The Virtues of Manliness

Fire of Liberty


Here's a good book review by Joseph R. Phelan in the Washington Times on Professor Harvey C. Mansfield's new book Manliness. Now if you've saw the end segment of ABC's This Week(Sun, March 26, 2006) and the comments of Naomi Wolfe(Feminist and advisor to Gore, who told him to wear more earth tones to appeal to women- It seemed to work for Tipper in the 2000 convention) you'd think that this book was some kind of handbook for men to return our society back to the stone age thus sending women out of the workforce and back into the home but in reality the book is an insightful look at what it means to be manly. As the distinguished Harvard Professor notes, one has to look at the actions of individuals throughout history and the philosophy of individuals within the Western Canon and you'll discover the true nature and definition of manliness. While I haven't had the privilege of reading the book yet, I've got to say from what I've read so far and got out of Mansfield recent appearance on C-SPAN's After Words(He was interviewed by Naomi Wolfe who was more concerned about expressing her agenda or how this or that passage in the book made her feel instead of focusing on the book - Mansfield still held his ground(Has a lot of practice being a conservative at liberal Harvard)) the book is a must read for young men and men to get a better understanding of what it's meant to be a man. This segment of Professor Phelan's review also sold me:

As one would expect from the author of seminal studies of Machiavelli, Bolingbroke, Burke and the American Presidency, Mr. Mansfield is at his best here tracing the development of ideas about human nature and the masculine soul in the history of modern philosophical speculation. Mr. Mansfield shows how Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza sought to eliminate "the quarrelsome and contentious" from their reconstructed political orders and therefore of necessity had to devalue manliness as the deepest root of political factionalism and "civil broils."

Finally Mr. Mansfield turns to the classic or traditional view of human nature as is to be seen in Plato and Aristotle. Those who study assertiveness today fail to relate it to the much older concept of spiritedness or thymos, which was very much at the core of the Greek philosophers' reflections on the human things. Spiritedness induces manly men to risk their "mere" lives for the sake of their "quality" lives. For the classics spiritedness came to sight as indispensable to the political community given the rapacious nature of international politics and the need for vigorous citizenship in the public square of free republics. In consequence they made it the foundation stone of paideia or the education of youth as well as of their system of gentlemanly ethics.

Mr. Mansfield's book moves from that with which we are most familiar, which is to say the contemporary stereotypes of manliness as an offensive expression of a "macho" mentality often associated with a "redneck" attitude to women and minorities, to that less familiar perspective which we need now more than ever, which is to say the wisdom of the great tradition of Western civilization.

So head on over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and pick up a copy of Harvey C. Mansfield's book Manliness today.