Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Machiavelli on running Harvard
Mansfield certainly channels the Florentine Devil in this piece on the resignation of Larry Summers a few months back. Machiavelli's influence (and that of several other thinks, like Aristotle) on Mr. Mansfield is especially obvious in the closing paragraph:
Summers's administration was a one-man show. He did not build a group of supporters to carry out his plans. He relied on himself alone. It was as if his individual superiority would bring victory in a series of single combats without his having to build an army with soldiers, marshals, and a Garde Impériale. His audience would applaud his victories and the common good would be served. Yet this picture is not quite right. Far from imitating Napoleon, Mr. Summers believed in reason and in self-interest as the object of reason. He thought he could prevail without winning and apologize without losing. Nor would he have to out-argue his intellectual inferiors. He would merely question their opinions and show them their indubitable self-interest. He was in a deep sense impolitic, an economic man who knows nothing of war and hence nothing of politics. He lost his own opportunity and in doing so may have spoiled it for others.
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