The Art of Manliness - The Classical Code of Manhood

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.060 what does it mean to be a man it's a timeless question that's been answered in different ways

00:00:16.020 across the ages for the ancient romans the word for manliness was weirdus the root of our word

00:00:21.360 virtue to be a man meant living a life of virtuous excellence walter newell takes up that same

00:00:26.740 definition in his book the code of man first published 20 years ago and now released in a

00:00:30.900 new edition tan the show waller professor of political science argues that we need to recover

00:00:36.180 an older vision of manhood rooted in the traditions of western antiquity he shares the five paths that

00:00:41.520 in his view form the classical code of manliness and how they can continue to be lived out today

00:00:45.900 after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is code of man

00:00:56.740 waller newell welcome back to the show good to be with you so you published the book the code of man

00:01:09.900 20 years ago we had you on the show to discuss it a decade back it's been 10 years you've recently

00:01:16.960 released an updated version of the book what first prompted you to write this book 20 years ago and

00:01:23.280 then what do you think has changed in the cultural conversation about manhood in the 20 years since

00:01:28.920 it's been published that you thought it warranted an update well i think the minor reason in a way to

00:01:36.680 republish it was simply that it had been out of print and i had dozens and dozens of people asking me

00:01:43.180 how can i get hold of it so for that reason alone i thought it was worth relaunching but the more

00:01:49.160 important thing is that in the intervening years the whole debate over the meaning of masculinity

00:01:55.320 and the distinction between true manliness and toxic masculinity as it's called has grown ever

00:02:02.280 more intense far from abating in the last election for example it was a very hot topic and so i thought

00:02:09.400 well this really is a good time to revisit what i think the true meaning of manliness is in contrast

00:02:17.320 with toxic masculinity and you're coming at this you're a political philosophy professor political

00:02:23.400 scientist like that's what you do so you're coming at it through that angle looking at

00:02:27.480 classical culture and how it can give us insights about masculinity and manhood

00:02:32.720 yeah that's right in fact i really began my interest in this topic because my scholarship had been very

00:02:41.520 much concerned with the notion of honor seeking what it means to pursue honor and a journalist friend

00:02:49.220 of mine actually said you know a lot of people out there are interested in these sorts of topics not

00:02:54.960 just academics or scholars why don't you try and branch out and reach a general audience and so that's

00:03:01.540 what i did so let's start off with the socratic question we're gonna do definitions socrates always said

00:03:07.420 you got to start with definitions how do you define manliness would you mind me if i quote myself from

00:03:13.360 the book because go right ahead i think i can sum it up in a few lines my view of this debate is that

00:03:20.740 what is now called toxic masculinity is a perverse and destructive force that is in fact the direct

00:03:27.600 opposite of the traditional western classical and biblical understanding of true manliness which is

00:03:34.020 premised on the need for virtuous behavior that could never violate anyone's rights or freedom

00:03:39.660 least of all that of women and instead defined manly virtue as the moderate gentlemanly and gallant

00:03:46.440 treatment of others that's about the best i can do that's sort of my whole argument really is there in

00:03:52.420 that few sentences and why do you go back to the ancient greeks and the romans and even the bible

00:03:59.080 for your idea of manliness well i think we have to begin with those moorings in tradition however shaky

00:04:07.760 they may have become to the extent that we can fashion a new way of approaching manliness in the

00:04:14.940 present i think it's got to at least begin in those older roots it might not rest content with those older

00:04:22.100 roots but i think that's your starting point and i think we should also bear in mind that these

00:04:28.680 classical teachings although they're thousands of years old have really been widespread in their

00:04:36.380 influence in the west i would say certainly up until the 19th century even into the 20th century

00:04:42.820 i was thinking for example of winston churchill you know he never went to a university which i think by the

00:04:50.340 way was one of the key ingredients to his success as a statesman that he did not go to oxford or

00:04:56.340 cambridge but he was interested in the classics and he read them in translation so he too had that

00:05:03.660 appetite for the older way of looking at things as for the biblical approach i i think again that

00:05:10.560 those roots are so deep in us still even today that we really have to explore what the biblical

00:05:20.220 understanding of manliness is and of course the extent to which it isn't simply harmonious with the

00:05:26.500 classical philosophical understanding that's why i treated the issue of revelation in the section on

00:05:34.000 pride because in a way the difference between the biblical approach and the classical approach

00:05:40.320 can be summed up in the fact that for the classics pride was one of the supreme human manly

00:05:46.640 virtues whereas in the biblical tradition of course that's very much called into question christianity

00:05:53.240 i think would argue that compassion is really the chief virtue should be the chief virtue of a true

00:06:00.160 man and pride is actually something to be avoided and i think out of that tension something creative

00:06:07.120 can emerge i'm not sure that those alternatives can ultimately even be reconciled we have to sort of face

00:06:13.080 even to the extent to which they conflict with one another something i've noticed in my own readings of

00:06:22.200 the classics and also the biblical tradition is that there's a lot of insights there on what to do about

00:06:29.700 what you know we call it a toxic masculinity you see a lot of people talking about what can we

00:06:34.440 do about this issue of these young men who are just unmoored and you know acting in incredibly

00:06:41.340 inappropriate ways i'm like just read the iliad i mean there's you can make a case it's about toxic

00:06:47.240 masculinity you're dealing with hubris and rage and unbridled ambition if you look at the life of 0.82

00:06:53.400 alcibiades there's a case study in what unbridled ambition can do the bible is constantly talking

00:06:59.580 about what can we do to harness or bridle those masculine passions and if and use them in a productive

00:07:06.660 way instead of them becoming destructive that's right a lot of my other scholarship has been on

00:07:12.560 the theme of tyranny and the history of tyranny ancient and modern as a theme in political thought

00:07:19.720 and the way that goes together with manliness is that for the classics and for later traditions as well

00:07:27.400 tyranny in a way is the deepest perversion of manliness it's a distortion of what true manliness

00:07:35.580 should be and its derailment into a kind of lust for power and domination over others whereas i think

00:07:43.300 the whole point of the traditional approach to manliness would be that those potentially tyrannical

00:07:50.400 energies should be sublimated and redirected toward the honorable service of the common good 1.00

00:07:57.000 so you want to knit people like alcibiades in the bud and turn them in a more constructive direction

00:08:05.240 and yes i think i agree with you completely about homer if you look at the contrast between

00:08:11.580 achilles and odysseus as they're presented by homer in a way achilles is everything that

00:08:18.960 you should not emulate because he is terribly narcissistic he's totally self-absorbed

00:08:26.060 even though he in fact has a family back home a wife and children i think homer deliberately

00:08:34.700 presents him in the iliad as if he is always by himself he's always isolated from others and angry

00:08:41.760 at them odysseus by contrast is very much enveloped in his love of family life his whole voyage is the

00:08:50.860 desire to get back home to his wife and son and i think in homer's view odysseus is meant to be the

00:08:57.680 more admirable character he isn't simply ambitious he doesn't simply use brute force homer says that he is

00:09:05.880 the ultimate prudent man the phronomos and that he uses his mind whenever he can rather than brute strength

00:09:14.220 and so i think of the two models homer himself is pointing us toward odysseus and really not so much

00:09:21.440 toward achilles as you know the very first word of the iliad is rage and it's the rage of achilles that

00:09:29.040 sets the whole iliad in motion so you mentioned that for the greeks and the romans manliness seemed

00:09:36.000 to be about the development of certain virtues what were some of those virtues that they thought a

00:09:41.940 man had to develop to become a manly man well in a way i was trying to suggest that with my own five

00:09:50.700 headings of love courage pride family country i think those comprehend a lot of the virtues that

00:09:57.360 were important to the classical thinkers for living a kind of integrated life the notion of virtue that the

00:10:05.900 classics had was very much one of integrity meaning a sort of unity of strength devoted to living a good

00:10:13.260 life serving the common good how has the biblical tradition what was their idea or what were the

00:10:20.600 virtues that they thought you needed to develop in order to become this integrated man you're talking

00:10:25.460 about well again to me that really all comes down to the difference between say aristotle and saint

00:10:33.000 augustine on the question of pride versus humility it's a very striking contrast because for aristotle

00:10:40.260 humility is actually a vice in the sense that a man who does not lay claim to honors to which he is

00:10:47.660 entitled actually has a flawed character for augustine i think it's the exact opposite that he would say

00:10:56.400 that humility is necessary to live a happy life meaning to live a godly life so there is a real

00:11:03.720 divergence there and i think that with a lot of these problems with time and age i've come to realize that

00:11:11.400 they just might not be ultimately harmonious if you know what i mean we might just have to live with

00:11:17.000 the possibility that they can't be reconciled with one another yeah we'll talk more about that tension

00:11:22.940 between the biblical tradition and the classical tradition we go more into detail about pride

00:11:28.460 but yeah i i agree with you i for the art of manliness one of the guiding sort of principles

00:11:33.800 is to bring back this classical idea of manliness where it meant becoming a man of virtue

00:11:39.020 and the development of these different positive virtues and one thing people often push back against

00:11:46.040 and i understand the pushback is okay well if manliness is about the development of virtue

00:11:50.480 what does that mean for women who also develop these virtues because yeah these virtues that 1.00

00:11:56.220 we're talking about courage pride family humility these are universal so what does that mean for

00:12:03.460 women who develop these virtues is that womanliness is that what you'd call it i agree with you

00:12:08.400 completely that men and women share the same aims and that my suggestion of what those should be

00:12:16.680 would apply both to men and women that said though i think that although men and women are pursuing the

00:12:24.000 same aims they do so along somewhat different paths we know from i think pretty solidly established

00:12:31.160 empirical research that men and women tend to lean towards certain occupations more than others

00:12:38.180 and so i think we can combine the universalism of those goals with a recognition of the fact that

00:12:46.780 temperamentally and psychologically men and women may be pursuing different routes to that same

00:12:53.540 outcome yeah i'd agree with you we all have the same aims but we'll get there through different

00:12:58.540 ways based on our temperaments our natural proclivities i've always thought of it as in terms of music

00:13:05.540 so like you know a tuba and a flute can play the same notes of music but they make different sounds

00:13:10.840 so you know men and women both pursue virtue but the result makes different kinds of music and we need

00:13:17.260 both yeah one thing you write in this book and it struck me when i first read it 10 plus years ago and i was

00:13:24.780 really hit by it when i read it again is that theodore roosevelt and winston churchill men who lived

00:13:31.980 you know 100 years ago 120 years ago they had more in common with homer than they do with us

00:13:39.180 what do you mean by that i think what i mainly meant was simply that their life had a kind of grandeur of

00:13:46.300 scope that we would associate with ancient heroism they really were truly towering figures and so in that

00:13:54.860 sense i think it's apt to compare them to heroic heroes out of the pages of homer and also too i think

00:14:03.920 they you mentioned earlier churchill even though he didn't go to college he was steeped in this

00:14:08.420 classical education that gave him this notion of classical manhood that you're talking about in this book

00:14:16.100 same with theodore roosevelt and same with the founding fathers and today that education doesn't

00:14:24.280 really exist in our schools or even our universities no that's very true i mean in the case of churchill

00:14:32.140 as i said he sort of came to this on his own his wry comment about reading aristotle's nicomachean

00:14:38.560 ethics for instance was that this simply described the people that he knew in his own social circle

00:14:44.380 on the other hand theodore roosevelt had a superb formal education which included reading latin and

