Manliness
by Professor Harvey C. Mansfield
List Price:
Our Price: $10.32
You Save: $6.68 (39%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $5.85 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Professor Harvey C. MansfieldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-04
ISBN: 0300122543
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Manliness
Book Review: A desperately needed topic but this is not the answer
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a frustrating book: it starts off on the wrong foot and never gets straight - yet it does contain a wealth of illuminating insights. It is rather like the alchemists of old who, by chasing will-o'-the-wisps, uncovered many interesting facts and truths.
Mansfield is a scholar and he makes it quite clear that he is going to write about manliness through the lens of philosophy. He has no time for real evidence, or verifiable facts.
He is strongly disparaging of science saying that it can contribute nothing to the understanding of something so ephemeral as manliness. Thus in one fatal gesture, Mansfield sweeps into oblivion the fundamental knowledge that sciences such as anthropology, comparative mythology and evolutionary biology provides. But worse, he conflates the exact sciences with the so called social "sciences", which are indeed riddled with wishful thinking and Cultural Marxism.
Indeed, Mansfield's argumentative technique is a master-class in sophistry, innuendo, and non-sequitur. So this book should come with a danger warning: no one of a gullible nature and who has an undeveloped sense of skepticism should venture into this thicket of manipulative dialectic.
Worse, Mansfield seems to have a chip on his shoulder about scientists and Darwin in particular. He never loses a chance to run down Darwin - often in the most ridiculous circumstances. For example: "... looming behind Darwin was the greater figure of Nietzsche... [what?!]; and "Our novelists are more perceptive than Darwin..." [what?!].
He betrays his politically correct neuroses when he apologetically finds "sexism" in the most innocent propositions.
Instead Mansfield offers us the thoughts of various philosophers from Nietzsche, Hobbes, Kant and Simone de Beauvoir to Locke, Aristotle, Burke and Plato. Having dismissed recourse to anything tangible Mansfield then treats us to ivory tower speculations reminiscent of theologians debating the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin.
But on the way, Mansfield does look at how figures like Theodore Roosevelt, and Gary Cooper in High Noon have represented manliness. He even gets close to admitting something sensible: that writers like Kipling The Jungle Book and Haggard King Solomon's Mines sought manliness in primitive peoples. Had he followed that line, we might have been led into the scientific insights of Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Cosmides and Tooby The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, E.O Wilson, Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006 and Dawkins The Selfish Gene.
But no: Winston Churchill observed that: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." So it is with Mansfield. Off he hurries, embarrassed by his close call with (gods forbid!) the earthy lessons of real humanity!
So what is favorable about Mansfield's treatise? He has a wonderful chapter on Feminism where he turns his talents and sharp tongue on pointing up the irrationalities and muddle-headedness of women's rights campaigners.
"Today's feminism ... wants to create equality by lowering women's morality to the level of men's...";
"The attitude of modern feminism is hostile to nature...";
"what man wants a monogamous woman on his hands - who also thinks she is full of virile independence?";
"Beauvoir is an intelligent writer... but she is not a great thinker, and she leans on great thinkers, who were males."
"Feminism does not appreciate the power over stronger men that women lose when they let go the authority and superiority that comes with the guardianship of morality."
"To assert yourself you must take the risk if losing. Today's women want power but they are not so eager to accept the risk that goes with seeking power."
And on the other hand: "Women are not meant to judge us [men] but to forgive us".
And Simone de Beauvoir: "One is not born, but becomes a woman." (An observation that Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth brings into context, if only Mansfield had not rejected scientific knowledge).
* "Only a woman can be a lady, and the feminists have deconstructed "woman" because they think it is a product fashioned by men."
* "The feminists knew more of the nature of woman than they cared to admit, and they relied on womanly devices". They achieved their success. Not by direct confrontation, but by "raising consciousness".
* "Sensitivity, like political correctness.... is the insinuation of opinion into others without either argument or imposition."
* "The trouble with feminist women is that they don't have wives to teach them sense";
* "The gender-neutral society is not friendly towards risky activity ... that might give advantage to manly men as risk-takers and thus upset the balance of the sexes...";
And very tellingly: In the programs proposed by feminists, "government substitutes for husbands and women are induced to put their trust in impersonal bureaucracy rather than in a man who loves them." Here Mansfield makes a vital point in a throwaway line. In a situation of gender equality, "How could she [the wife] make up for the loss of pride he [the husband] might feel from no longer providing for her?"
This goes to the heart of the question, yet Mansfield shuffles off as if nothing had happened. The crisis in western society is that men are no longer important or indispensable; ideally they are feminized clones. If Mansfield had the slightest clue about how our evolutionary psychology had programmed the genders for independent yet complementary roles, he would have developed this notion as the main theme of this book. For that is the great tragedy: today there is no room for men, let alone manly men. But Mansfield wants to finish up by supporting a "gender neutral society" in spite of the contradictions that he has delightfully pointed out. So most of his book makes its way, by a roundabout route, to that end, even though he admits that no society on earth has ever developed one before. And even opines: "...gender-neutrality is a social construction like any other, and not founded in human nature..." At this I have to gag. As a nutritional anthropologist, I deplore the ever increasing mismatch between our savannah-bred natures and our dysfunctional world today. No wonder we are driven neurotic by our socially engineered societies!
And what about "manliness". Mansfield proclaims that it is something metaphysical and not susceptible to scientific study. Yet he is obliged, nevertheless to attempt to define it. This he does in little snippets as he works his way through the book.
