The Rise and Fall of Rational Control

By: Harvey Claflin Mansfield

Published by Harvard University Press, 2026-01-20

Harvey C. Mansfield traces the birth of modern political philosophy to Machiavelli’s brief on behalf of rational control of human affairs, which became the basis of liberalism. But Rousseau, Kant, Marx, and Hegel all issued challenges, and finally Nietzsche doubted reason entirely. Mansfield asks how we can extract ourselves from Nietzsche’s trap.