00:14:52.700 greek in the original and so he drew directly upon the wellspring of these classical teachings about

00:14:59.700 the virtues and as you know from his writings he is a superb interpreter of those virtues and how they

00:15:07.500 should contribute to democratic manhood in the present think too of the american founders by the way

00:15:13.920 the american founders who attended university like jefferson they were deeply steeped in the

00:15:20.020 classics they read all of the great ancient thinkers historians poets and they also read important

00:15:28.220 modern thinkers like montesquieu and locke so even though they were in a way servants of an egalitarian

00:15:35.600 society they believed if anything that the ruling class of that society must be made up of

00:15:42.340 liberally educated gentleman it's something i'm struck by when i read books or letters from the

00:15:49.620 founding era particularly when they're describing george washington they always talk about the manliness

00:15:56.020 of george washington and if you were to read that in the 21st century in 2025 not knowing about this

00:16:04.260 classical notion of masculinity or manhood you think manliness of george what what did that mean was he

00:16:10.880 big and burly and did he just tear stuff up and he's just a great fighter but for those individuals

00:16:18.660 who lived during that time when they said the manliness of george washington they knew like that

00:16:23.000 actually had some deeper broader significance it meant that this was a man who was as you said

00:16:29.960 integrated he developed the whole the whole man yes that's right he had the refinement of a gentleman

00:16:36.980 and yet he was also courageous without limit really and self-reliant and encouraged those same

00:16:45.480 qualities in others you know one of my favorite references to washington was by the great english

00:16:52.100 wig leader charles james fox who wrote a wonderful encomium to washington saying that this is a man who

00:16:58.840 seems to have stridden right out of the pages of plutarch and i think we all know that the american

00:17:05.340 founding was very much caught up in a kind of roman spirit in a way they thought they were reviving a

00:17:13.060 new order of the ages that previously it had been rome now it was going to be america and the united

00:17:19.880 states another anecdote that i think is very revealing about washington is that when his troops were camping at

00:17:28.540 valley forge under very difficult conditions washington actually had a troop staged a very famous play about

00:17:37.920 the life of cato and how cato committed suicide rather than give into the offer of clemency by julius

00:17:46.620 caesar in other words even under the terrible conditions of valley forge washington in effect staged a

00:17:53.260 civics lesson for his own troops so you mentioned in your book you focus on five particular virtues

00:18:00.040 and each each of these virtues have like sub virtues that you might need to develop to develop that

00:18:04.960 virtue and you picked love courage pride family and country or patriotism we're going to talk more about

00:18:12.080 these virtues in detail here in a moment but one thing i want to talk about in the beginning of the book

00:18:16.880 you make the case that another part of manliness in this classical notion is that it's the balance of

00:18:25.580 reason and passion and you use plato's allegory of the chariot to describe that balance for those who

00:18:32.720 aren't familiar with the allegory can you walk us through it yes basically it's an image based on a

00:18:39.460 chariot with a charioteer and two powerful horses and in the analogy the charioteer represents the mind or

00:18:48.880 the intellect which has to guide the chariot in its celestial ride through the heavens the horses represent

00:18:57.080 the power of human passion both erotic and ambitious and if the horses get out of the control of the

00:19:07.740 charioteer they're going to plunge the chariot downward into the world of chaos below so that's

00:19:14.760 why the mind has to govern the passions but by the same token without the energy and power of those

00:19:20.680 horses the chariot isn't going anywhere the charioteer by himself is not enough the mind is not enough

00:19:27.700 there has to be a symbiotic interaction between the mind and the passions in which the passions are

00:19:34.160 sublimated and placed at the service of reason so that's what i was trying to convey there there has

00:19:40.100 to be this harmony of the mind and the passions even though the mind in a certain way has to be in

00:19:47.120 the driver's seat how do you think we've lost sight of that balance in our discourse about manhood today

00:19:52.320 well you know this takes me to one of my favorite comparisons which is fight club the novel and the

00:19:59.220 movie because i think what you see there is the tension between what i call the wimp and the beast

00:20:06.060 which sums up the modern dilemma of masculinity on the one hand you've got the character played by ed

00:20:13.500 norton who is a kind of pouch carrying ikea furniture buying self-help group attending male he wants to be the

00:20:24.140 new male that he thinks is required of him by feminism but then he takes all of the energies 0.96

00:20:30.780 that he thereby represses natural masculine energies and they get shifted to his alter ego

00:20:36.980 the character played by brad pitt who is a kind of macho fascist and i think that i've observed and

00:20:46.060 others have confirmed this to me teachers i know young men today when faced between the choice between

00:20:53.140 the wimp and the beast believe that in order to be manly they have to act out the brad pitt side

00:21:00.420 of the coin meaning that they identify manliness with macho aggressiveness and i think that really

00:21:07.380 sums up the dilemma because rather than a harmony between the mind of the passions you've got a complete

00:21:12.880 contradiction between the mind which has now been turned into something wan and weak on the other hand

00:21:20.000 the passions have been left to become monstrous and i think it's interesting in 2025 with digital

00:21:28.800 technology i'm talking social media youtube video games i think you see instances of those passions

00:21:37.280 of unbridled masculine passion you see it in the real world in the terms of violence and sexual violence

00:21:44.160 but you also see it online as well like some of the discourse you see in some of these internet

00:21:49.680 subcultures that are populated by young men it can be very pornographic very violent it's very 0.85

00:21:57.020 aggressive but not in a healthy way and so you're seeing different outlets for that unbridled beast type

00:22:04.280 you're talking about yes and and some video games of course are incredibly violent and simply blood

00:22:11.100 drenched in violence and i think that people are coming to think that living online is just an

00:22:17.660 unhealthy experience for people in general and particularly young men because it in a way it

