Harvey Mansfield

"Science, according to science, ought to be the most important attribute of human beings."

"Today political science is often said to be ‘descriptive’ or ‘empirical,’ concerned with facts; political philosophy is called ‘normative’ because it expresses values. But these terms merely repeat in…"

"The way out from complication and doubt is to reduce the good to pleasure, something close to the body, or to utility, something useful to the body. ... The body is considered as a factor all human be…"

"Self-interest, when simple, is universal; I would do the same as you. I would be propelled toward an obvious good, or toward a good I thought obvious. If self-interest is obvious, it is not really you…"

"The simplified notion of self-interest used by our political and social science cannot tolerate the tension between one’s own and the good, for that tension leaves human behavior unpredictable. One ca…"

"Literature ... seeks to entertain — and why is this? ... The reason, fundamentally, is that literature knows something that science does not: the human resistance to hearing the truth. Science does no…"

"Science for its part speaks against the special importance of any object of science, including human beings. ... Science as opposed to religion recognizes nothing sacred either outside man or within h…"

"Identity is as foreign to science as the good, and just as the good is reduced to something palpable, one’s own is raised to something vaguer but shareable."