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    A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy
    A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy
    A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy

    By Harvey C. Mansfield

    3.5/5

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    A primer on the bedrock principles of politics from “Harvard’s most controversial conservative professor” and the author of Democracy in America (Boston magazine).

    Behind the daily headlines on presidential races and local elections is the theory of the polity—or what the end of our politics should be. Harvard’s Harvey C. Mansfield, one of America’s leading political theorists, explains why our quest for the good life must address the type of government we seek to uphold. He directs our gaze to the thinkers and philosophies and classic works that have proved most influential throughout the ages.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJul 29, 2014
    ISBN9781497645103
    A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy

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    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      I recently acquired a number of these little Guides to the Major Disciplines. They are published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which is a sort of conservative, traditionalist academic organization. Thus, the idea behind the guides seems to be to provide beginning students with a traditionalist-leaning introduction to the various areas of study they might choose to explore in college. The authors tend to be fairly substantial figure in their given fields, at least in conservative academic circles. I take it that part of the motivation behind the guides is to present like-minded students with the kind of academic guidance they may not be able to find on radicalized, tradition despising campuses. I've now read several of the guides on my morning train ride, as I am usually too sleepy and distracted to focus on anything more substantial.Having read the volumes devoted to history, economics, and the core curriculum, I've come away with a generally positive view of the project. Each book has provided a fairly balanced look at it's subject matter, a solid list of recommendations, and a bit of more substantive thought on the part of the author (that is, there are positions taken and defended, albeit rather sketchily given the constraints of the page count). I can see how these guides could serve as useful resources for beginning students.However, I'm specifically reviewing this volume by Mansfield because I think it's weak and not nearly as useful as the others I've read. Mansfield attempts to center his rendering of political philosophy around the following question: What is partisanship and what should we do about it? The idea is then to look at the major political philosophers (from Plato to Heidegger) as they interact with this question. Mansfield major problem is that he attempts to cover too much territory (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, and more in only 50 pages) and ends up giving an account of these thinkers that is so cursory, and leaves so much unclarified, that I can't see how it would be helpful for the student. He often neglects to define his terms, tries to cram complex ideas into one or two sentences, and is forced to presuppose the kind of background that readers of these guides aren't expected to have. The end result is a disjointed, opaque, difficult to follow piece of work. I also doesn't help that Mansfield is part of the Leo Strauss cult. What this means is that when he does put things clearly, his points are still out of touch with current scholarship (political ideologies aside) and often misleading. In fact, the notion that a Straussian should introduce anyone to political philosophy strikes me as fantastical. I say this not because I'm an out and out hater of Strauss and his disciples. I actually studied Plato with a Straussian as an undergraduate and learned quite a lot. But what I learned, while interesting, was not representative and, in some sense, probably not correct. The ISI could have done much better.A caveat, however: Mansfield does do a nice job differentiating normative political philosophy/theory from latter day political science, which is best understood as a descriptive practice often given to faddish attempts to provide statistical rigor as means of self-justification. However, even here it seems like his critique is off, because certainly the normative project can learn from the descriptive project. Ought implies can, and insofar as the descriptive project helps us to outline what can be done, it helps better see what ought to be done.

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    A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy - Harvey C. Mansfield

    PARTISAN DIFFERENCES

    EACH SIDE defends its own interests, those of schoolteachers versus those of stockbrokers, for example, but they also appeal to something they have in common: the common good. Defending their interests, each says, contributes to the common good. At the same time, the parties appeal to someone in common, a common judge who would decide the issues between them. Normally this judge is merely the person they are trying to persuade or impress, but he could be a person competent to judge. Arguments, good or bad, are made with reasons and so are aimed implicitly, if not usually, at a reasonable judge. Here is where political philosophy enters. Most people reason badly, but they do reason—and political philosophy starts from that fact. In America today, liberals argue that wealth is unjustly distributed, for example, but they overlook the need to generate wealth. Conservatives do the reverse; preoccupied with wealth generation, they pay little attention to how it should be distributed.

    A partisan difference like this one is not a clash of values, with each side blind to the other and with no way to decide between them. A competent judge could ask both sides why they omit what they do, and he could supply reasons even if the parties could not. Such a judge is on the way toward political philosophy.

    There is a long tradition of political philosophy dating from Socrates and consisting of a series of great books, each written to comment favorably or adversely on a contemporary or a preceding philosophy. A scholar can devote his life to this tradition or a part of it, and anyone serious about political philosophy will want to acquire at least some knowledge of the tradition. But one does not have to go to books of political philosophy to find political philosophy. All the books of political philosophy could be lost, if one can imagine such a calamity, and yet the activity could be generated anew directly from political life. The partly rational character of politics calls for completion in political philosophy—even though it takes a great thinker, to whom we are all greatly indebted, to answer the call.

    Politics always has political philosophy lying within it, waiting to emerge. So far as we know, however, it has emerged just once, with Socrates—but that event left a lasting impression. It was a first. I stress the connection between politics and political philosophy because such a connection is not to be found in the kind of political science that tries to ape the natural sciences. That political science, which dominates political science departments today, is a rival to political philosophy. Instead of addressing the partisan issues of citizens and politicians, it avoids them and replaces their words with scientific terms. Rather than good, just, and noble, you hear political scientists of this kind speaking of utility or preferences. These terms are meant to be neutral, abstracted from partisan dispute. Instead of serving as judge of what is good, just, or noble, such political scientists conceive themselves to be disinterested observers, as if they had no stake in the outcomes of politics. As political scientists, they believe they must suppress their opinions as citizens lest they contaminate their scientific selves. The political philosopher, however, takes a stand with Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), who said that while he himself was not a partisan, he undertook to see, not differently, but further than the parties.

    To sum up: political philosophy seeks to judge political partisans, but to do so it must enter into political debate. It wants to be impartial, or to be a partisan for the whole, for the common good; but that impartiality is drawn from the arguments of the parties themselves by extending their claims and not by standing aloof from them, divided between scientist and citizen, half slave to science, half rebel from it. Being involved in partisan dispute does not make the political philosopher fall victim to relativism, for the relativism so fashionable today is a sort of lazy dogmatism. These

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