00:22:24.000 isolates them from any kind of wider human context they think they're in touch with other people but

00:22:30.980 they're really just shouting into a void and that tempts them to simply abandon all self-restraint and

00:22:38.120 prudence and indulge themselves in really the most wicked of sentiments yeah i think there's something

00:22:44.200 about disembodying those passions like those passions are part of the body yeah and if you don't

00:22:49.580 keep them there they're gonna you like kind of let them out off in the digital ether yeah it's like

00:22:54.780 almost they get distorted somehow yeah we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:22:59.920 and now back to the show so let's dig into the virtues that you highlight in the code of man

00:23:07.640 so again those are love courage pride family and country and you started with love first why start

00:23:16.000 with love i began with love because it's the most deeply personal of the virtues and getting to know

00:23:25.680 my students my male students their quandaries about manliness things like ancient virtue were rather

00:23:32.720 distant from them but love was something that touched them right now immediately in the present

00:23:39.200 and so i felt that beginning with the theme of love was a way that young men could be drawn in

00:23:47.380 at a level that they could already relate to whereas a as i said notions about civic virtue and civic

00:23:56.600 freedom citizenship those were rather more remote concerns but i thought that starting with the

00:24:02.520 personal one could then branch out into these more public other regarding virtues and what's interesting

00:24:09.280 is your approach of using love as an entry point into manliness or philosophy or virtue

00:24:17.220 this isn't new plato did the same thing or socrates did the same thing in the symposium that's right

00:24:23.220 so what can plato symposium teach us about how love can lead us to true manhood i think two things

00:24:30.380 first of all the symposium teaches that when we love another person it isn't simply a bodily love what

00:24:38.860 we're truly in love with is the nobility in their character and that means that we have a motivation

00:24:46.780 to perfect ourselves we want to earn the admiration of the beloved by displaying our own capacity to

00:24:55.300 strive for nobility i think that's the core of plato's teaching there you can find a similar version of this

00:25:02.580 in castiglione's the courtier he makes essentially the same argument that love is a matter of longing for

00:25:09.640 the nobility in the beloved and wishing to win the beloved's affection in return by showing that you're

00:25:16.560 capable of striving for that nobility yourself yeah i've always really liked plato's idea of love

00:25:23.760 as a ladder so your love for a particular person can lead to a love of beauty overall and then to loving

00:25:31.200 knowledge and then to loving truth so it can point your perspective higher um so yeah so loving a

00:25:36.540 particular person can lead to loving virtue how do you think our idea of love has changed in the

00:25:44.660 modern west and then how do you think that change has made it harder for love to be an on-ramp into

00:25:52.320 noble manhood well i think as has frequently been observed that the divorce culture in a way whose

00:26:00.820 duration is duration is considerable at this point made love about what was immediately satisfying for

00:26:09.520 me and encouraged the notion of no-fault divorce meaning that if you as an individual were somehow

00:26:16.320 not satisfied for whatever reason then you should move on and i think that this really undermined

00:26:25.680 the notion that previous generations had like my parents for example that even if you were not

00:26:33.300 entirely happy in your married life that you had a duty to your children to keep things together

00:26:40.340 hopefully in the long run you might reach some kind of better accommodation with your partner

00:26:46.700 so i think that's had a big effect on why we can no longer make these appeals to duty

00:26:53.800 when it comes to marital life although we're told that the divorce rate is slowly but surely beginning

00:27:01.600 to decline and it appears as if people have taken a second look at the institution of marriage and

00:27:08.600 thought you know maybe it is worth persevering and not expecting every single one of our own

00:27:15.340 demands or desires to be satisfied the the greek word for love is eros or eros however you want to

00:27:23.500 pronounce it and there's different types of eroses like there's a carnal eros like the the bodily

00:27:28.200 pleasures like you're attracted to the person physically but then as you said there's an eros

00:27:32.440 that's more noble you care about and love the person the other that inspires you to to live up to a

00:27:39.600 nobility and i think you make the case that our version of eros in the 21st century has shifted more

00:27:46.160 towards that more carnal eros and again the greeks say that's carnal eros is fine like you need that's a part of

00:27:52.200 being human but you don't want to make it the the sole thing in your erotic arsenal and also i think

00:28:00.480 something that's happened to in the the 20th and 21st century is that we've kind of turned eros on

00:28:06.080 ourselves like it's a self-love like what can i do for myself how can i make myself that's right good

00:28:11.920 instead of it being directed towards the other i think that's right and it's interesting that in

00:28:18.840 colloquial greek eros isn't necessarily even restricted to love between two people for instance

00:28:26.600 diatema in the symposium says that the most distinctive human trait is the eros for honor

00:28:34.060 this is what sets human beings apart and for instance there is an ancient greek statue of eros

00:28:41.020 which depicts it as a warrior so it's a word that's almost untranslatable because it has all

00:28:47.020 of these nuances and you just have to consider what context you're in to try and fill that with content

00:28:53.520 so it sounds like part of helping young men use love as a step into noble manhood it seems like we

00:29:01.920 have to kind of educate the moral sense of love i think you know who's it is it augustine that talked

00:29:07.320 about getting your loves in order like you have to know what are the good things to love

00:29:11.380 yeah that's certainly true and i think you could look at jane austen's novel pride and prejudice where

00:29:18.700 it's fair to say that mr darcy comes to believe that he must perfect himself in order to deserve the love

00:29:25.980 of elizabeth and that's a lesson that he doesn't take too readily but he does realize that he does have

00:29:33.980 to in a way make himself admirable in her eyes that it's not just automatic that everyone admires him

00:29:42.020 and so i think that you know literature can be another way in which people are educated to

00:29:48.740 understand love as something more than physical desire yeah i love reading jane austen we did a

00:29:55.860 podcast a long time ago with a jane austen scholar about why men should read jane austen and that's one of

