Harvard Professor’s Masterclass on Machiavelli | Harvey Mansfield

An Interview with Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli

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We underestimate how important Machiavelli is. At best we consider him to be just a clever political commentator. At worst we consider him to be an immoral schemer that can be easily dismissed.

My guest, Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield has spent his career trying to show that Machiavelli is so much more, that he is the very founder of modernity, responsible for establishing the very world you and I live in. He is the founder not just of modern ethics and politics but the true father of modern science itself. In Mansfield's estimation, Machaivelli’s chief rivals are no less than Plato and Jesus, Machiavelli is the anti-christ and we are his heirs.

Machiavelli started a silent revolution, one that was purposefully hidden, Mansfield is here to reveal to us its secrets.

Companion lectures and interviews:

* Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality Explained:

Timestamps:

00:00 0. Introduction

01:45 1.  Machiavelli's Chief Enemy: Christianity

13:12   2. Machiavelli's First Enemy: the Classical Tradition

24:24  3. Necessity Over Goodness

57:48  4. Machiavelli's Virtue

1:06:29  5. Machiavelli's Political Revolution

1:17:47   6. The Possibility of Withdrawal

1:24:03  7. Machiavelli's Effectual Truth

1:33:43  8. The Father of Modern Science

1:40:57  9. Machiavelli and Tocqueville

1:45:00  10.  Progressivism

1:51:56  11. Is Mansfield a Machiavellian?

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