, but the relevant context is not the rest of the book, or comparing it to other great books, but the relevant context is the history of its time.

“Is that a complement to Straussian methods or again another substitute? 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, Machivali, his context is what he saw as his context, and he tells you what that is. He tells you that the trouble of Europe, or Italy, can be put in the phrase "ambitious idleness" or "cylantizioso" that is an anachipide, leaves you nothing to do.

You look this view that Machivali himself offers of his context, but the main point is, get the author's view of his context first.

“And then if that's limited or needs to be restated in terms of what we know today, go ahead. If we turn to Machivali into a series of empirically testable propositions, what percentage of them do you think would be true?”

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 said earlier, the effectual truth, he tries to predict what can happen. He has a path toward greater liberty and greater virtue. That we now call modernity, a knowledge as prediction is really begins, I would say, with him. What we call empirical, which is 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.

For Machivali religion is most important as a form of providence or prediction, because most people don't want to know so much, no God, as they want to know what's going to happen to them.

So they want to know what is going to, what God is going to bring to us, or what Machivali said, he substitutes us, 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. The 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 they requirement of empirical analysis, not the enemy of it.

“Are there still great books being written today on the level of canon of great books?”

Guess I would say in the 20th century, a high-digger, and I would add Strauss to high-digger, though I know that that's a controversial statement. Why has the supply dried up? Because high-digger and Strauss that's a while ago, right? All right, they are, but it doesn't happen that often. That a really great book is written. But if you look at the 18th and 19th centuries, you could name easily a dozen great books from each century. And here we have the whole 20th century. You name two authors. I'm not sure how many books you're going to have that cover, but it seems to be less.

“Even though population is larger, literacy is up, right? What changed?”

I'm not sure that there has been a change. I'm not sure that that is useful speculation. It's better to not expect a great book. I'll say this, philosophy is of decline. Since the beginning of the 19th century, it's been historicized such that people doubt that

And a great book is always one that is written in a time, but for the sake of the future and the possibilities in what will happen.

“And for another time, so I think maybe that ambition to write for other times,”

or the city said, to write a book which is a possession for all times as left us. And that the authors are not trying this, they might have done to write that kind of book. In your own thought, how much have you learned from travel, travel abroad, travel in this country? Or does that not matter much? It's a help. It doesn't matter much.

I took my family twice to wait a late, when I was working on Machiavelli.

Spaded a sped a year in 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. That was a joy in a pleasure to become acquainted with. It's a value of being a professor that you get time off for such expressions. And also that you see a lot of different people come through the university,

so that you can sort of do your traveling by staying at home and see them and their differences. They carry their country and their context along with them. But you're mostly seeing cognitive elites, right, if you're at Harvard. You're not really seeing what, say India is like, though plenty of Indians come to Harvard. I'm not seeing what India was like, that's true, yeah.

So I have to take the Indians word for it. Now it's a recurring theme in your book, this idea of rational control.

“What do you think of the hierarchy and tradition that suggests that it is impossible?”

The complex systems traditions that see things as a spontaneous order, matters are the result of human action, but not a human design, and that rational control is a kind of illusion. What's your view of those thinkers? 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 a rational control, name of 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 it begins as 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 I think the hierarchy is just an advanced version of what was originally intended.”

But what was originally intended also included the imposition that is required to liberate spontaneous order.

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. So I would say, he overlooks the hierarchy and view overlooks the necessity of liberating spontaneity. That doesn't happen spontaneously. I recall having read that in the early 1950s, you saw in person a speech by Winston Churchill. Is that true? And if so, what were your impressions?

That was one of the thrills of my life, I knew it then. That was in England in 1953.

Thanks to my professor Sam Beard, who was a great student or British politics, and whom I was sort of accompanying in England as a student at that year.

“And Churchill was back in power and towards the end of his term and his faculties.”

But he began with a greeting to his friend Anthony Eden was a foreign minister who had been in the hospital 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. So he was likening an election to taking the temperature of a patient's body and say it wasn't Eden. That stuck in my mind. It was a nice analogy, one that gives room for thought.

“As a world historical figure, what was it that 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. He was from a very high lane of people and he was from high society. And he saw that radical forces of socialism were 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 preserved its dignity and gave himself great deserve fame.

“So that's what I would say he understood and accomplished.”

However, you've been well known that every year every semester you would take out your highest performing undergraduate student and have lent your dinner with them. Over time, how have those conversations changed? I'm not sure that's correct statement. That legend is correct. But in general, your conversations with your students and you have many of them, right? 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 it in a way. They see the books that I assign and answer to my remarks and try to put 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 and give them a kind of guide for what they're working at.

I always say to them, "Do something that you can be proud of. That's a pretty general advice."

But I think it enables a young man or woman to do her own thinking.

But you far-viewed in writing that manliness has declined. You don't see that in your students over time or you do. Less courage or how is that evolving?

“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 said that men are different from women and want to be and need to express that is something that we need to hold on to.

That can't be repressed without trouble arising.

So the decline in Manliness is also a rise in bad Manliness.

The assassinations, for example, that you mentioned before, can be counted for by the bad education that we get. And to some extent, the influence of points of view that deny Manliness, particularly feminism.

“Very last question. As we all get older, and each day face increasing risks of death, does that influence how we think about politics and should it influence how we think about politics?”

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 of the reverse, a short past and a long future, getting old makes you reminisce. Perhaps to an exaggerated extent, and at the same time it sharpens your concern for the present, so I wouldn't worry about it.

“Is the old age perspective the more correct one?”

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 on them and on welcome way. Harvey Mansfield. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show.

On Twitter, I'm @TilerCowin, and the show is @CowinConvows. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.