The Classical Code of Manhood
Episode Stats
Summary
What does it mean to be a man? It s a timeless question that has been answered in different ways across the ages. For the ancient Romans, virtue meant living a life of virtuous excellence; for the Greeks, it meant being a man meant being virtuous. In his book, The Code of Man, Walter Newell takes up that same definition in a new edition of his classic, The Art of Manliness.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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what does it mean to be a man it's a timeless question that's been answered in different ways
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across the ages for the ancient romans the word for manliness was weirdus the root of our word
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virtue to be a man meant living a life of virtuous excellence walter newell takes up that same
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definition in his book the code of man first published 20 years ago and now released in a
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new edition tan the show waller professor of political science argues that we need to recover
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an older vision of manhood rooted in the traditions of western antiquity he shares the five paths that
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in his view form the classical code of manliness and how they can continue to be lived out today
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after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is code of man
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waller newell welcome back to the show good to be with you so you published the book the code of man
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20 years ago we had you on the show to discuss it a decade back it's been 10 years you've recently
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released an updated version of the book what first prompted you to write this book 20 years ago and
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then what do you think has changed in the cultural conversation about manhood in the 20 years since
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it's been published that you thought it warranted an update well i think the minor reason in a way to
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republish it was simply that it had been out of print and i had dozens and dozens of people asking me
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how can i get hold of it so for that reason alone i thought it was worth relaunching but the more
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important thing is that in the intervening years the whole debate over the meaning of masculinity
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and the distinction between true manliness and toxic masculinity as it's called has grown ever
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more intense far from abating in the last election for example it was a very hot topic and so i thought
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well this really is a good time to revisit what i think the true meaning of manliness is in contrast
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with toxic masculinity and you're coming at this you're a political philosophy professor political
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scientist like that's what you do so you're coming at it through that angle looking at
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classical culture and how it can give us insights about masculinity and manhood
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yeah that's right in fact i really began my interest in this topic because my scholarship had been very
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much concerned with the notion of honor seeking what it means to pursue honor and a journalist friend
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of mine actually said you know a lot of people out there are interested in these sorts of topics not
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just academics or scholars why don't you try and branch out and reach a general audience and so that's
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what i did so let's start off with the socratic question we're gonna do definitions socrates always said
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you got to start with definitions how do you define manliness would you mind me if i quote myself from
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the book because go right ahead i think i can sum it up in a few lines my view of this debate is that
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what is now called toxic masculinity is a perverse and destructive force that is in fact the direct
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opposite of the traditional western classical and biblical understanding of true manliness which is
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premised on the need for virtuous behavior that could never violate anyone's rights or freedom
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least of all that of women and instead defined manly virtue as the moderate gentlemanly and gallant
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treatment of others that's about the best i can do that's sort of my whole argument really is there in
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that few sentences and why do you go back to the ancient greeks and the romans and even the bible
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for your idea of manliness well i think we have to begin with those moorings in tradition however shaky
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they may have become to the extent that we can fashion a new way of approaching manliness in the
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present i think it's got to at least begin in those older roots it might not rest content with those older
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roots but i think that's your starting point and i think we should also bear in mind that these
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classical teachings although they're thousands of years old have really been widespread in their
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influence in the west i would say certainly up until the 19th century even into the 20th century
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i was thinking for example of winston churchill you know he never went to a university which i think by the
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way was one of the key ingredients to his success as a statesman that he did not go to oxford or
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cambridge but he was interested in the classics and he read them in translation so he too had that
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appetite for the older way of looking at things as for the biblical approach i i think again that
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those roots are so deep in us still even today that we really have to explore what the biblical
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understanding of manliness is and of course the extent to which it isn't simply harmonious with the
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classical philosophical understanding that's why i treated the issue of revelation in the section on
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pride because in a way the difference between the biblical approach and the classical approach
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can be summed up in the fact that for the classics pride was one of the supreme human manly
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virtues whereas in the biblical tradition of course that's very much called into question christianity
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i think would argue that compassion is really the chief virtue should be the chief virtue of a true
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man and pride is actually something to be avoided and i think out of that tension something creative
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can emerge i'm not sure that those alternatives can ultimately even be reconciled we have to sort of face
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even to the extent to which they conflict with one another something i've noticed in my own readings of
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the classics and also the biblical tradition is that there's a lot of insights there on what to do about
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what you know we call it a toxic masculinity you see a lot of people talking about what can we
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do about this issue of these young men who are just unmoored and you know acting in incredibly
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inappropriate ways i'm like just read the iliad i mean there's you can make a case it's about toxic
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masculinity you're dealing with hubris and rage and unbridled ambition if you look at the life of
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alcibiades there's a case study in what unbridled ambition can do the bible is constantly talking
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about what can we do to harness or bridle those masculine passions and if and use them in a productive