MANLINESS:
* "is the stereotype that stands stubbornly in the way of the gender-neutral society";
* "is the willingness to challenge nature combined with the confidence... that one can succeed";
* "contends with nature but respects nature because it is prompted by nature";
* "appears first not as a claim of authority but as the assertion of virtue against authority...";
* "rejects the safety of self-preservation in favor of the glory of risking one's life to vindicate one's rights and deserts";
AND
* "humans want to survive with honor;
* "When confronted with a problem, manly men get busy";
* "A sense of honor is the source of the protectiveness so characteristic of manliness";
* "A man protects those whom he has taken into his care against dangers they cannot face or handle without him."
* "The manly man will take it personally if you do not pay attention to what he says";
* "When manly men assert themselves, they compel us to remember their names. They make themselves... distinct from the nondescript, commodified human beings who are the subjects of our social science";
* "Manliness wants risk, not comfort and convenience";
* "... a team player or an organization man, hardly roles for a manly man";
* "Manliness is preferable to any life of ease or riskless routine";
* "... manliness seeks adventure and that adventure needs to be beheld, narrated";
* "The true man wants two things, danger and play. For that reason he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything";
* "... the gender-neutral society cannot destroy manliness, but it can repress and confuse it";
AND YET:
* "The gender-neutral society needs to believe that manliness is a product of nurture and that it can be removed from the scene...;
* "Manliness is the assertion of meaning when meaning is at risk";
* "... men need to feel they are important...";
So what is Mansfield's conclusion? His final chapter is promisingly entitled "Unemployed Manliness". Ah! Maybe he will at last put his finger on the catastrophe of the age:
"our public education tries to get boys to play with dolls and girls to play with... no, for some reason, not guns."
"The liberal state... is neither male nor female. But human beings cannot live that way, vigilantly stifling every thought or impulse due to one's sex."
"To protect women's careers we need a gender neutral state."
"Women should be free to enter careers yet also expected to be women, and men should be expected to be manly."
But the whole point is this: men cannot be manly if women are free to follow the same career. As I say in my book Deadly Harvest:
"A man's work (hunting) was where he went to get his sense of identity -- where he found prestige and a sense of self-worth. A woman did not go to work (foraging) to find her identity -- she got that by being a mother to her children. Modern ideas of work destabilize this major asymmetry. We can expect a man to feel diminished if a woman does the same job as him. At the very least he will not feel special or important. Here we lose an important prop to self-esteem, especially for a male of low status. The situation gets even worse if, in the hierarchy, he is subordinate to a woman. In these circumstances, the man's workplace, instead of being his main source of self-respect and status-enhancement, will be the opposite -- an unhappy place which reminds him daily of his mediocrity. An unplanned consequence is that such men will seek their identity, status and prestige outside the workplace. Some might do it in innocent ways, through pastimes, hobbies and sports. Many others will find it in street gangs, soccer hooliganism and organized crime."
But Mansfield's treatise ends not with a bang but with an unmanly whimpering pleading: "Please find manliness an honorable and honest employment."
This is no clarion call to rediscover our humanity. Many other thinkers such as Robert Bly Iron John: A Book About Men make a better fist of it. But the definitive book is yet to be written: one that will roll back the inhumane, poisonous and debilitating orthodoxies of gender-neutrality, political correctness and the feminization of society.
Philosophy Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Philosophy Books
Sex Roles and the School (Education in Society Series)by Sara Delamont
Routledge; Published: 1990-10-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.37
Price in other shops:
Gender and Sovereignty: Feminism, the State and International Relationsby John Hoffman
Palgrave Macmillan; Published: 2001-04-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $145.75
Price in other shops:
Queer Frontiers: Millennial Geographies, Genders, and GenerationsUniversity of Wisconsin Press; Published: 2000-04-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $20.10
Price in other shops:
Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalizationby Ladelle McWhorter
Indiana Univ Pr; Published: 1999-08; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desireby Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Bruce Erickson
Indiana University Press; Published: 2010-07-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $21.99
Price in other shops:
Queer Social Philosophy: CRITICAL READINGS FROM KANT TO ADORNOby Randall Halle
University of Illinois Press; Published: 2004-06-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.50
Price in other shops:
Femininity, Mathematics and Science 1880-1914by Claire Gwen Jones
Palgrave Macmillan; Published: 2009-12-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $95.61
Price in other shops:
Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine (Women in Culture and Society)University Of Chicago Press; Published: 2001-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.20
Price in other shops:
The Gay Gnani of Gingalee, Or, Discords of Devolution; A Tragical Entanglement of Modern Mysticism and Modern Scienceby Florence Chance Huntley
General Books LLC; Published: 2012-01-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.99
Price in other shops:
Philosophy of Sex and Love: A Readerby Robert Trevas, Arthur Zucker, Donald M. Borchert
Prentice Hall; Published: 1996-10-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $98.70
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American CultureSage Publications, Inc; Published: 2008-03-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $43.82
Price in other shops:
The Closing of the American Mindby Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1988-05-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops:
The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wildby Susan J. Douglas
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2010-12-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.62
Price in other shops:
Nicomachean Ethicsby Aristotle
Hackett Publishing Co.; Published: 1999; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.38
Price in other shops:
The Laws of Platoby Plato
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1988-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.35
Price in other shops:
The Shorter Catechism, Vol. 10by Westminster Assembly
Banner of Truth; Published: 1998-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Four Texts on Socrates: Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito and Aristophanes' Cloudsby Thomas G. West, Grace Starry West
Cornell Univ Pr; Published: 1998-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops:
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Lifeby John Calvin
Baker Books; Published: 2004-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.18
Price in other shops:
Moral Theory: An Introduction (Elements of Philosophy)by Mark Timmons
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Published: 2001-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.35
Price in other shops:
Discourses and Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)by Epictetus
Penguin Classics; Published: 2008-11-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.35
Price in other shops: