Harvey Mansfield: evaluation

Transcript context

…If you look at the 18th and 19th centuries, you could name easily a dozen great books from each century. Here we have the whole 20th century. You named two authors. I’m not sure how many books you’re going to have that cover, but it seems to be less. Even though population is larger, literacy is up, right? What changed? I’m not sure that there has been a change. I’m not sure that that is a useful speculation. It’s better to not expect a great book. I’ll say this. Philosophy has declined since the beginning of the 19th century. It’s been historicized such that people doubt that a great book is possible because it’s not easy or possible for a thinker to think outside his time. A great book is always one that is written in a time, but for the sake of the future, and the possibilities of what will happen, and for other times. I think maybe that ambition to write for other times—or Thucydides said, to write a book which is a possession for all times—has left us, and that the authors are not trying as they might have done to write that kind of book. In your own thought, how much have you learned from travel abroad, travel in this country, or does that not matter much?…

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