00:30:03.020 the reasons it's to educate your moral sense and how you can learn to balance the passion of love

00:30:09.100 but also learning to love with with reason as well you don't want to go too far into passion but you

00:30:14.740 also don't want to be too heady about it yeah that's right like the novel sense and sensibility

00:30:20.000 yeah sensibility means the romantic kind of love inspired by rousseau and sir walter scott

00:30:26.120 as opposed to a more old-fashioned level-headed approach to love and marriage like many men i used

00:30:34.420 to dismiss jane austen as just a woman's writer but my wife convinced me to read her and i just love

00:30:41.440 her novels for one thing she is just uproariously funny she is such a comical genius right every page

00:30:49.780 there's a laugh no i agree and i think she is an aristotelian virtue ethicist if you read closely

00:30:56.800 enough oh very much so yes you know leo strauss the great political theory scholar once remarked that

00:31:05.000 if you wanted a taste for the classics you'd be fortunate to be born with a taste for jane austen

00:31:12.180 because that would open the door for you back to ancient writers like aristotle and xenophon

00:31:17.980 okay so that's love so love is the the step into noble manhood it can inspire us to develop these

00:31:23.660 more public facing virtues the virtue you talk about next is courage how did the ancients define

00:31:29.860 courage well they defined it in many different ways of course the baseline definition would be

00:31:36.840 physical courage in combat aristotle for example interestingly remarks that in order to be courageous

00:31:43.380 you must possess fear if you're not full of fear at the prospect of bodily harm in battle then you're

00:31:52.660 never going to be able to rise above that and experience the virtue of courage but then of course

00:31:58.600 there's courage for the sake of the common good the courage of the citizen if you think of a classical

00:32:04.680 work like the dream of scipio by cicero he very much makes the point that yes physical courage is the

00:32:12.580 important baseline meaning of courage battlefield courage is very important too but higher than that

00:32:20.380 is public service and the life of the mind one thing you talk about that the ancients believed in

00:32:26.860 order to develop courage one of these sub virtues you had to develop or maybe a characteristic is

00:32:32.420 thumos what is thumos and how does it relate to the cultivation of courage well plato is really the

00:32:40.760 most illuminating writer here about thumos for plato thumos is really the seat in the soul of all

00:32:48.600 aggressive belligerent passions and it can therefore be very destructive it can culminate in the desire

00:32:56.320 to exploit other people that's why plato's republic is it's almost almost its central theme is the need to

00:33:03.920 educate thumos and shape it draw it away from those temptations and turn it into a vigorous

00:33:11.140 pursuit of serving the common good whose reward is the honor you receive from your fellow citizens

00:33:19.040 so thumos is this sort of aggression that can be used for good or bad it depends on how you

00:33:24.800 you harness it yeah anger is a facet of thumos yeah yeah i mean something that i've noticed with

00:33:32.060 the young men that i've worked with for the past over 10 years there are some young men who are very

00:33:38.640 thumotic you know they play sports and they're kind of directing it towards a positive end they're very

00:33:44.540 active in their academics they're using that drive to do well in school then you see these extremes where

00:33:50.000 you you have these young men who are very thumotic but they're not directing it towards anything 1.00

00:33:54.760 and it becomes chaotic but then i i see a lot of young men who just like they lack thumos they just

00:34:02.180 seem listless and just almost anesthetized have you noticed that as well i i certainly have noticed it

00:34:09.440 so how do you think we can help nurture healthy thumos and young men even men who are in their 30s 40s

00:34:16.860 50s well for one thing i think that we should not attempt to extend to boys the same kind of

00:34:25.600 learning that is extended to women and and girls in in other words frequently now in education

00:34:32.400 girls are encouraged to express themselves in whatever way they wish and that's good they should

00:34:38.240 be encouraged to do that but boys are often encouraged to not express themselves in the ways

00:34:43.240 that come naturally to them girls for example there's evidence that shows this are better team

00:34:49.320 players they work more harmoniously in groups than boys do so i think that we ought to encourage boys to

00:34:57.160 express that natural energy that natural competitive energy even a degree of aggressiveness in competition

00:35:06.340 and that would mean we have to really rethink the way that education is being done

00:35:12.160 yeah and i also think it's helpful to give young men books films where you see healthy thumos

00:35:20.840 in play and like a lot of young men they're not getting that in schools like you said that sort of

00:35:25.240 classical education is not there anymore they're not reading the odyssey they're not reading

00:35:29.680 the count of monte cristo they're not reading these books where you see this thumos and how it can play

00:35:36.880 out in both positive and negative ways i think so too and one way in which i've changed my approach

00:35:44.160 to teaching over the years is that i now encourage not only the best books or the great books but what

00:35:50.900 i call the next best books meaning to say history biography literature art dealing with the themes of

00:35:59.580 civic virtue honor ambition that people need to know something about the history of statesmanship

00:36:06.260 the history of honor seeking so as i said i think the more that young people can be steeped in the

00:36:14.720 biographies of great statesmen in narrative history about great conflicts that this is all to the good

00:36:21.340 but as to how this is going to be institutionalized in the formal education system in a way i'm at a loss

00:36:28.680 i think some of it's got to come through informal educational circles reading groups online discussions

00:36:38.060 programs like the toqueville project in the united states that deliberately do not offer courses for

00:36:45.540 university credit but simply give students an away year in which they can steep themselves

00:36:51.320 in the classics and in these books about history biography culture and so on the hope is that when

00:36:57.960 they then return to the university to resume their formal education they will somehow choose courses that

00:37:04.460 are most likely to give this kind of education or encourage their own professors to teach these

00:37:10.460 kinds of subjects yeah so if you're a parent of a young man encourage them to read those classics that

00:37:16.960 you're talking about biographies and things like that i mean i'm doing that with my own son

