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Comprehensive study of "manliness"
Yale University Press
February 2006
304 pages
ISBN: 0300106645
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
This book invitesΓ―ΒΏΒ½no, demandsΓ―ΒΏΒ½a response from its readers. It is impossible not to be drawn in to the provocative (often contentious) discussion that Harvey Mansfield sets before us. This is the first comprehensive study of manliness, a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our Γ―ΒΏΒ½gender-neutral societyΓ―ΒΏΒ½ does not like it but cannot get rid of it. Drawing from science, literature, and philosophy, Mansfield examines the layers of manliness, from vulgar aggression, to assertive manliness, to manliness as virtue, and to philosophical manliness. He shows that manliness seeks and welcomes drama, prefers times of war, conflict, and risk, and brings change or restores order at crucial moments. Manly men in their assertiveness raise issues, bring them to the fore, and make them public and politicalΓ―ΒΏΒ½as for example, the manliness of the womenΓ―ΒΏΒ½s movement. After a wide-ranging tour from stereotypes to Hemingway and Achilles, to Nietzsche, to feminism, and to Plato, the author returns to todayΓ―ΒΏΒ½s problem of Γ―ΒΏΒ½unemployed manliness.Γ―ΒΏΒ½ Formulating a reasoned defense of a quality hardly obedient to reason, he urges men, and especially women, to understand and accept manliness, and to give it honest and honorable employment.
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