Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy

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0:41Tyler Cowen:Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today, I'm speaking with the great Harvey Mansfield, and Harvey has a new and excellent book out called The Rise and Fall of Rational Control. Harvey, welcome. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. Now, given that Machiavelli had no real sense of modern science and its fruits, What ends up being missing from his political thought?

1:29Well, he didn't have no idea of modern science. In fact, I would say that his notion of effectual truth is the beginning of modern science. The effectual truth, he says, is what comes out of the truth, or what is the effect. In fact, if you say to somebody, I love you, the effectual truth of that is, I want something from you. So the effectual truth is the upshot, sometimes not necessarily the intent of the statement. So you must judge then from cause to effect. The word effectual was brand new, actually invented by Machiavelli. It comes from the Latin facere, which has to do with fact. Today, we use the word fact all the time as if it were something that always existed.

2:30But it was Machiavelli and some later thinkers who developed that notion of fact. So the fact of a thing is what it is without any wish or intent attached to it. So that means you can go from cause to effect. And that, I think, is the fundamental notion behind modern science. Modern science isn't based on wish or speech, as with Plato and Aristotle. It's based on fact. Galileo didn't go around asking people, does the earth move or not? He looked for the fact, said it was not a matter of public opinion or philosopher's opinion, but for the effectual truth.

3:29Tyler Cowen:But say when it comes to technology, Machiavelli understood gunpowder, but the idea that our lives could be so safe, nuclear weapons, modern effective birth control, modern media, don't all those things mean that modernity is in fact quite irreversible? Not so much those things, but the first thing you mentioned, gunpowder. Gunpowder means the defense of the state. That's especially what's involved. And it seems that technology must continue, can't really be stopped or reversed, because one country always needs to protect itself against another country. So it's that need for national defense that I think especially drives technology.

4:17Whether or not other new developments come is good, but it's not necessary. It's not something that you must have. But once somebody has gunpowder, then others must have it. And that applies, of course, to all the modern military technology.

4:41Tyler Cowen:Did Strauss think modernity was reversible? Yes, what I just said, I think, came from Strauss. There wasn't any possibility of reversing it. There might be a possibility of improving it, of making it better than it might be otherwise. eyes. He thought that the ancients had more to say on the big question of how should I live than the moderns did. You can understand things better if you begin with an approach from Plato and Aristotle. That's what he thought. Yes, it's not reversible, but it's improvable. So is it a mistake for me to read Strauss as actually a modernist, but who wants to marginally improve the current world with virtue ethics?

5:34It wouldn't be a marginal improvement. He doesn't begin from the modern world, but he begins from the ancient world, which produced the revolution led by Machiavelli, the modern world against the ancient. I don't think you should look at it simply as an approach to, or even at first glance, as an approach to the modern world.

5:56Tyler Cowen:Machiavelli and his notion of indirect rule, does that lead people to excess attachment to conspiracy theories, which is something we seem to see today, especially on the political right? Yes, it does. That's right. I think Machiavelli's notion of conspiracy does indeed have that effect. He wants you to think of politics in terms of conspiracy. Politics isn't what it looks to be, but it's always what's going on behind the scenes. What is behind the scenes is more important. That is the effectual truth, you could say. Whereas the principles, the talk, the justification, the rationalization, that's not worth paying attention to.

6:43or if it is, you have to take it with grains of salt. Yes, it's conspiratorial. The longest chapter in Machiavelli's two great works, The Prince and the Discourses on Living, is the chapter on conspiracy. The conspiracy had been considered by previous thinkers as to whether tyrants should be killed or not. whether that's a just thing for a citizen to undertake. But it had never been actually explained and how to do it, or account given. But that's what Machiavelli does, especially in the long chapter, which is Book 3, Chapter 6, in the Discourses on Living, by far the longest chapter. And he tells you how to do it before, and during, and after.

7:40So there's three stages of a conspiracy and the things to watch out for.

7:47Tyler Cowen:If we look at America since, say, the beginning of the 20th century, is Machiavelli right or wrong? Is it a conspiratorial politics? I don't think he's right. So what did he get wrong? What he got wrong was our frankness, our openness, behavior, the great wars we fought were not undertaken by us. They were not intended. They were wars of defense. He talked about the 20th century when America sort of saved the world, or if not Europe, at least, America saved the world from three great invasions. That was a considerable accomplishment which wasn't intended or conspired for by us. But say even after the Cold War ends, there's plenty of years since then.

