Bully For You A Review Of Manliness by Prof. Harvey Mansfield

This book might very well be to the late ’00s and ’10s what the late Prof. Allan Bloom's The Closing Of The American Mind was to the late’80s and ’90s. Both Prof. Mansfield and the late Prof. Bloom share a common penchant: using erudition to challenge a prevalent belief which is so hard to directly question that it takes on the status of a taboo. The late Prof. Bloom questioned the open-university concept which was ensconced by the administrative responses to university-centered protests in the late 1960s, and the still extant Prof. Mansfield has put his pen in the service of questioning one of the offshoots of those days of tumult, present-day feminism. Like Prof. Bloom, Prof. Mansfield is treading on ground already broached by scholars in the social-sciences field, but which is still risky to stomp through these days: witness the recent fate of his still-extant top boss, Lawrence Summers. Also, like Prof. Bloom, Prof. Mansfield is good at deploying erudition in the service of his challenges, and thus at making evident a divide between the higher learning and the popular classes in such a way as to make him turn into a ready-to-pundit spokesperson among the latter.

It's easy if you already have the prior erudition and know how to time it right. His latest book, Manliness, is clearly a middlebrow work aimed at the middle classes – especially college-age youths. Prof. Mansfield is clearly a liberal; he all-but-explicitly identifies himself as such, and even tries the true trick of the modern liberal by working in Edmund Burke, an icon of modern conservatism, into his discussion of the manly liberal mind. Despite the presumptive intention of his to revivify "manly liberalism," though, he'll almost certainly wind up becoming one of the staple distance instructors of raffish neoconservatism, just as Prof. Bloom wound up becoming the long-distance tutor of late’80s pre-nihilists, along with the accountant kind of’80s kid. More thoughtful neos will note to themselves, and perhaps to others, "he pinched our side when he called our hero a u2018liberal' so he should've known we'd be all over it" when working the text of Manliness into their new modes of thought. This consequence could not exactly be called unintended, as Prof. Mansfield knows full well the iconic status of Burke in the modern American right.

Both Manliness and The Closing Of The American Mind hold out the promise of acquiring erudition, which for the typical reader will be "instant erudition" and little else. In the case of Prof. Mansfield's tome, the potential for consequences which are genuinely unintentional lurk in his orally delivered, simple, and quite quotable, definition of manliness: "Confidence when in risky situations." Although preferring to stick to provisionality (p. 16) in the text of the book itself, what he put in the book is consistent with this definition – "confidence and competence in the face of risk" (p. 216) – which, like the more clear-cut alternative of "courage in the face of uncertainty," does hold a certain kind of man up as a manly one.

To see what kind, contrast it with a definition more consistent with our traditions: manliness as "devotion to principle at all costs" or, less clear-cuttedly, "rule-following in the face of temptation." Once the contrast is made, it is seen that Prof. Mansfield's own definition identifies a manly man as being something not dissimilar to a plain bully. Its two closest analogs in the list of chivalric virtues are fidelity to morals – “Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil” – and valor: “Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.” The two items in the chivalric code which are closest to what more conventional thinkers define manliness as are: “Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God,” and “Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.”

To be fair to Prof. Mansfield, the bar brawler and his likesake are firmly pegged by him as being amongst the lowest order of the manly, even if they are not declared to be beyond the pale. There is even a sensible model of manliness within his book, which puts the surly and the aggressive at the bottom of a hierarchy of manliness, one which is gradated using the standard of self-control, and the valorous warrior-nobleman right at the top. There is a little more to this book than yet another Harvard/M.I.T. co-production which highlights the virtues and worth of those with beefy biceps. Interestingly enough for a middlebrow work, there is even an explication of a kind of manliness which specifically applies to scholars and thinkers, with Aristotle and Plato, as well as the ubiquitous Socrates, doing duty as role models. (Nietzsche is mentioned as well, though in a more ambivalent light than is customary nowadays.)

The reader is treated to a long description of the politician who Prof. Mansfield evidently believes is the cynosure of American manliness, Theodore Roosevelt; the recounting of T.R.'s life story is sufficiently detailed to make me suspect that "Kettle Hill Roosevelt" got started on the path to claim his manhood through being kicked out of the family home by his parents. If so, then the archetypical American manly man is someone who found masculinity through a kind of redemptive life quest – which starts from a plush background. Not for Prof. Mansfield is the more traditional redemptive quest which sees a young bully boy turn into a chivalrous man, such as Robin of Locksley did in the movie Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.

