Tag Archives: mansfield

Self-Interest Rightly Understood: On Harvey Mansfield’s 2007 Jefferson Lecture

The American enterprise lends itself to the conduct of political science today: it is a science concerned with satisfaction, utility, and power. The reason why it is concerned with these concepts is that individuals can be abstracted into something more general, and their behavior can be predicted. Hence, “self-interest” arises, and it is a loaded …

October 27, 2007 – 11:15 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, politics | Tagged | Comments (0)

Forms and Formalities Regarding the American Constitution

Mansfield aims to defend the Constitution against the slights and scorns of political and social science and, especially, to restore respect for its forms and formalities…. Mansfield argues that while the Constitution is a means to ends outside itself, its forms include an end – self-government – that deserves our loyalty even when it is …

June 29, 2007 – 4:04 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Defending Mansfield: Why the Executive is Not Entirely Defined by the Rule of Law

Energy is an ambivalent term in this kind of political philosophy – but its worth again being very precise by what we mean here. Mansfield takes both the word energy and the Machiavellian word, virtu, to be attributes that only tyrants or those acting extra legally can have. Its an interesting case- but in my …

May 3, 2007 – 5:44 pm | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Macbeth and Manliness

Looking over the Macbeth essay for the 85,000th time, I cannot help but note that while I am very clear in alluding to the inversion of Christ through Malcolm, I am not clear on the tearing apart of Macbeth through different notions of love. (It should be noted that while I hold Lady Macbeth symbolizes …

February 18, 2007 – 8:08 am | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , | Comments (0)