8:36Tyler Cowen:Do you think of current politics in terms of conspiracies? Current politics, yes, because it's always possible. It is always necessary for government to be secret. Some of the work I did on executive power had that for a thesis. You can't ever speak without holding back something. So to this extent, Machiavelli is right. If you've ever been in charge of someone or something, you know that you can't say everything that you know. So even a babysitter can't say everything to the baby. You have to say something which is understandable and won't cause grief or trouble. So all politics has that kind of need for equivocation.

9:31In addition, anything that you're doing, you need to plan first. But if you make all your plans open and public, whoever it is that you're acting on, even if it's a friend or a friendly power, will react and perhaps foil what you plan to do. So execution requires secrecy, and secrecy includes conspiracy. In the end, you could say the truth comes out. After the plan has been executed, then people see what was underway the whole time. And at that time, you've got to show that what you did was according to your principles. Now, Machiavelli would say people can be impressed by power or by the fact of a display of power, especially a sensational use of it, as we just had with the capture of Maduro in Venezuela.

10:40That impresses people regardless of principle, and they begin to think that because it succeeded so well, it must have been right. You could even say maybe God intended it and justifies it. So in this way, I'm coming back to the other side for the question you raised on Machiavelli, that maybe conspiracy is always there and always justifiable. But my Americanism or my American principles, my liberal principles, rebel against that. And I do think that America can be seen to have done good things in a very major way throughout the 20th century.

11:28Tyler Cowen:Are we entering a new age of political assassination? And if so, what insights can we get from earlier political theorists? Political assassination. I see what you mean. Israel especially, against the jihadists. But also attempts against Trump. Charlie Kirk is killed. That's right. The healthcare CEO was killed. A lot of cases right here in America. You're right. Well, political theory, at least as regards Machiavelli, comes to the fore. I don't see anything more to add to what I said on Machiavelli. If there's a trend to it, people copy it. I don't think inspired by reading political theory. Peter Thiel, as you probably know, has great admiration and respect for René Girard and the idea of mimetic desire.

12:14Tyler Cowen:What is your view on Girard? I don't have a view on Girard. I'm sorry. Haven't read him. But that's endogenous, right? You don't find it that interesting then? Endogenous. Yeah, there's something to do with violence in there, but I haven't. No, I've read plenty of things and not read plenty of things that I ought to have done as well. So I can't defend myself of that. What in Shakespeare gives you the most insight into leadership and politics? You could think of Macbeth's nature of ambition and the character of it and the way in which it is treated by pacifists or by victorious mastermen. The question of Macbeth is debate between the pre-Christian view of revenge and the Christian view of God's peace, the power of ambition, the role of women, Lady Macbeth urging on her less eager husband.

13:23This is a reminder of something that our political science especially overlooks, the importance and the power of human ambition. Our country is really based on a kind of ambition that's reflected in the separation of powers. I don't mean to be wandering back and forth, but I think you could learn something about American politics by reading Shakespeare and especially Macbeth. But there's any number of lessons to be learned from Shakespeare. I just pick out this one that comes to mind.

14:03Tyler Cowen:If you think of President Trump, where to you does he fit on the Shakespearean map? tragic, comic, ambition, all of the above? He fits in the vulgarian quality of Shakespeare's characters. I've written on that to some extent. President Trump is not a gentleman. He works at a level of discordant impulse, and he's always looking to say something that will strike people rather than persuade them. That led me to think of the vulgarity of democracy. President Trump is, in his way, more democratic than the rest of us because he's able to understand and to impress people who are not refined in their thinking and in their ways.

15:07he's not a man of courtesy. Some of the vulgar people in Shakespeare around Falstaff, for example, could be understood as vulgarian Democrats that Shakespeare wants to present to us. Have you read Bronze Age Pervert, also known as Costin Alamariu? I've read his dissertation, which I guess is the basis of his book.

