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Manliness

harvey c. mansfield

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This book invites—no, demands—a response from its readers. It is impossible not to be drawn in to the provocative (often contentious) discussion that Harvey Mansfield sets before us. This is the first comprehensive study of manliness, a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our “gender-neutral society” does not like it but cannot get rid of it.
Drawing from science, literature, and philosophy, Mansfield examines the layers of manliness, from vulgar aggression, to assertive manliness, to manliness as virtue, and to philosophical manliness. He shows that manliness seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk, and brings change or restores order at crucial moments. Manly men in their assertiveness raise issues, bring them to the fore, and make them public and political—as for example, the manliness of the women’s movement.
After a wide-ranging tour from stereotypes to Hemingway and Achilles, to Nietzsche, to feminism, and to Plato, the author returns to today’s problem of “unemployed manliness.” Formulating a reasoned defense of a quality hardly obedient to reason, he urges men, and especially women, to understand and accept manliness, and to give it honest and honorable employment.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2006

This edition

Format
304 pages, Hardcover
Published
February 6, 2006 by Yale University Press
ISBN
9780300106640
ASIN
0300106645
Language
English

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About the author

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harvey c. mansfield

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Harvey Claflin Mansfield, Jr. is a Professor of Government at Harvard University.

He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center; he also received the National Humanities Medal in 2004 and delivered the Jefferson Lecture in 2007. He is a Carol G. Simon Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is notable for his generally conservative stance on political issues in his writings.

Mansfield is the author and co-translator of studies of and/or by major political philosophers such as Aristotle, Edmund Burke, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Thomas Hobbes, of Constitutional government, and of Manliness (2006).

Among his most notable former students are: Andrew Sullivan, Alan Keyes, Robert Kraynak, John Gibbons, William Kristol, Nathan Tarcov, Clifford Orwin, Mark Blitz, Paul Cantor, Delba Winthrop, Mark Lilla, Arthur Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, Francis Fukuyama, Shen Tong, and James Ceaser.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 42 votes)
5 stars
11(26%)
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15(36%)
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42 reviews All reviews
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sonnygirl___
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book is worth reading if only for its dense essay on Manly Virtue, wherein Professor Mansfield discusses, in Plato and Aristotle, aner and akuron, as well as thymos, in the family and the polity.

This is a bright mind and an entertaining writer. Although at times he indulges himself somewhat distractingly, I can forgive him that because often he does so amusingly—and as too many today forget, humor, like manliness, is a virtue.
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Kaungaline
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Most will dismiss it without a careful reading. Mansfield is a precise and nuanced thinker. This is a great piece of challenging philosophy that true critical thinkers will appreciate.
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vetenho
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A book I was unaware of by a reputable Harvard scholar . . . recommended by my friend Jonathan.
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CherryPunch
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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You could really just read the first and the last chapter. An interesting brief run-through of Western philosophy and feminist theory concerning gender. Doesn't really give a solution on how to restore 'manliness' other than what the Greeks say: "Always in moderation".
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Class1cal
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Not as good as I hoped. Though I consider myself a Straussian (though I don't know what that means), and though I agree with much of what he says (though I don't know much about feminism)--I'd as soon read Allan Bloom. Mansfield's writing did not grip me (I am working on his translation of Tocqueville--that is heavy going too). Of course, I do have a series of trading cards called "Michael's Unmanly Traits Trading Cards" so what do I know.
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VoltCollector
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book is incredibly forthright in its gender bias. Mansfield has obviously been endowed by Harvard University to spew their usually conservative and elitist trash. He claims to be aware of gender studies and responding to that body of knowledge but he never truly engages any of the current theory or even ethnographic research. He ignores sexuality completely; he essentializes gender into two very specific and dichotomous categories; and he appears to celebrate/long for the "manly man" existant before Second Wave Feminism and that has very deep repercussions for women and supposed "non-manly men". The poor guy just seems to have been irritated by gender studies and decided to step out of his usual research on Machiavelli and indirect governance; or Edmund Burke. Essentially, this is an old, conservative Harvard professor paid to spew his idiocy and intellectual masturbation......if you enjoy being irritated with intellectual spooge in your eye this book is for you!
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TheMagicStik
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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There are many ways to describe my problems with Mansfield's book, but the the most illustrative is to say that Mansfield's treatment of sex differences and by extension his treatment of nature is Hobbesian rather than Platonic. Mansfield constantly says things such as, "[women] are not as manly or as often manly as men" and then uses such observations as the basis for natural sex differences. This mode of argumentation was pioneered by Hobbes, who said that by nature fear of violent death is the strongest passion in men, b/c it is true for most men most of the time. Mansfield should have paid better attention to his teacher Strauss' criticism of that Hobbesian view of nature. Of course it's true that Manliness can and should be read on more than one level. It is also true, to alter a comment Strauss made regarding Machiavelli, that there is an irony beyond Mansfield's irony.

Although I only give this book two stars, I believe that this book should be read and even studied. Unfortunately, those who are most in need of reading this book will not read it. There are those who will dismiss Mansfield's argument without consideration. Time is scarce, and they have better things to do than to question what they already know. Of course, just because an opinion is unquestioned does not mean it is not questionable. As Socrates indicated by saying that he knew only that he knew nothing.
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