Harvey Mansfield

by Lee Trepanier

In my last post, I wrote about Leo Strauss’ defense of liberal education as a possible antidote to the narrowness of specialization of knowledge and the moral aimlessness of positivist ideology. One way to teach liberal education is to have students read the great thinkers of one’s tradition. In his chapter on Harvey Mansfield in Teaching in an Age of Ideology, Travis D. Smith writes about how Mansfield breathes new life into old books, asks students to be courageous, and invites them to participate in the conversation about the true, the beautiful, and the good.

As the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard, Harvey Mansfield is not only a prolific scholar, sophisticated patriot, and one of the best known public intellectuals of conservatism but he is also an outstanding teacher who challenges his students’ preconceptions and prejudices where they will feel at unease but not displeased with the world. Raising more questions than resolving them in the classroom, Mansfield pitches his lectures slightly over the heads of everyone in class to engender puzzlement, confusion, and frustration in the hope that students realize that genuine education is neither glib performance nor academic condensation but to be shaken at the soul from the dogmatic laziness of our contemporary culture. The starting point of liberal education therefore is not one of self-satisfaction or skeptical smugness but a genuine wondering of the world that is prompted by puzzlement and bewilderment.  [Read more...]