Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield

For forty years, Harvey Mansfield has been worth reading. Whether plumbing the depths of Machiavelli's Discourses or explaining what was at stake in Bill Clinton's impeachment, Mansfield 's work in political philosophy and political science has set the standard. In Educating the Prince, twenty-one of his students, themselves distinguished scholars, try to live up to that standard. Their essays offer penetrating analyses of Machiavellianism, liberalism, and America., all of them informed by Mansfield's own work. The volume also includes a bibliography of Mansfield's writings.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 Machiavellianism and Its Alternatives Chapter 3 Virtue, Modern and Ancient Chapter 4 How a Liberal Picks a Fight: Marsilius of Padua and the Singular Case of Strife Chapter 5 Machiavelli and the Foundations of Modernity: A Reading of Chapter 3 ofThe Prince Chapter 6 Necessity, Morality, Christianity Chapter 7 Metaphysics and Religion: Francis Bacon's Critique of the Ancients Chapter 8 "Christian Kings" and "English Mercuies":Henry V and the classical tradition of Manliness Part 9 The Liberal Regime Chapter 10 "Hobbes", "Socinus", Spinoza": Esotericism and the Atheist State in Pierre Bayle'sHistorical and Critical Dictionary Chapter 11 Rousseau, Nationalism, and the Politics of Sympathetic Identification Chapter 12 Kantian Idealism Chapter 13 Political Philosophy and the Religious Issue: From the Ancient Regime to Modern Capitalism Part 14 America, Constitutionalism, and Statesmanship Chapter 15 Things Which Independent States May of RIght Do Chapter 16 The Common Law Spirit of the American Revolution Chapter 17 The Federalist's Unmixed Republican Government Chapter 18 Responsibility inThe Federalist Chapter 19 Abraham Lincoln and the Spirit of American Statesmanship Chapter 20 Constitutional Bureaucracy Chapter 21 Separation of Powers and Contemporary Politics: The Case of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 Chapter 22 The Care of Souls in a Constitutional Deocracy: Some Lessons from Harvey Mansfiled and Alexander Solzhenitsyn Chapter 23 Churchill's Understanding of Politics Chapter 24 Publications by Harvey C. Mansfield

About the Author :
Mark Blitz is Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy, chair of the Department of Government, and the director of research at Claremont McKenna College. William Kristol is editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard.

Review :
Buy this book. The volume contains an introduction by Kristol and 21 impressive and provocative essays. The book also contains a bibliography of Mansfield's writtings, which alone would have made it worth the price. Any Scrapbook student who fails to grab a copy gets an automatic C-minus grade. Harvey Mansfield is an extraordinary teacher who has, as this fine volume of essays attests, profoundly influenced the lives and thinking of his students. But Professor Mansfield's influence extends beyond the walls of the academy. His insights have deep practical and political importance.Throughout his career Harvey Mansfield has taught us important things about self-government; we need, now more than ever, to heed his wise counsel. In addition to being the world's leading interpreter of Machiavelli and an unblinkingly courageous social commentator, Harvey Mansfield is a superb teacher who has fostered a generation of influential students. The present volume is testimony both to the breadth of Mansfield's interests, and the depth of influence that he has had on contemporary thought about politics and philosophy. Machiavelli urged the prince to rely on his own arms. Harvey Mansfield, a one-man antidote to liberal complacency, relies on his formidable learning and rapier wit. A dazzling teacher, he has inspired a remarkable group of admiring students, as this volume attests. It will provoke and engage readers across the political spectrum. Among scholars and citizens, Harvey Mansfield is a prince-a theorist who neither disdains nor is satisfied by political practice, a partisan for whom the truth and the common good always rank above cause, and a bright spirit who knows how much American public life depends on the graces of form and humor. For Americans of all persuasions, Harvey Mansfield is-as these essays testify-an invaluable teacher and example. Harvey Mansfield's students include the undergraduates and graduate students who have been in his Harvard classes, and those of us who have been taught by his remarkably varied writings. The essays in this volume reveal the range of his interests and his students' gratitude. The range and depth of the 19 essays they have commissioned make the book far more substantial than the average run of such tributes. As one would expect from students of a leading authority and translator of Machiavelli, the author of The Prince figures prominently in these pages. But so do reflections on the American founding and the place of statemanship in modern politics. Add to these the fascinating chapters on Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Kant, Churchill, Solzhenitsyn, common law, ethics in foreign policy, and the place of the federal bureaucracy in the constitutional order-and you begin to understand Mansfield's distinctive contribution to conservative ideas. This volume of essays by Mansfield's students attests to the breadth of their teacher's interest and to the liberality that has led a rather diverse group of students to his door. Educating the Prince covers an amazing range of topics. . . . The essays are almost uniformly of high quality, readable, interesting. Most of the contributions are short and crisp; they make a point without worrying it to death. All of them have interesting things to say.