High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
Method
Browse
← Back to evidence

Evidence receipt / evaluation

Published · transcript-backed

Harvey Mansfield: evaluation

18 Mar 2026 Conversations with Tyler Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy

“He wants to make a point of the dirty necessities of politics and of founding so that he doesn’t start with the Stone Age or even the Iron Age, but all the way to the Bronze Age, but still just as people are on the edge of beginning civilization.”

— Harvey Mansfield

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Harvey Mansfield
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
evaluation
Recorded
18 Mar 2026
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

Transcript context

…Is he a vulgarian? If his name is Bronze Age Pervert, should I think of him as another vulgarian? He’s a deliberate seeker of what is vulgar and what is uncivilized, or on the edge of civilization. He wants to make a point of the dirty necessities of politics and of founding so that he doesn’t start with the Stone Age or even the Iron Age, but all the way to the Bronze Age, but still just as people are on the edge of beginning civilization. That might be where the greatest truth or the greatest insight into the need for violence is most obvious. I read his dissertation. It was done at Yale. I’ve had not much contact with him since, but we left on good terms. It seems he’s by far the best-known young Straussian. Should we take what he’s doing as a model for what Straussianism is evolving into?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.

Search evidence