Harvey Mansfield on Manliness




Conversations with Bill Kristol show

Summary: The eighth in our ongoing series with Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield, this conversation marks the tenth anniversary of his important and provocative book "Manliness." Mansfield offers his account of manliness and its importance as a permanent, though problematic, feature of human nature. He explains how liberal political philosophers and liberal society have often been suspicious of manliness, and details the consequences of this for our politics. Mansfield and Kristol also discuss contemporary efforts to transcend manliness through the creation of a gender-neutral society, which have led, according to Mansfield, to “more justice and less happiness.”