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way instead of them becoming destructive that's right a lot of my other scholarship has been on
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the theme of tyranny and the history of tyranny ancient and modern as a theme in political thought
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and the way that goes together with manliness is that for the classics and for later traditions as well
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tyranny in a way is the deepest perversion of manliness it's a distortion of what true manliness
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should be and its derailment into a kind of lust for power and domination over others whereas i think
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the whole point of the traditional approach to manliness would be that those potentially tyrannical
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energies should be sublimated and redirected toward the honorable service of the common good
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so you want to knit people like alcibiades in the bud and turn them in a more constructive direction
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and yes i think i agree with you completely about homer if you look at the contrast between
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achilles and odysseus as they're presented by homer in a way achilles is everything that
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you should not emulate because he is terribly narcissistic he's totally self-absorbed
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even though he in fact has a family back home a wife and children i think homer deliberately
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presents him in the iliad as if he is always by himself he's always isolated from others and angry
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at them odysseus by contrast is very much enveloped in his love of family life his whole voyage is the
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desire to get back home to his wife and son and i think in homer's view odysseus is meant to be the
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more admirable character he isn't simply ambitious he doesn't simply use brute force homer says that he is
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the ultimate prudent man the phronomos and that he uses his mind whenever he can rather than brute strength
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and so i think of the two models homer himself is pointing us toward odysseus and really not so much
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toward achilles as you know the very first word of the iliad is rage and it's the rage of achilles that
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sets the whole iliad in motion so you mentioned that for the greeks and the romans manliness seemed
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to be about the development of certain virtues what were some of those virtues that they thought a
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man had to develop to become a manly man well in a way i was trying to suggest that with my own five
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headings of love courage pride family country i think those comprehend a lot of the virtues that
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were important to the classical thinkers for living a kind of integrated life the notion of virtue that the
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classics had was very much one of integrity meaning a sort of unity of strength devoted to living a good
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life serving the common good how has the biblical tradition what was their idea or what were the
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virtues that they thought you needed to develop in order to become this integrated man you're talking
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about well again to me that really all comes down to the difference between say aristotle and saint
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augustine on the question of pride versus humility it's a very striking contrast because for aristotle
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humility is actually a vice in the sense that a man who does not lay claim to honors to which he is
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entitled actually has a flawed character for augustine i think it's the exact opposite that he would say
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that humility is necessary to live a happy life meaning to live a godly life so there is a real
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divergence there and i think that with a lot of these problems with time and age i've come to realize that
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they just might not be ultimately harmonious if you know what i mean we might just have to live with
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the possibility that they can't be reconciled with one another yeah we'll talk more about that tension
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between the biblical tradition and the classical tradition we go more into detail about pride
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but yeah i i agree with you i for the art of manliness one of the guiding sort of principles
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is to bring back this classical idea of manliness where it meant becoming a man of virtue
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and the development of these different positive virtues and one thing people often push back against
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and i understand the pushback is okay well if manliness is about the development of virtue
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what does that mean for women who also develop these virtues because yeah these virtues that
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we're talking about courage pride family humility these are universal so what does that mean for
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women who develop these virtues is that womanliness is that what you'd call it i agree with you
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completely that men and women share the same aims and that my suggestion of what those should be
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would apply both to men and women that said though i think that although men and women are pursuing the
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same aims they do so along somewhat different paths we know from i think pretty solidly established
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empirical research that men and women tend to lean towards certain occupations more than others
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and so i think we can combine the universalism of those goals with a recognition of the fact that
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temperamentally and psychologically men and women may be pursuing different routes to that same
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outcome yeah i'd agree with you we all have the same aims but we'll get there through different
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ways based on our temperaments our natural proclivities i've always thought of it as in terms of music
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so like you know a tuba and a flute can play the same notes of music but they make different sounds
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so you know men and women both pursue virtue but the result makes different kinds of music and we need
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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
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really hit by it when i read it again is that theodore roosevelt and winston churchill men who lived
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you know 100 years ago 120 years ago they had more in common with homer than they do with us
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what do you mean by that i think what i mainly meant was simply that their life had a kind of grandeur of
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scope that we would associate with ancient heroism they really were truly towering figures and so in that
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sense i think it's apt to compare them to heroic heroes out of the pages of homer and also too i think
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they you mentioned earlier churchill even though he didn't go to college he was steeped in this
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classical education that gave him this notion of classical manhood that you're talking about in this book
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same with theodore roosevelt and same with the founding fathers and today that education doesn't
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really exist in our schools or even our universities no that's very true i mean in the case of churchill
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as i said he sort of came to this on his own his wry comment about reading aristotle's nicomachean
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ethics for instance was that this simply described the people that he knew in his own social circle
