Harvey Mansfield on John Locke, Aristotle, and the Spirit of Liberalism

How liberal thinkers like John Locke shaped modern society, and how ancient thinkers like Aristotle can help us better understand and defend liberalism.
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Chapter 1 (00:15 - 47:48): Liberalism and the Common Good
Chapter 2 (47:48 - 1:00:28): Locke and Aristotle
What is liberalism? How did political thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu pave the way for modern liberal societies? To discuss these questions, we are joined again by Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield. Mansfield explains the choice of a politics of rights and consent in the thought of early modern thinkers, especially John Locke. Mansfield discusses the original case for liberalism, and explains how liberalism rightly understood calls upon important human qualities for the defense of liberty. Turning to Aristotle, Mansfield argues that in modernity a “land of virtue” can still exist-and that serious defenses of liberalism can draw on the fundamental insights of classical thinkers, especially Aristotle.