00:37:20.940 he just finished the iliad and the odyssey and he's moving on to the count of monte cristo

00:37:27.520 and he loves it i think young men they're hungry for it and if you just present it to them in a way

00:37:33.560 that's palatable they'll just eat it up i i find that when i teach these books that the average young

00:37:41.300 person almost take to it spontaneously i mean all you have to do is facilitate their being able to read

00:37:48.780 those books they kind of sell themselves you don't really have to sell them they sell themselves

00:37:53.100 yeah all right so thumos is that drive that aggression that allows you to be courageous so 0.97

00:37:59.400 whenever you're feeling fear you can call upon your thumos to overcome that fear but then you're

00:38:04.620 going to want to balance that with reason because you don't want to be reckless with your courage

00:38:09.200 how do courage and love work together as virtues well i think at the most fundamental level that

00:38:18.140 if you love another person then you're going to be courageous on their behalf you're going to want

00:38:24.100 to protect them and to help them bring about their own self-fulfillment right and so then i think the

00:38:31.320 argument you make is that using that courage because you love someone else like your family that's close

00:38:37.680 to you you can then extend that in your social circle to family to community to state to country

00:38:46.200 yeah i think that was one of aristotle's great teachings in the nicomachean ethics that people

00:38:53.720 have to begin feeling affection for their fellow family members this was his criticism of plato's

00:39:00.420 republic for abolishing the family for aristotle all of us learn to feel affection first for

00:39:07.480 our fellow family members then we can extend that feeling of friendliness outward to our fellow

00:39:13.740 citizens so the family in a way is an incubator for the wider political and civic virtues it's a school

00:39:22.080 of virtue yeah so you mentioned that these virtues can be perverted love can be perverted how have you

00:39:29.740 seen courage be perverted in the modern day well i mean again to to to refer to aristotle courage is a

00:39:38.920 mean between cowardice and mad daring and like all of those virtues it's closer to one extreme than the

00:39:46.520 other courage is actually closer to mad daring than it is to cowardice so one always has to be aware

00:39:54.400 or on guard against the fact that your own virtue could actually be taken too far and become something

00:40:01.700 harmful to others and to yourself all right so let's move on to pride we mentioned earlier that there's a lot of

00:40:08.340 tension between the classical view and the biblical view in the chapter on pride you say that pride is the central

00:40:16.580 issue in the search for a code of man why is that

00:40:20.300 i think because in a way as aristotle says it's the ornament of all the virtues that that in a

00:40:27.420 certain sense being able to exercise the virtues of love and courage and family life would be a kind of

00:40:36.960 ascent to the position that he describes as greatness of soul megalos hocea often gets translated as pride that

00:40:46.040 for him as the crown of all the moral virtues they all sort of come together and reach that pinnacle

00:40:51.720 so what does a classical virtuous prideful man look like how do they carry themselves

00:40:57.720 what do they think of themselves well for one thing they never deign to treat inferiors cruelly

00:41:04.960 because that would be beneath them it would show that they needed the recognition of people not on their

00:41:11.960 own level and so they would not deign to do that they reserve their sense of outrage to people on their own

00:41:19.180 level who offend them the other thing that he says is characteristic of pride is that people who serve in public

00:41:26.240 life who possess this virtue only want to deal with truly great affairs matters of life and death for a country

00:41:34.760 national emergencies that's why i think you could say someone like winston churchill was really the

00:41:41.280 embodiment of what the classical thinkers meant by pride because without world war ii churchill's

00:41:47.740 political career would have been rather spotty i'm not sure that absent the great challenge of the war

00:41:54.060 that he would be remembered as a particularly outstanding politician the same is true of abraham lincoln

00:42:01.420 his record before the civil war in the minds of many people was somewhat open to question open to

00:42:09.740 accusations of dishonor or being a kind of for sale type of politician for sale to others it was only

00:42:18.160 the grand struggle of the civil war in which he was able to find himself and operate on a scale that

00:42:26.180 brought out everything that was best in him one thing too that you notice with these

00:42:31.380 you know prideful men in the classical sense they're also extremely ambitious i think abraham lincoln

00:42:38.320 even said i'm very ambitious he he said like i want public office uh same with churchill he wanted to be the

00:42:46.440 guy in charge of world war ii and he believed he was destined to be in that role george patten same sort

00:42:54.020 of thing i think he actually he actually thought he was he was reincarnated like he lived another life where

00:42:59.800 he was a greek general but yeah he was incredibly ambitious as well yeah again i mean they they really

00:43:06.060 only flower when placed in a position to be in charge of the greatest affairs of state during times of

00:43:14.860 national peril there's a great passage in churchill's memoirs of world war ii where he talks about the day he

00:43:22.560 was appointed prime minister to succeed chamberlain and he basically said that that night i slept soundly

00:43:29.900 for the first time in years because i knew the situation pretty well and i was pretty sure that i was

00:43:36.400 up to dealing with it so not all of us are going to be lincoln's or washington's or churchill's

00:43:42.960 so what does a manly virtuous pride look like for just a regular guy well again i think in everyday

00:43:49.840 life not to treat other people with disdain particularly people who are in a less advantageous

00:43:57.760 situation than oneself that that one should avoid at all costs any display of cruelty or sort of cheap

00:44:06.440 haughtiness toward others gloating over oneself in the eyes of others pride has a lot to do with

00:44:12.900 self-restraint not boasting not demanding that other people praise you just let your works and

00:44:19.560 thoughts speak for themselves another part of healthy pride for aristotle was striving for

00:44:26.700 excellence in accordance with virtue so healthy pride was only justified if it rested on real

00:44:34.320 achievement so if you wanted to be a great sold man you had to continually be aiming at noble deeds

00:44:42.040 worthy of honor but in the modern world you know particularly the modern west we're pretty ambivalent