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on the other hand theodore roosevelt had a superb formal education which included reading latin and
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greek in the original and so he drew directly upon the wellspring of these classical teachings about
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the virtues and as you know from his writings he is a superb interpreter of those virtues and how they
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should contribute to democratic manhood in the present think too of the american founders by the way
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the american founders who attended university like jefferson they were deeply steeped in the
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classics they read all of the great ancient thinkers historians poets and they also read important
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modern thinkers like montesquieu and locke so even though they were in a way servants of an egalitarian
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society they believed if anything that the ruling class of that society must be made up of
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liberally educated gentleman it's something i'm struck by when i read books or letters from the
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founding era particularly when they're describing george washington they always talk about the manliness
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of george washington and if you were to read that in the 21st century in 2025 not knowing about this
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classical notion of masculinity or manhood you think manliness of george what what did that mean was he
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big and burly and did he just tear stuff up and he's just a great fighter but for those individuals
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who lived during that time when they said the manliness of george washington they knew like that
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actually had some deeper broader significance it meant that this was a man who was as you said
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integrated he developed the whole the whole man yes that's right he had the refinement of a gentleman
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and yet he was also courageous without limit really and self-reliant and encouraged those same
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qualities in others you know one of my favorite references to washington was by the great english
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wig leader charles james fox who wrote a wonderful encomium to washington saying that this is a man who
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seems to have stridden right out of the pages of plutarch and i think we all know that the american
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founding was very much caught up in a kind of roman spirit in a way they thought they were reviving a
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new order of the ages that previously it had been rome now it was going to be america and the united
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states another anecdote that i think is very revealing about washington is that when his troops were camping at
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valley forge under very difficult conditions washington actually had a troop staged a very famous play about
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the life of cato and how cato committed suicide rather than give into the offer of clemency by julius
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caesar in other words even under the terrible conditions of valley forge washington in effect staged a
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civics lesson for his own troops so you mentioned in your book you focus on five particular virtues
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and each each of these virtues have like sub virtues that you might need to develop to develop that
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virtue and you picked love courage pride family and country or patriotism we're going to talk more about
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these virtues in detail here in a moment but one thing i want to talk about in the beginning of the book
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you make the case that another part of manliness in this classical notion is that it's the balance of
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reason and passion and you use plato's allegory of the chariot to describe that balance for those who
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aren't familiar with the allegory can you walk us through it yes basically it's an image based on a
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chariot with a charioteer and two powerful horses and in the analogy the charioteer represents the mind or
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the intellect which has to guide the chariot in its celestial ride through the heavens the horses represent
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the power of human passion both erotic and ambitious and if the horses get out of the control of the
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charioteer they're going to plunge the chariot downward into the world of chaos below so that's
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why the mind has to govern the passions but by the same token without the energy and power of those
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horses the chariot isn't going anywhere the charioteer by himself is not enough the mind is not enough
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there has to be a symbiotic interaction between the mind and the passions in which the passions are
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sublimated and placed at the service of reason so that's what i was trying to convey there there has
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to be this harmony of the mind and the passions even though the mind in a certain way has to be in
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the driver's seat how do you think we've lost sight of that balance in our discourse about manhood today
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well you know this takes me to one of my favorite comparisons which is fight club the novel and the
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movie because i think what you see there is the tension between what i call the wimp and the beast
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which sums up the modern dilemma of masculinity on the one hand you've got the character played by ed
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norton who is a kind of pouch carrying ikea furniture buying self-help group attending male he wants to be the
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new male that he thinks is required of him by feminism but then he takes all of the energies
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that he thereby represses natural masculine energies and they get shifted to his alter ego
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the character played by brad pitt who is a kind of macho fascist and i think that i've observed and
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others have confirmed this to me teachers i know young men today when faced between the choice between
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the wimp and the beast believe that in order to be manly they have to act out the brad pitt side
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of the coin meaning that they identify manliness with macho aggressiveness and i think that really
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sums up the dilemma because rather than a harmony between the mind of the passions you've got a complete
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contradiction between the mind which has now been turned into something wan and weak on the other hand
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the passions have been left to become monstrous and i think it's interesting in 2025 with digital
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technology i'm talking social media youtube video games i think you see instances of those passions
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of unbridled masculine passion you see it in the real world in the terms of violence and sexual violence
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but you also see it online as well like some of the discourse you see in some of these internet
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subcultures that are populated by young men it can be very pornographic very violent it's very
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aggressive but not in a healthy way and so you're seeing different outlets for that unbridled beast type
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you're talking about yes and and some video games of course are incredibly violent and simply blood
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drenched in violence and i think that people are coming to think that living online is just an
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unhealthy experience for people in general and particularly young men because it in a way it
