Here’s a lecture by the greatest political scientist in America, the ancient Prof. Harvey Mansfield. He talks about the limits of a political science which does not take seriously anything about the great, as opposed to the average, & which does not pay attention to the names by which we understand ourselves, our communities, & everything else in our lives—instead replacing all that with a jargon of scientific making, which is both ugly & silly. Mansfield argues that true political science must include an understanding of the soul.
He has seven topics on his mind, as he summarizes at the end of the lecture:
1 The exactness & the inexactness of science
2 The stubbornness of partisanship & the ever presence of one's own
3 The role of assertiveness
4 The argument for the soul
5 The character of individuality
6 The inevitability of common sense
7 The ambition of greatness
I especially want to attract your attention to his insistence on the tension in our understanding & in our politics between the average & the great, between the criterion by which we identify members of a class & the standard of excellence in that class. America has had many presidents, but they are mediocrities—America, however, has also had a Washington & a Lincoln, & it is by doing our best to understand their activity that we come to realize how mediocre the others are… So who’s a real president & how should we think about our way of life once we realize that we cannot get rid of this difference between great & average?
I add a second version of this talk—one that pays more attention to politics & religion—altogether a lecture about spiritedness, thumos, the quality we immediately notice in manly men, which we have forgotten & urgently need to learn about if we are to understand our politics. Here, he also talks about identity politics as an attempt to restore honor to politics under democratic, egalitarian conditions. Mansfield summarizes this lecture in nine points:
1 The contrast between anger & gain
2 The insistence on victory
3 The function of protectiveness
4 The stubbornness of partisanship
5 The role of assertiveness
6 The ever-presence of one's own
7 The task of religion
8 The result of individuality
9 The ambition of greatness
For those who prefer reading, a version of the first speech is available at The New Atlantis. His second speech is available as the Jefferson lecture at the National Endowment for the Humanities.