The political philosopher Harvey Mansfield, he arrived at Harvard University as an undergraduate

in the fall of 1949 and has remained at Harvard ever since.

For a man who has spent almost six decades studying the United States, five questions

about America today, Harvey Mansfield on Uncommon Knowledge Now.

Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson. The political philosopher Harvey Mansfield

enrolled at Harvard University in the autumn of 1949 and has remained at Harvard ever since.

After receiving his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1953, he received his doctoral

degree from Harvard in 1962. The following year, 1963, he joined the Harvard faculty and

earlier this very day, 59 years after joining the Harvard faculty, Professor Mansfield

taught a seminar in political philosophy at Harvard.

Harvey Mansfield has published more than a dozen books, including the standard edition

of Detokeville's Democracy in America, published in 2000, which he translated and edited with

his late wife, Delville Winthrop. In 2006, Professor Mansfield, perhaps, published perhaps

his most controversial book, Manliness. Joining me today from the campus of Dartmouth College,

one of the few institutions that can condescend to Mother Harvard, Harvard legend Professor

Harvey Mansfield, Harvey five questions. Here's first family and religion.

And the big question here is, do our underlying social institutions remain healthy enough to

support self-government from your book, Tokeville, a very short introduction? I'm quoting you,

in Tokeville, religion and family represent an indispensable supplement to politics that

keeps it under restraint with a reminder of a higher and more intimate life than political

life. Both religion and family are necessary, necessary to self-government. All right, we come

to religion in a moment. First family, this will take another moment to set up and then

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