15:35Tyler Cowen:Is he a Bulgarian? I mean, if his name is Bronze Age Pervert, should I think of him as another Bulgarian? He's a deliberate seeker of what is vulgar and what is uncivilized, or on the edge of civilization. He wants to make a point of the dirty necessities of politics and of founding, so that he doesn't start with the Stone Age or even the Iron Age, but all the way to the Bronze Age. but still just as people are on the edge of beginning civilization. And that might be where the greatest truth or the greatest insight into the need for violence is most obvious. So I read his dissertation. It was done at Yale.

16:27I've had not much contact with him since, but we left on good terms.

16:34Tyler Cowen:It seems he's by far the best-known young Straussian. Should we take what he's doing as a model for what Straussianism is evolving into? No, you shouldn't. Please don't. What is the model, then? Even to call him a Straussian is not correct, I don't think. He picked things out of Strauss, especially from Nietzsche. He presented them to me. He was not the kind of student who was a patient, respectful listener. He had his own ideas. But he was interesting and he's smart. So what is Straussianism evolving into? So Strauss himself is gone. His students are now typically older or they've passed away, like Seth Bernadetti.

17:18What's the future for the movement? I think the future is, if not assured, pretty good. The basis for my thinking that is the great books. I think Strauss emphasizes the great books, is that that's sort of the center of his teaching, and those books are so superior that they, in a way, guarantee their own future. Why is it that we still read Plato's Republic, say, 2 ,500 years ago? So I think the books will always be there, and therefore the basis for Strauss will always be there. And since Strauss has shown what can be seen in those books, I think that will continue. Whether it's true that in recent years, Straussian professors at the most prestigious universities have died, retired, and not been replaced.

18:15I don't think that matters fundamentally because people can always find it. If I just meet someone and introduce some of his ideas, they're always attractive. But it's true that there are many ways in which Strauss is not attractive to scholars and Democrats, by which I mean all of us democratic citizens these days.

18:42Tyler Cowen:But these days, what's the best way to learn Straussian methods of reading a text? You sit down with the AI? I haven't tried that. It works pretty well. Really? Does it? AI wouldn't substitute the words for the original that would try to explain it. It's not as good as Strauss or you, but it's better than most of what's out there. All right. That's not good enough, though. What's the best we've got? Yeah, you want the best. You want the best. And the best is in the original text. I don't think you want to substitute for that original text trying to understand it. So you need to pay careful attention to everything that is said in the way that it's said and in the place that it's said.

19:37Strauss had this concept of what he called logographic necessity. Logographic, meaning where a thing was, what a thing was said by a great book's author had to be there. It isn't an accident. There are no accidents in a great book. Everything is as it should be. So to understand it, you don't want to go to some second-rate explanation that departs from the text.

20:11Tyler Cowen:But many people pick up Plato's Republic and they come away thinking it's a mere homage to totalitarianism. Not all of these people are stupid. Karl Popper was not stupid, but I think he read the book completely wrongly. How is it one learns how not to do that? Today, you can't study with Strauss. You're not teaching at Harvard anymore. What does one do? Look for a Straussian. Look at Strauss' books, especially natural right in history. That's the most easy one to begin with. But also at Persecution and the Art of Writing, which is his explanation of esoteric writing. Read what others have tried to do before you.

20:52Look for somebody, somebody to help. I get a number of emails when people write to ask about things they have seen. and ways they would like to go.

21:05Tyler Cowen:How would you put your finger on what Strauss had and say Quine and Rawls, both brilliant people, but Quine and Rawls did not have? What is that difference? With regard to Quine, Quine famously said, philosophy of science is philosophy enough. Strauss would certainly oppose that and try to introduce Nietzsche to Professor Quine, as I once attempted to do when I was younger. How did that go? Yeah, I was at a meeting of people, and somebody asked about Nietzsche and so on, and so I discoursed for a while. And he sat there listening with a smile and never commented. I was actually pretty good friends with him on a political basis because we both had conservative political opinions.

21:54And we belonged to the senior common room at Elliott House. So I would fairly frequently have lunch with him. And then on a later occasion, I once invited Tom Stoppard, the playwright, to come give a talk at Harvard. And afterwards, we had a dinner to which I invited Quine, and he came because Quine had figured in one of Stoppard's plays. So that's Quine. Now, Rawls is kind of slightly decayed liberalism. So I think Strauss would have liked to introduce John Locke to Rawls and show him how Locke set up things better than he had. Locke's state of nature was a better picture of the fundamental principle of liberalism than Rawls' original position.