00:44:49.200 pride it's like you know do aim for great things but you know don't get too big for your britches

00:44:54.920 why are we so conflicted about pride well i think again it really is a fundamental conflict of values

00:45:03.220 between religious revelation and a kind of secular approach to political and civic psychology that

00:45:11.380 anyone who has been raised with a religious background which is certainly true of me it's drilled into

00:45:18.300 you from very early on that pride is a vice that that should be avoided i think somewhat unreasonably

00:45:24.760 theologians like saint augustine immediately equate pride with vainglory and you know oppressive

00:45:33.120 treatment of others i don't think that's warranted but it's also a very very strong content in you know

00:45:40.280 all three of the major monotheistic faiths and not merely them that pride is something to be avoided

00:45:46.840 humility is to be preferred so i think you mentioned earlier that we're probably not going to be able

00:45:54.360 to square this but do you think there is a way we can live with that tension only just by living with

00:46:01.440 it i i mean i'm happy to let the contradiction reign within me i i don't think there's a synthesis

00:46:08.660 whereby we can say we've got the best of both worlds it's just a tension and i think a lot of

00:46:14.720 psychological depth comes from recognizing those tensions and accepting the fact that there may not

00:46:20.940 be a magic solution let's talk about the family as a path to manhood why do you think family is a path

00:46:28.560 to manhood i think because in a certain way family life draws on the other virtues that i discussed

00:46:36.920 previously that to have a successful family life you need those qualities of love courage

00:46:44.800 and a sense of honor so the family in a way draws upon all of those virtues of character i think

00:46:52.100 yeah and then you can practice them as we said the family's a school of virtue yeah that's right yeah

00:46:57.860 and then you gave examples and counter examples from the classical tradition of what a good family man

00:47:04.060 can look like you did the contrast between achilles and odysseus odysseus is that family man who he's

00:47:10.900 just trying to get back to his family and then hector and achilles is another one you also talk about

00:47:16.880 insights that aristotle has about being a husband and a father what does he tell us about those roles

00:47:23.360 well he again it's often a kind of veiled or open critique of plato but he does say that

00:47:30.280 the relationship between a husband and a wife should never be one of simply commanding obedience

00:47:37.920 from the wife that a marriage should be a partnership between the husband and the wife

00:47:44.340 one in which they cooperate to raise their children to be virtuous so i think this notion of marriage as

00:47:51.580 friendship was very much shaped by aristotle and so by the time you get to say the roman republic

00:47:59.660 you find famous couples like brutus and his wife portia who embody this kind of friendship it's not

00:48:08.020 simply her serving him he philosophizes but so does she they're both stoic philosophers when he

00:48:15.080 embarks upon his perilous journey against julius caesar she wants to join him she wants to share

00:48:21.380 his dangers so so i i think that aristotle did a great deal toward humanizing the concept of marriage

00:48:29.080 and family life making the marriage a kind of equal partnership yeah and you see that a bit in the

00:48:35.160 odyssey with penelapine odysseus you know homer describes them as being of one mind you know they think

00:48:42.420 the same they see the world is the same they're both kind of they're both sneaky uh you know odysseus

00:48:48.200 with his different tricks and penelope with the trick of weaving the the funeral cloak they're of one

00:48:54.740 mind they they they had that really close friendship well and i find it interesting too that on his way

00:49:01.300 home odysseus is accompanied by athena who is not only the goddess of wisdom but a woman i think part of

00:49:08.320 what homer is implying there is that there's a way in which a man's character has to tap into

00:49:14.160 some female traits the fact that odysseus is characterized more by his mental prudence by his

00:49:23.100 reliance on rhetoric and craft trying to avoid open physical conflict when he can i think that's why

00:49:30.480 there's a sort of partnership from the very beginning between him and athena and then as you said

00:49:37.080 when he gets back and in the course of his journey home we also find that his wife back in ithaca

00:49:43.480 has a number of the same traits that he does all right so the last path to manliness is country and

00:49:50.160 this is where you talk about patriotism patriotism gets a bad rap these days but i think it's because

00:49:56.120 our idea of patriotism has been bastardized it's been uh perverted so let's talk about what the

00:50:02.120 ancients thought about patriotism how do they define it well i think they define it and this

00:50:08.860 i think would be something we would still recognize immediately that patriotism is not uncritical and

00:50:15.540 unswerving loyalty to your country no matter what it does there has to be a built-in capacity for dissent

00:50:22.600 and freedom of expression so i think that would be the first thing that citizenship has to be

00:50:29.200 responsible it can't just be blind patriotism or conformity yeah so you love your country

00:50:36.260 but you love it enough where you'll push back and criticize it when it's warranted yeah what's

00:50:41.920 interesting too for the classical thinkers to be a man aristotle talks about this to be a man you had

00:50:49.740 to be active in public life like you couldn't just retreat to your home you had to take part in

00:50:54.380 political life and that might not mean you run for office necessarily but you're aware of what's

00:51:00.760 going on you're active in your community you're you're voting and also you you have to think about

00:51:05.940 politics i mean not just in terms of you know partisan politics but political life embraces you know the

00:51:12.620 volunteer groups you belong to your church those sorts of things too so you need to be active in that as

00:51:17.940 well yeah and i just want to add if i may that i think that any version of globalization whether of

00:51:25.740 the left or the right the globalization of the right which sees the world as one single economy

00:51:32.560 or the globalization of the left which sees a kind of post-modernist society perhaps without private

00:51:39.460 property to me this is really the death of patriotism in any constructive sense i i think that

00:51:46.320 patriotism requires the nation state and the nation states differ from one another in many ways you can

00:51:55.460 say that modern nation states have the same general institutional frameworks the same kinds of

00:52:01.680 constitution you know independent judiciary rights division of powers but on another level each nation

