By Harvey C. Mansfield, ISI Books ,July 2001

Hidden within every political debate—in legislatures, on radio talk shows, and even in coffee shops—is an implicit philosophy of the polity, or a particular understanding of the limits and possibilities of human life in community.

Harvard University's Harvey C. Mansfield, one of the philosophers who have shaped our fundamental views of politics through the ages. In an era when "partisanship" is deplored, Mansfield shows that taking sides in disputes about the common good is a permanent part of politics; and it is the place to begin the quest for wisdom concerning the human things.

Dr. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard University. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and has been a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. One of America's leading political theorists, his books include Machiavelli's Virtue, Taming the Prince, America's Constitutional Soul, and The Spirit of Liberalism.

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Introductory Note: 

Political Philosophy is found in great books—those by Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau and others of the highest rank—and in books by professors. You should spend much more time with the great authors than with the professors, and you should use the professors to help you understand the great authors; you should not allow yourself to be diverted or distracted from the great books by the professors. Why not go for the gold? Why be content with the dross? I am a professor; so take it from me that I am only a subordinate guide, one with the office of introducing you to the true guides.

Political philosophy can also be found outside the books—in actual politics—but here we see it only in its first strivings, before it appears under its own name. Citizens and politicians do not claim to be philosophers, whom they rather look down on as ingenious but inept. But politics and political philosophy have one thing in common, and that is argument. If you listen to the talk shows, you will hear your fellow citizens arguing passionately pro and con with advocacy
and denigration, accusation and defense. Politics means taking sides; it is partisan. Not only are there sides—typically liberal and conservative in our day—but also they argue against each other, so that it is liberals versus conservatives.

Book Review (An Reader):

Harvard University Professor Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., is well known within the discipline of political theory as one of the great figures of our time. Profoundly influenced by Leo Strauss, he also brings to his work a concern for the institutions of constitutional democracy which was a staple at Harvard during the era of Carl Friedrich. He has made original contributions to the study of Machiavelli and recently completed a translation of, and commentary on, Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

Mansfield's lectures on ancient, medieval, and modern political philosophy are famously dense and provocative, forcing students to confront the deepest problems posed by some of the greatest minds in Western history. In this remarkable guide, Mansfield conveys with subtle precision the contours, the twists and turns, that political philosophy has taken over the centuries, from Plato to Nietzsche.

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