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isolates them from any kind of wider human context they think they're in touch with other people but
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they're really just shouting into a void and that tempts them to simply abandon all self-restraint and
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prudence and indulge themselves in really the most wicked of sentiments yeah i think there's something
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about disembodying those passions like those passions are part of the body yeah and if you don't
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keep them there they're gonna you like kind of let them out off in the digital ether yeah it's like
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almost they get distorted somehow yeah we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so let's dig into the virtues that you highlight in the code of man
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so again those are love courage pride family and country and you started with love first why start
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with love i began with love because it's the most deeply personal of the virtues and getting to know
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my students my male students their quandaries about manliness things like ancient virtue were rather
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distant from them but love was something that touched them right now immediately in the present
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and so i felt that beginning with the theme of love was a way that young men could be drawn in
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at a level that they could already relate to whereas a as i said notions about civic virtue and civic
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freedom citizenship those were rather more remote concerns but i thought that starting with the
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personal one could then branch out into these more public other regarding virtues and what's interesting
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is your approach of using love as an entry point into manliness or philosophy or virtue
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this isn't new plato did the same thing or socrates did the same thing in the symposium that's right
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so what can plato symposium teach us about how love can lead us to true manhood i think two things
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first of all the symposium teaches that when we love another person it isn't simply a bodily love what
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we're truly in love with is the nobility in their character and that means that we have a motivation
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to perfect ourselves we want to earn the admiration of the beloved by displaying our own capacity to
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strive for nobility i think that's the core of plato's teaching there you can find a similar version of this
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in castiglione's the courtier he makes essentially the same argument that love is a matter of longing for
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the nobility in the beloved and wishing to win the beloved's affection in return by showing that you're
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capable of striving for that nobility yourself yeah i've always really liked plato's idea of love
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as a ladder so your love for a particular person can lead to a love of beauty overall and then to loving
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knowledge and then to loving truth so it can point your perspective higher um so yeah so loving a
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particular person can lead to loving virtue how do you think our idea of love has changed in the
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modern west and then how do you think that change has made it harder for love to be an on-ramp into
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noble manhood well i think as has frequently been observed that the divorce culture in a way whose
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duration is duration is considerable at this point made love about what was immediately satisfying for
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me and encouraged the notion of no-fault divorce meaning that if you as an individual were somehow
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not satisfied for whatever reason then you should move on and i think that this really undermined
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the notion that previous generations had like my parents for example that even if you were not
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entirely happy in your married life that you had a duty to your children to keep things together
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hopefully in the long run you might reach some kind of better accommodation with your partner
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so i think that's had a big effect on why we can no longer make these appeals to duty
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when it comes to marital life although we're told that the divorce rate is slowly but surely beginning
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to decline and it appears as if people have taken a second look at the institution of marriage and
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thought you know maybe it is worth persevering and not expecting every single one of our own
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demands or desires to be satisfied the the greek word for love is eros or eros however you want to
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pronounce it and there's different types of eroses like there's a carnal eros like the the bodily
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pleasures like you're attracted to the person physically but then as you said there's an eros
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that's more noble you care about and love the person the other that inspires you to to live up to a
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nobility and i think you make the case that our version of eros in the 21st century has shifted more
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towards that more carnal eros and again the greeks say that's carnal eros is fine like you need that's a part of
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being human but you don't want to make it the the sole thing in your erotic arsenal and also i think
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something that's happened to in the the 20th and 21st century is that we've kind of turned eros on
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ourselves like it's a self-love like what can i do for myself how can i make myself that's right good
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instead of it being directed towards the other i think that's right and it's interesting that in
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colloquial greek eros isn't necessarily even restricted to love between two people for instance
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diatema in the symposium says that the most distinctive human trait is the eros for honor
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this is what sets human beings apart and for instance there is an ancient greek statue of eros
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which depicts it as a warrior so it's a word that's almost untranslatable because it has all
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of these nuances and you just have to consider what context you're in to try and fill that with content
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so it sounds like part of helping young men use love as a step into noble manhood it seems like we
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have to kind of educate the moral sense of love i think you know who's it is it augustine that talked
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about getting your loves in order like you have to know what are the good things to love
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yeah that's certainly true and i think you could look at jane austen's novel pride and prejudice where
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it's fair to say that mr darcy comes to believe that he must perfect himself in order to deserve the love
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of elizabeth and that's a lesson that he doesn't take too readily but he does realize that he does have
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to in a way make himself admirable in her eyes that it's not just automatic that everyone admires him
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and so i think that you know literature can be another way in which people are educated to
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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
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
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
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
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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