Harvey Mansfield: Liberal Democracy as a Mixed Regime

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2020

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

What is liberal democracy? What parts of human nature does liberal democracy rely on and try to cultivate? How can Aristotle help us understand America? In this thought-provoking and challenging Conversation, Harvey Mansfield shares his interpretation of liberal democracy as a regime that relies on both the democratic and aristocratic parts of human nature. However, citizens of liberal democracy tend to deny or misunderstand the aristocratic elements of the liberal democratic regime. According to Mansfield, this leads to the underestimation of the need for virtue in public and private life. And virtue is indispensable for a healthy politics. Relying on Aristotle’s classic account of the mixed regime, Mansfield argues that a deeper understanding of both the democratic and aristocratic parts of liberal democracy could help us better understand ourselves—and perhaps help us improve liberal democracy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm pleased to be joined again by Harvey Mansfield,
0:20.4	Professor of Government at Harvard University.
0:23.0	Always a pleasure, I think to say.
0:24.9	You have to say that, right.
0:26.3	And I thought we would discuss today your excellent essay,
0:30.1	which made a big impression on me when I read it when it came out when I was in graduate school.
0:34.7	Liberal democracy as a mixed regime, it appeared in the American Spectator, which was then called
0:40.1	the alternative, before it became more mainstream I guess and became the American
0:45.7	spectator and was republished in your excellent book for 1978 I think the spirit of
0:51.1	liberalism so people should look at the essay, but I thought it's not the books out of print,
0:57.0	unfortunately, and disgracefully, really a terrible statement about the publishing profession that that's the case?
1:03.4	Well, that's Harvard Press, so.
1:05.8	Well, yeah.
1:06.8	All right.
1:07.8	That's a decline at Harvard there.
1:10.0	And the essay I was happy to, was reminded of it and looked at it recently and was struck by how interesting it is.
1:18.0	And since the people can look at it online, it's not as accessible in some of your other work, so I thought
1:25.0	worth really walking people through it. We had a discussion recently about it, and I thought
1:29.7	other people also were in a seminar and other people, as you know, were very struck by the formulation.
1:35.0	So I mean mixed regime that sounds like Aristotle and classical political
1:40.6	philosophy and liberal democracy sounds like modern
1:43.8	liberalism so what's the that's the idea the title is a kind of paradox
	...

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