The temptation to declare Prof. Mansfield to be an enabler of tyrants, like Machiavelli was to Cesare Borgia and Plato was to Dionysius the Younger, isn't very strong; Prof. Mansfield's liberal leanings are too evident. In addition to his liberal bent, which is double-decked by his cheerful stipulation that the existence of his kind of manliness amongst the lower orders is a practical checkrein on any blooming tyranny (pp. 176–7 in discussions of Spinoza and Locke), he also includes William James' well-known dichotomy which folds rationality, intellectuality and idealism into "tender-mindedness" and their antipodes into "tough-mindedness," with evident approval on Prof. Mansfield's part (p. 89). A person such as this does not make for a good tutor of tyrants.

It's the opposite means of categorizing rationalism versus empiricism which is the tyrant's seedbed: these two quotes which together link rationality and politico's manliness – "Reason must be the universal rule and guide; all things must be done according to reason without allowing oneself to be swayed by emotion" and "Harshness towards individuals who flout the laws and commands of state is for the public good; no greater crime against the public interest is possible than to show leniency to those who violate it” – are both from Cardinal Richelieu. We all know how central rationalism and scientism were to both Communism and fascism, even if the latter lets rationalism in through the back door through “organization” and “order.” The past century has provided more than enough evidence that the habit of reason is best left to the tender-minded for the sake of freedom. Bullying is deplorable, but the pugnacious bully is always easier to restrain than the cruel master is. An upsurge in plain tyranny is not likely to result from the popularity and success of Manliness.

What is likely to result can be seen from Prof. Mansfield's choice of a paragon of wimpishness, a choice which is more subtle than it seems at first glance. His Great Wimp is none other than John Stuart Mill: after conceding that "in Mill's thought manliness is still present but keeps company with unmanliness" (p. 185), Prof. Mansfield ends up calling Mill "a wimp when you come down to it" (p. 189). What bugs Prof. Mansfield about Mill's thought is Mill's respect for psychological individuality: at the bottom of Mill's hierarchy of manliness is not the bully – who is clearly beyond the pale – but the eccentric (p. 186). The requirement in Mill's system of liberty that all desire to command must be confined to self-command is written off by Prof. Mansfield as – well, wimpish.

Who is a more manly – more virile – philosopher of freedom, according to Prof. Mansfield? The answer may surprise you: he implicitly recommends as a substitute the thought of John Locke. To the extent that Prof. Mansfield is critical of Locke – "Liberalism is unmanly in setting down self-preservation as the end of man, as do Hobbes and Locke" (p. 185) – he is also critical of Hobbes.

Lest you think that this pro-Locke element of partisanship in Manliness is a sign that Prof. Mansfield is a covert lover of liberty, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Prof. Mansfield is yet another Harvard liberal: he defined liberalism as a balancing act between liberty and security, as (according to Prof. Mansfield) you can't have one without the other (p. 165). It's easy from this to guess the fate of minimal government should present-day liberalism become suffused with Prof. Mansfield's kind of manliness again. Remember his admiration of T.R.?

It is strange that a fellow such as this would latch on to Locke, isn't it? Especially when he also sends Mill out through the ladies' exit.

Perhaps this ostensible antinomy isn't one, come to think of it. There is one crucial difference between Mill and Locke which is evident in Manliness: Mill takes civil society as a given, which Locke does not do.

What's evidently wrong with Mill is that he's too civil. What evidently is right with Locke is that his system allows for quarrelsomeness. This latter point indicates precisely what will be the – genuinely unintended, I am sure – consequence of this book entering into the popular culture and in the hands of the popular classes: a rise in quarreling, and a resultant rise in civil disorder in the United States.

Realizing this unintended consequence makes the fulsome praise of this book by neoconservatives far easier to understand than a mere reference to Prof. Mansfield having kind things to say about Edmund Burke, as well as having unkind things to say about feminism, does. When civil disorder goes up, so does the public demand for neoconservative remedies, ceteris paribus. Manliness will serve them well to this end, and for this reason it is a good book to poke through for the purpose of seeing what kind of disorder it will likely engender. It's a sad fact that all the erudition a man can acquire never takes away the need for him to learn some things the hard way, and this need to learn through experience definitely includes re-learning what Grampaw already knew quite well. America is about to learn the hard way that Mill is not an effete sidepath from Locke, but a worthy successor to him.

Memo to Professor Mansfield: You won't be able to stop the ensuing interregnum.

May 1, 2006