00:52:10.860 state is pursuing its own historical pathway americans frenchmen british italians including newcomers in

00:52:19.520 their midst they are pursuing their own distinct pathway and i think that patriotism has to be grounded in the

00:52:26.400 context of the particular nation state in which you have grown up or in which you live so i'm totally

00:52:34.040 against the notion that there's something unethical about borders i think there have to be borders

00:52:39.220 yeah so some people will say well you know borders are arbitrary you know this idea of a nation state

00:52:46.060 you know it's a 17th century creation and we're beyond that now because we're all connected via the

00:52:52.880 internet so maybe you don't we don't need that anymore it sounds like in order for you to have a

00:52:59.480 patriotism and really love your fellow countrymen or the people around you it sounds like you need a nation

00:53:06.080 state i think so again not in a narrow totally inward looking way i think at its best the nation

00:53:14.420 state should be a window on the whole world especially through its educational institutions but i still

00:53:20.160 think at the end of the day you can't be loyal to the globe i think that you have to be loyal to a

00:53:26.160 particular society with its own traditions you mentioned toqueville in this section on patriotism

00:53:34.520 or love of country as providing some insights maybe particularly for americans on what healthy

00:53:42.940 patriotism looks like what can we learn from toqueville well i think toqueville shared the

00:53:48.700 concern that rousseau had originally expressed that the problem with modern democratization and the

00:53:56.360 spread of modern economic prosperity would be that it might undermine the individual's feeling of

00:54:03.400 obligation to participate in civic life and just fall back on endless material pleasures so i think

00:54:10.920 toqueville was trying to find tendencies in america as he experienced it that would somehow slow down or

00:54:18.840 halt that process of total economic homogenization and so he praised local self-government the different

00:54:27.500 states the local townships that these were in a way incubators of citizenship in the more old-fashioned

00:54:34.880 sense where your citizenship is primarily about a local community so anything that men can do to develop a

00:54:43.160 virtuous patriotism today again i think it's a matter of somehow being exposed or finding a way of being

00:54:51.840 being exposed to this pedigree of writings about the virtues and about the manly virtues the traditional

00:55:01.280 meaning of manly virtue there are books available on this as to how one finds that in one's own

00:55:11.360 formal educational experience well there are of course places like the university of austin the university of texas

00:55:19.440 at austin where they are attempting to create institutes that combine liberal education with civics

00:55:26.420 education and so i think there is hope for the future here clemson college is another mercer college is

00:55:32.760 another these programs are beginning to spring up where you combine an interest in the canon of the great

00:55:39.160 books with an interest in what you might call applied citizenship the history of civics and the need to know

00:55:47.580 something about the founding principles of your regime so i guess the most promising thing on the horizon

00:55:54.140 would be that those institutions continue to proliferate and offer an alternative to the more

00:56:01.620 conventional educational approach and i think another thing too is to just start practicing noble

00:56:09.840 patriotism like i said earlier just get involved in your community like you get start small toqueville

00:56:15.740 talked about this just get involved with your kids school you know get involved with the booster

00:56:21.820 club of your kids sports teams because it's where you learn how to work with other people like you learn

00:56:28.340 how to deal with the frustrations of dealing with other people they're like these sort of little 0.99

00:56:33.840 laboratories of democracy and and maybe that leads to getting involved in higher levels of governance but

00:56:41.460 you got to start small you just you got to start somewhere i think that's especially true of

00:56:45.120 education i mean i i know a lot of teachers and i think sometimes we tend to put everything on

00:56:51.640 them or expect them to do everything as far as educating their children but they can't assume

00:56:59.720 sole responsibility for that most of them are very conscientious in my experience but the parents

00:57:05.280 really do need to be in the driver's seat about guiding their children in cooperation with their teachers

00:57:11.600 through school so after decades of studying and writing about manliness and thinking about it

00:57:19.100 is there one particular lesson from that tradition that has most shaped your life i would say that

00:57:26.080 i'm not pessimistic about the future of manliness if if that's an answer because in my view human nature

00:57:36.040 does not change and the yearning of young men for a satisfying way of living does not go away if

00:57:45.300 anything i think it's possibly intensifying at the present time so i guess what i've learned is to

00:57:51.540 be hopeful and to be persevering because i i don't think there are grounds for despair i love that how

00:57:57.960 you're not pessimistic because there's a lot of pessimism today about masculinity and i think what

00:58:03.780 we need more of is some thumatic optimism about masculinity or manhood yes i do too i mean thuma

00:58:12.700 certainly has a role in civic spiritedness and we shouldn't be afraid to display that well waller this

00:58:19.260 has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work

00:58:22.460 i've had a great time as far as your question goes the best place would be my website which is

00:58:29.920 www.wallerneuel.com all lowercase that's basically got links to all of my books reviews of my books

00:58:39.480 my own publications my whole cv so if anyone wants to know more about me and what i do

00:58:46.020 that would be the place to go fantastic well waller newell thanks for time it's been a pleasure

00:58:50.980 thanks very much for it i really enjoyed it my guest today was waller newell he's the author of

00:58:56.520 the book the code of man it's available on amazon.com you can find more information about his work at his

00:59:00.700 website wallerneuel.com also check out our show notes at awim.is slash code of man where you find

00:59:05.880 links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic

00:59:07.960 well that wraps up another edition of the awim podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:59:19.220 www.artofmanage.com where you find our podcast archives and sign up for a new newsletter it's

00:59:22.960 called dying breed you sign up at dyingbreed.net it's a great way to support the show directly

00:59:27.400 as always thank you for the continued support until next time this is brett mckay

00:59:30.720 remind you to not listen to anyone podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:59:34.060 you

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The Art of Manliness - October 07, 2025

The Classical Code of Manhood

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