Note: CONCLUSIONA@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@SOLYZIONE: SEPARARE PUBBLICO (NEUTRALITÀ) E PRIVATO (VIRILITÀ). LA SOCIETÀ LIBERALE È FORMALISTA E LO CONSENTE. Edit
I could tell young women not to disparage motherhood in the hearing of a man they want to attract. If you do, you will make a man think his mother is being disparaged and he will compare you to herRead more at location 3314
I could tell young men that women want to be taken seriously almost as much as they want to be loved.Read more at location 3315
The problem of manliness is not that it does not exist. It does exist, but it is unemployed.Read more at location 3318
In that case, consider the evidence for manliness in social psychology and evolutionary biology, which show as best they can that the stereotypes of men and women are basically correct.Read more at location 3320
The actions of the Islamic fascists are proof enough that despite our civilization there remain barbaric cutthroats waiting to assault us. To oppose the horrifying excess of manliness we need not just to imagine the moral equivalent of war but to wage a real war.Read more at location 3322
Unemployed manliness is nothing new in the world, and in particular it has not been caused by feminism.Read more at location 3325
The entire enterprise of modernity, however, could be understood as a project to keep manliness unemployed. The goal of modern liberalism was the rational state (chapterRead more at location 3326
Christianity, a religion that puts the honor of gaining salvation in the next world above worldly honors that engage the ambition of manly men.Read more at location 3330
The world was effeminate, and Machiavelli set out to revive it. His method was to do his best to exclude or at least minimize the influence of the next world over this oneRead more at location 3331
All it wants is more acquisition since however much you have is never surely enough. To acquire more, men must play the fox as well as the lion, and more the fox than the lion.Read more at location 3338
With Machiavelli the modern idea of "security" was born, the very antithesis of manliness.Read more at location 3342
Manliness henceforth would be occupied with making humans more powerful rather than making them better. Machiavelli called this "prudence;" but I have to say it was not wisdom.Read more at location 3344
Such wisdom can be sought in classical philosophy, but it can be found, too, in the BibleRead more at location 3345
After Machiavelli the modern notion of rational control took shape. It can be seen developing in the series of philosophers studied in chapter 6,Read more at location 3347
In the early phase of modernity, rational control meant human as opposed to divine control, and the religious question was foremost.Read more at location 3349
Our rational control, fearing courage more than fear, will do without manliness and will seek to supplant it and to keep it unemployed by means of measures that encourage or compel behavior intended to be lacking in drama. Read more at location 3354
Thus we have replaced the manly man with the bourgeois, a character who has several faces, none of them manly.Read more at location 3355
Professionals treat each other with "professional courtesy" but never with chivalry.Read more at location 3359
People obsessed with their health, divided into devotees of physical or mental health, bring rational control into their own lives.Read more at location 3362
They are unmanly because they want longer or less troubled life rather than a short, eventful life in the noble manner of Achilles.Read more at location 3362
Rational control is afraid of exposing itself and thereby being compelled to take responsibility for its rule; so it claims only to represent those whom it controls.Read more at location 3364
Commerce is unmanly because it is materialistic, willing to settle for gain rather than victory, for trade-offs rather than justice.Read more at location 3367
The commercial life rejects sacrifice and rests on calculation of advantage.Read more at location 3368
Edmund Burke laments over the imprisonment of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution, that no one was man enough to avenge her: "But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever..73Read more at location 3369
What in manliness makes it the target of modern progress? We may sum up the characteristics of manliness as they have been developed, for all of them are obstacles to rational control.Read more at location 3375
Our meritocracy is qualified by the policy of "affirmative action" on behalf of those who might not make the grade without help.Read more at location 3386
Commerce is unmanly, yet there is manliness in the spirit of commercial enterprise, so that Tocqueville can say that "Americans put a sort of heroism into their manner of doing commerce."Read more at location 3387
We see that the disparate features of manliness discussed in this book and just now summarized have in common the fact that they express - better to use my favorite word, assert-the importance of the individual.'Read more at location 3391
To make an identity takes effort to impress those who may contest it, sometimes in battle, sometimes through persuasion. Manliness is never selfless;Read more at location 3394
Professionalism makes one individual replaceable by another, for example, one doctor by another;Read more at location 3397
Lacking individuality is the way rational control likes us to be, so that we can be governed without regard to our foibles and without encountering foolish excuses for resistance.Read more at location 3399
Nowadays it often speaks the language of diversity, but it believes in egalitarian justice that leaves manliness, the cause of diversity, unemployed.Read more at location 3401
I have in mind the modern project that begins with Machiavelli and Bacon, long before feminism got started, we may say, with Mary Wollstonecraft in the late eighteenth century. Read more at location 3402
Too little manliness would follow from the success of the modern project of rational control, for the very meaning of rational control is to do away with erratic, obstreperous manliness.Read more at location 3404
The great Tocqueville dwells on this possibility; he sees democracy in a long trend toward similarity in its citizens and conformity in their behavior.Read more at location 3405
To oppose this trend he would rely on every democratic institution of self-government that strengthens individual pride.Read more at location 3408
The communists spoke of "the struggle for peace;" but they were always much more interested in struggle than in peace.Read more at location 3416
One thing we cannot do is to go back to a society in which women are kept in the home and men are free to leave it.Read more at location 3427
Release of the will is usually dressed up by feminists (and others) in the word "au- tonomy;"a concept from the liberal philosophy of Kant, a highly respectable source.Read more at location 3458
In practice, autonomy means putting yourself ahead of your husband and your children.Read more at location 3461
To be autonomous is the contrary of "contextual' the understanding of women that you get in common sense, social psychology, and Carol Gilligan.Read more at location 3463
I have said that the woman's movement was a manly enterprise, an assertive claim to rights long denied. But it was womanly in its choice of means, particularly in the idea of raising consciousness.Read more at location 3471
Women are misled by feminism into mistaking themselves. They are told they have no weaknesses because they have no essence, no definition; hence they have no limitations. Women can do anything,Read more at location 3477
as many of them say, "want it all." They want a career and they want to be women too.Read more at location 3482
Our gender-neutral society needs to readopt the distinction between public and private that is characteristic of liberalism. In public it should be gender-neutral, in private not.Read more at location 3483
In public it should not permit sex stereotypes to operate; in private it should admit that they are true.Read more at location 3484
Somehow I think that the female exceptions will be more numerous than the male, because men are by nature more single-minded, hence more public-spirited, than women, but let's not say that in law.Read more at location 3486
Our liberalism is a formal theory, one that offers rights that may or may not be exercised.Read more at location 3489
But in the private sphere, in society, we should think of men and women really, not formally.Read more at location 3491
Marriage is the social construction of the natural inclinations of the two sexes, and it includes, of course, virtues held in common as well as sex differences.Read more at location 3513
Our gender-neutral society is, thankfully, much stronger formally in public law than it is actually in private. But so often in our private lives the two sexes live in embarrassment and confusion. This is the problem of legitimacy in the gender-neutral societyRead more at location 3515
A better education would make children and grown-ups more aware of themselves, and it would be franker and less manipulative than what we attempt now.Read more at location 3519
This is a liberal country, "liberal" in a broad sense that includes the liberals and conservatives of our politics. But in constructing the gender-neutral society it has been following an illiberal impulse by trying to impose the liberal state upon liberal society.Read more at location 3522
