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

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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 effectual truth, he says, is what comes out of the truth or what is the effect?

And 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, actually invented by Machiavelli.

It comes from the Latin focaré, 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.

That 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 looked for the fact, so 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 effect of 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 means the defense

of the state, that's 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 is 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.

He thought that the ancients had more to say on the big question of how should I live

than the moderns did. You can 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

what produced the revolution led by Bakivali, 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 in 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 Bakivali's notion of

conspiracy does indeed have that effect. 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, I have to take it with

the grains 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 had never been actually explained and how to do it,

account given. But that's what Machiavelli does, especially in the long chapter,

which is book three, chapter six, in the discourses on living by far the longest chapter.

And he tells you how to do it before and during 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 or wrong, is it a conspiratorial politics? I know he's right.

So what did he get wrong? What had 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 the

wars of defense. He talked about the 20th century when America sort of saved the world,

or if not Europe, at least for 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 government to be secret. Some of the work I did on executive power had that for a thesis. You

can 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 for first.

But if you make all your plans open in 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 or 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. 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 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-hats. But also attempts against Trump, Charlie Kirk is killed,

the officer CEO was killed, a lot of cases right here in America. You're 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. Peter T L, as you probably know, has great admiration and respect

for a Rene Gerard 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. You know, 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, so I can defend myself out there. What in Shakespeare gives you the most

insight into leadership and politics? You could think of, 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 in my path 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,

Urjian, or 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

wondering back and forth, but I think you could learn something about an American politics

by reading Shakespeare and 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, or 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

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 and in Shakespeare

around Falstaff, for example, could be understood as vulgarian Democrats that Shakespeare wants

to present to us. Have you read Bronze Age pervert? 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 pervert, should I think of him as another vulgarian?

He's a deliberate seeker of what is vulgar and what is uncivilized or see 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 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. 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.

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, you shouldn't. Please don't.

What is the model then? Even to call him a Straussian is not correct.

I don't think. He picks 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. 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 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?

So there's 2,500 years together. So 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, 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 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.

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. But what's the best we've got?

Yeah, you want the best. You want the best. And the best is in the original text. I don't think

you want a 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 logo graphic necessity, logo 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 great book. Everything is as it should be. So to understand

you don't want to go to some second rate explanation doesn't take account or the

departs from the text. But many people pick up Plato's Republic and they come away thinking

it's a mere homage to totalitarianism. Not all of these people are stupid.

Karl 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's books, especially natural writing

history that that's 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. How would you put your finger on what Strauss had

and say quine enrols, both brilliant people, but quine enrols did not have? What is that difference?

Regardless, 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? I was at a meeting of people and somebody asked about

Nietzsche and so I discourse 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 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 Stopperd,

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 Stopperd's plays. So that's quine.

Now roles 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 quine to Nietzsche. But there's no just appropriation in Rawls

in the same sense, right? 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. 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's 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. Analytics 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, which has a plot and a background.

And a context, whereas 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 can be said against it

without really wanting to choose which is the truth? Are they compliments or substitutes the

analytic approach and 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.

To take it out of its context means to the private of the story that it represents an

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 doubtful.

So every postonic 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 postonic 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 as opposed 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 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.

So the author is, and what I'm describing is irony. What distinguishes analytic philosophy

from Strauss is the lack of irony in analytic philosophy. That 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 Rolls, Rolls based his philosophy

on what he called public reason, which meant that the reason that convinces Rolls is no different

from the reason that he gives out to the public. Whereas Strauss reason is 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. Now 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 and 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 troubles of Europe or Italy can be put in the phrase

ambitious idleness, Ortsian Pizzioso, that is a leisure that is unoccupied leaves you nothing to do.

So that's his picture of the Christian world that he lived under and in 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 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 in view a path toward greater liberty and greater virtue that we now call

majority. A knowledge as prediction is really begins, I would say, with him so that 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 says,

he substitutes, 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 the 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 Heidegger and I would add Strauss to Heidegger, though I know that that's a controversial statement.

Why has the supply dried up? Because Heidegger and Strauss, that's a while ago, right?

All right, they are, but then 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 and 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

easy or possible for a thinker to think outside his time. A great book is always one that is

written in a time, but also for the sake of the future and the possibilities and what will happen.

And for other times. So I think maybe that ambition tool 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 are not trying as 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

Italy when I was working on Machiavelli, sped a year in Florence and the 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 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,

you can stay, do your traveling by staying at home and seeing 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 Hayekian tradition that suggests that

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 the rational control named 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 its 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. I think Hayek 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

and sludge and spoiled, prevented, inhibited. It's something that needs to come to pass,

but also if that's to be the case, it needs to be liberating. So I would say that he overlooks

the Hayekian 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, and I went to the conservative party conference

of his held in Margate, a seaside resort, and was able to get into here, Churchill, thanks to my

professor, Sam Beard, who was 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. But he began with agreeing to his friend, Anthony Eden, who was the foreign

minister, who had been in the hospital and just gotten out. And the question of the day was whether

Churchill would call any 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

spotting, and saying it wasn't needed. That stuck in my mind. And it was a nice analogy, one

that gives room for thought. As a world historical figure, what was it that Churchill understood?

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.

But 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

deserved fame. So that's what I would say he understood and accomplished.

That would Harvard, 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?

Yeah. 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.

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.

His or her own thinking and yet come out with something that is solid and objective and praiseworthy.

But you've argued 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? No, I don't think manliness is in decline.

It's in the eclipse. You don't see it as much as you did it except in a bad version such as the

Bronze Age pervert. 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. 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, I find, and perhaps too an exaggerated

accent 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 them in an unwelcome way.

Harvey Mansfield, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

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