Harvey Mansfield, one of the most prominent living students of Leo Strauss, has flatly rejected the notion that Bronze Age Pervert - the pseudonymous online figure also known as Costin Alamariu - represents the future of Straussianism. Asked by Tyler Cowen whether Alamariu, arguably the best-known young Straussian, should be taken as a model for where the movement is heading, Mansfield's response was immediate: "No, you shouldn't. Please don't."
The exchange, part of an extensive Conversations with Tyler interview, "Hvylya" reports, revealed that Mansfield has personal familiarity with Alamariu's academic work. "I read his dissertation. It was done at Yale," he said. "He was not the kind of student who was a patient and respectful listener. He had his own ideas, but he was interesting, and he's smart."
Yet Mansfield drew a sharp line between intellectual interest and intellectual lineage. "Even to call him a Straussian is not correct, I don't think. He picked things out of Strauss, especially from Nietzsche." Alamariu, in Mansfield's view, is "a deliberate seeker of what is vulgar and what is uncivilized, or on the edge of civilization" - someone drawn to the Bronze Age precisely because it is where "the greatest insight into the need for violence is most obvious."
The real future of Straussianism, Mansfield argued, rests not on any particular figure but on the great books themselves - books Strauss placed at the center of his teaching, and books so superior that "they, in a way, guarantee their own future." He acknowledged that Straussian professors at top universities "have died or retired and not been replaced" in recent years, but dismissed this as superficial: "People can always find it."
When Cowen suggested that AI might be the best available tool for learning Straussian methods of reading a text, Mansfield was unmoved. "AI wouldn't substitute the words for the original," he said. Cowen pushed back, arguing that AI "works pretty well" and is "better than most of what's out there." Mansfield's reply: "That's not good enough, though."