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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Last May...

...UD blogged the Jefferson Lecture, which featured Tom Wolfe. This May, it's Harvey Mansfield, and she'll be there again, ready to blog.

Here's some information about the paper he'll give. I got it from the Harvard University Gazette:



His topic is “How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science.”

In the lecture, Mansfield will look at thumos, a concept in ancient Greek that conveys the idea of “spiritedness,” and the depth of emotion and desire that underlies the basic human need for recognition. Thumos is more important to understanding politics than power or self interest, said Mansfield. “It’s what is excited when you are angry, and also when you are ashamed of yourself.” Thumos can turn anger at a slight into a principle that ultimately informs a political movement — like feminism, he said, admitting that part of his lecture will “shade into my book on manliness.”

Mansfield will also advance a novel idea: Why not enrich the study of politics by requiring its students to read more literature? It would put “proper names” back into political discourse, he said, and counteract a tendency among political scientists to define society and institutions as abstractions. “You don’t live in them,” Mansfield said of abstractions. “You live in America.” He offered, for instance, that Mark Twain’s 1889 fantasy “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” illuminates the idea of a capitalist manager or entrepreneur. Shakespeare, too, said Mansfield, “has a wonderful political understanding.”