22:56Rawls is much closer to Locke, of course, than Quine's nature.

23:02Tyler Cowen:But there's no just appropriation in Rawls in the same sense, right? That's no just appropriation. The labor theory of value is not understood or appreciated by Rawls. The good life is a life which must be earned. I think that's a fundamental principle of liberalism, which today is set forth more by conservatives than by liberals, that needs to be remembered. From a Straussian perspective, where's the role for the skills of a good analytic philosopher? How does that fit into Straussianism? I've never quite understood that. They seem to be very separate approaches, at least sociologically. Analytic philosophers look for arguments and isolate them.

23:48Strauss looks for arguments and puts them in the context of a dialogue or the dialogue or the implicit dialogue. So instead of counting up one, two, three, four meanings of a word, as analytic philosophers do, he says, why is this argument appropriate for this audience and in this text, and why is it put where it was and not earlier or later. Strauss treats an argument as if it were in a play, a play which has a plot and a background and a context. Whereas analytic philosophy tries to withdraw the argument from where it was in Plato to see what would we think of it today and what other arguments can be said against it without really wanting to choose which is the truth.

25:01Tyler Cowen:Are they complements or substitutes, the analytic approach and the Straussian approach? I see. I wouldn't say complements, no. Strauss's approach, I think, is look at the context of an argument rather than to take it out of its context. To take it out of its context means to deprive it of the story that it represents. Analytic philosophy takes arguments out of their context and arranges them in an array. It then tries to compare those sort of abstracted arguments. Strauss doesn't try to abstract, but he looks to the context. And the context is always something doubtful. So every platonic dialogue leaves something out.

26:08The Republic, for example, doesn't tell you about what people love instead of how people defend things. Since that's the case, every argument in such a dialogue is intentionally a bad argument. It's meant for a particular person, and it's set to him. So the analytic philosopher doesn't understand that arguments, especially in a Platonic dialogue, can deliberately be inferior, easily or too easily refutes the argument which you are supposed to take out of a Platonic dialogue and understand for yourself. Socrates always speaks down to people. He is better than his interlocutors. So, what you, as an observer or reader, are supposed to do is to take the argument that's going down, that's intended for somebody who doesn't understand very well, and raise it to the level of the argument that Socrates would want to accept.

27:37So to the extent that all great books have the character of downward shift, all great books have the character of speaking down to someone and presenting truth inferior but still attractive way, The reader has to take that shifter in view and raise it to the level that the author had. So the author is, and what I'm describing is irony. What distinguishes analytic philosophy from Strauss is the lack of irony in analytic philosophy. Now, that philosophy must always take account of non-philosophy or budding philosophers, and not simply speak straight out and give a flat statement of what you think is true.

28:48To go back to Rawls, Rawls based his philosophy on what he called public reason, which meant that the reason that convinces Rawls is no different from the reason that he gives out to the public. Whereas Strauss, reason is never public or universal in this way, because it has to take account of the character of the audience, which is usually less reasonable than the author.

29:27Tyler Cowen:Now, what would a Straussian view be of, say, materialist approaches, which seek to put the great books in context, but the relevant context is not the rest of the book, or comparing it to other great books, but the relevant context is the history of its time. Is that a complement to Straussian methods, or again, another substitute? The context of the time is very important, but it must be got from the author himself, and not from an historian's backward view, an anachronistic view from today. So, for example, Machiavelli, his context is what he saw as his context. And he tells you what that is.

30:16He tells you that the troubles of Europe or Italy can be put in the phrase ambitious idleness, Ocio ambicioso, that is, a leisure that is unoccupied, leaves you nothing to do. So that's his picture of the Christian world that he lived under and which he opposed to say he was some kind of Christian, as some scholars do, because he makes statements that indicate a friendly view toward it to overlook this view that Machiavelli himself offers of his context. But the main point is, get the author's view of his context first. And then, if that's limited or needs to be restated in terms of what we know today, go ahead.