Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
Although the book is getting mixed reviews (I've reproduced one, below), I wonder if the concept
still has life or value? I believe the concept is supposed to include courage, confidence, 'grace under fire', protection of the vulnerable. Is it worth retaining a virtue which is so gender associated?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060318.BKMANL18/TPStory/?query=manlines
s
In search of the manly man
MARK KINGWELL
[book review of]
Manliness
By Harvey C. Mansfield
Yale University Press,
304 pages, $32.50
It is hard to know how to evaluate a book that is at once challenging and rather silly, especially if it is written, as this one surely is, with deliberate intent to provoke. That provocation is the first clue that Harvey Mansfield is, himself, not exactly behaving in a manly fashion in his wide-ranging apologia for manly virtues. Manly men do not provoke, especially do not provoke women, just for the sake of making a point. That is the stuff of passive-aggression, the difference between poison
and pistol as your preferred weapon of attack.
Still, let us agree for now that there is such a thing as manliness; also that Mansfield, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard and an expert on Machiavelli, is broadly correct in thinking it distinct from masculinity, as an ethical category stands apart from a merely biological or descriptive one.
The terms "masculine" and "manly" are often conflated, but note that chest hair is masculine whereas grace under pressure is something else. Not all men are manly, in other words, and not all manliness belongs to men. Manliness is a quality of character and action, rightly associated with assertiveness, discipline, courage and protection of the vulnerable.
Mansfield defines it, neatly, as
"confidence in the face of risk."
At the same time, illustrating Aristotle's doctrine of the mean in virtue, he acknowledges that manliness becomes vicious when carried to even mild extremes. The very same qualities that make for strength and self-reliance may distort, under slight condition changes, into aggression, arrogance and intimidation. The bully is the manly man gone bad. But how, precisely, is that badness to be prevented if there is no bright line between the stand-up guy and the knock-down jerk?
Mansfield is preoccupied with this question, but he has little to offer except an acknowledgment that making the distinction is a problem. His book is primarily devoted, instead, to taking issue with feminist attacks on manliness under the rubric of a gender-neutral society. Mansfield has harsh things to say about everybody from Simone de Beauvoir to Germaine Greer[....]
[...]
[...][Let us] note instead the massively false premise of the book's major argument. Line one of chapter one: "Today the very word manliness seems quaint and obsolete."
Nonsense. Even an Ivy League professor must now and then watch television. Has Mansfield not seen the F-18 fly-bys and trooping of the colours at every possible football game? He applauds the firefighter heroes of Sept. 11, 2001, but did he not notice George W. Bush's bullhorn stumping in Manhattan two days later, or the manufactured drama of the disgusting "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier op during the Iraq invasion? Manliness is alive and thriving, if also brain-dead and
meretricious, at every level of American society. (Mansfield does not consider any other kind.)
[...]
The book is better when it reaches back to classical authors, Plato and Aristotle primarily, to find a deeper wisdom about the values and risks of risk-taking. Here Mansfield touches on, but does not much illuminate, the real problem of "unemployed manliness": the kind of empty, Fight Club love of agon that creates teenage gangs and stupid wars.
Aristotle knew that risk was virtue only in the service of justice, that physical courage must be governed by the moral kind. Risking one's body for the sake of principle may be the highest form of ethical action, but only if directed toward a larger human flourishing -- a standard that is probably incomprehensible to today's manly rulers.
That's a good point, and one where Mansfield claims to join cause with thoughtful feminists. The final irony of this book is that its end should have been its beginning: "Philosophical courage" is both valuable and neglected, but it's a far cry from primate aggression. For all the bluster,
Mansfield's argument lacks the careful discussion of manliness needed to distinguish good forms from bad, to separate genuine confidence from the ersatz displays favoured by draft-dodging middle-aged hawks. [...]
still has life or value? I believe the concept is supposed to include courage, confidence, 'grace under fire', protection of the vulnerable. Is it worth retaining a virtue which is so gender associated?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060318.BKMANL18/TPStory/?query=manlines
s
In search of the manly man
MARK KINGWELL
[book review of]
Manliness
By Harvey C. Mansfield
Yale University Press,
304 pages, $32.50
It is hard to know how to evaluate a book that is at once challenging and rather silly, especially if it is written, as this one surely is, with deliberate intent to provoke. That provocation is the first clue that Harvey Mansfield is, himself, not exactly behaving in a manly fashion in his wide-ranging apologia for manly virtues. Manly men do not provoke, especially do not provoke women, just for the sake of making a point. That is the stuff of passive-aggression, the difference between poison
and pistol as your preferred weapon of attack.
Still, let us agree for now that there is such a thing as manliness; also that Mansfield, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard and an expert on Machiavelli, is broadly correct in thinking it distinct from masculinity, as an ethical category stands apart from a merely biological or descriptive one.
The terms "masculine" and "manly" are often conflated, but note that chest hair is masculine whereas grace under pressure is something else. Not all men are manly, in other words, and not all manliness belongs to men. Manliness is a quality of character and action, rightly associated with assertiveness, discipline, courage and protection of the vulnerable.
Mansfield defines it, neatly, as
"confidence in the face of risk."
At the same time, illustrating Aristotle's doctrine of the mean in virtue, he acknowledges that manliness becomes vicious when carried to even mild extremes. The very same qualities that make for strength and self-reliance may distort, under slight condition changes, into aggression, arrogance and intimidation. The bully is the manly man gone bad. But how, precisely, is that badness to be prevented if there is no bright line between the stand-up guy and the knock-down jerk?
Mansfield is preoccupied with this question, but he has little to offer except an acknowledgment that making the distinction is a problem. His book is primarily devoted, instead, to taking issue with feminist attacks on manliness under the rubric of a gender-neutral society. Mansfield has harsh things to say about everybody from Simone de Beauvoir to Germaine Greer[....]
[...]
[...][Let us] note instead the massively false premise of the book's major argument. Line one of chapter one: "Today the very word manliness seems quaint and obsolete."
Nonsense. Even an Ivy League professor must now and then watch television. Has Mansfield not seen the F-18 fly-bys and trooping of the colours at every possible football game? He applauds the firefighter heroes of Sept. 11, 2001, but did he not notice George W. Bush's bullhorn stumping in Manhattan two days later, or the manufactured drama of the disgusting "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier op during the Iraq invasion? Manliness is alive and thriving, if also brain-dead and
meretricious, at every level of American society. (Mansfield does not consider any other kind.)
[...]
The book is better when it reaches back to classical authors, Plato and Aristotle primarily, to find a deeper wisdom about the values and risks of risk-taking. Here Mansfield touches on, but does not much illuminate, the real problem of "unemployed manliness": the kind of empty, Fight Club love of agon that creates teenage gangs and stupid wars.
Aristotle knew that risk was virtue only in the service of justice, that physical courage must be governed by the moral kind. Risking one's body for the sake of principle may be the highest form of ethical action, but only if directed toward a larger human flourishing -- a standard that is probably incomprehensible to today's manly rulers.
That's a good point, and one where Mansfield claims to join cause with thoughtful feminists. The final irony of this book is that its end should have been its beginning: "Philosophical courage" is both valuable and neglected, but it's a far cry from primate aggression. For all the bluster,
Mansfield's argument lacks the careful discussion of manliness needed to distinguish good forms from bad, to separate genuine confidence from the ersatz displays favoured by draft-dodging middle-aged hawks. [...]
