The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2026)
Several years ago, I attended a conference devoted to the thought of Harvey Mansfield. At the conclusion, Professor Mansfield rose from his seat in the front row to give a few remarks. I remember the fascination I felt as he spoke slowly and softly of the “land of virtue” whose “beauties and difficulties” the ancient philosophers extolled. In this land lies a secret garden—the garden of tact, of those philosophers who know more than they say—where beautiful wildflowers are allowed to blossom. The great indictment of rights-obsessed liberalism, and its reactionary younger brother conservatism, is that they know almost nothing of the awesome, sun-drenched vistas of the land of virtue.
The reader may decide if I yielded that day to the siren song of Straussianism. Yet if true education always begins with wonder, Professor Mansfield has immense gifts as a teacher. The great books that have shaped the self-understanding and aspirations of the West are not dead artifacts, but living manifestations of flawed genius that have an innate power to fascinate. Nor do they exist in isolation; they form prominent landmarks in a great conversation, emerging from a common spiritual and cultural history that reaches across the centuries. In reading them, we read ourselves.
Professor Mansfield’s ability to communicate the significance of great books is on display in The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy (2026). Mansfield here “transcribes” the undergraduate course on modern political thought that he taught at Harvard for over fifty years.11. The Rise and Fall of Rational Control, 310. (This is a venerable genre: Aristotle’s Politics is a compilation of lecture notes, as is Hegel’s Philosophy of History, which Mansfield exegetes at length.) He invites his students (readers) to encounter the great texts of the Western canon along with him, sprinkling his interpretations with charming editorial asides. “[T]o tell a secret,” reading Kant is easy as pie once you learn his terminology. Hegel’s great works, by contrast, are “a foreign land where home becomes a distant and unnecessary memory.” Yes, Nietzsche is thrilling to read, but “please try not to fall in love with him!” Mansfield grants his apprentices dignity and agency without abdicating his authority as a superior guide.
Professor Mansfield allows the great books to speak for themselves, claiming to offer only “a respectful and secondary guide to the higher guides.” Nevertheless, he wants to say something definite about them, to tell a cohesive story that is of more than historical interest. The subtitle, The History of Modern Political Philosophy, is instructive for those who are familiar with the Straussian distinction between the ancients and the moderns. The ancients (represented by Plato and Aristotle) were concerned with virtue; the moderns (beginning with Machiavelli) replaced virtue with self-interest and physical well-being. The ancients respected nature, including human nature, and sought a freedom in accordance with it; the moderns seek freedom from nature through rational calculation and the manipulation of matter. The original sin of modern philosophy is to lower the bar for human achievement below the moral potential and dignity of our nature and to hubristically proclaim the efficacy of human will—and the tools it makes for itself—to re-fashion reality in conformity with the modern standard.
The book’s subject matter, then, is the second act of this great drama, from Western man’s fall from grace to the moment when he exhausts the possibilities of his dogged self-reliance and feels the full consequences of his fall. “Rational control” is both the essence and the means of realizing the modern ideal of freedom. This is freedom from both God and nature, and it is born in man’s mind when he discovers that he is alone in the world with no one to be grateful to. This presents a distressing challenge—because man now must provide for his own necessities without help from beneficent powers—but also a thrilling possibility—because man now may change the world as he sees fit without restraints of religion, tradition, or the normative laws of nature.
According to Mansfield, modern political philosophy has a coherent “internal history” because it consists of self-conscious efforts by great philosophers who correct and build on each other in working out one central idea. On the Straussian view, if human history at large is one damn thing after another, the history of philosophy is made by men who rise above the vagaries of historical change to articulate ideas that cross barriers of time, space, and language. Great philosophers are founders.
Hence Machiavelli, with whom the book begins, is the true founder of modernity. His philosophy gave birth to the staggering technological and scientific changes of the subsequent centuries—rather than those changes giving birth to a theoretical justification post hoc, as a Marxist interpretation of history would have it. Machiavelli invented the idea of rational truth when he elevated “effectual truth” over the received truths of philosophy and religion. Reason becomes a means of control by which man reckons with his natural nakedness and helplessness—his “necessity”—rather than a means of understanding the world as it is given. The politics of rational control requires rulers to exercise “indirect government” over those who believe themselves to be free, and Machiavelli must mask his own teaching lest the deceitful aspect of political rule be fully exposed.
In the next phase of Mansfield’s narrative, Hobbes and Locke (two Englishmen) pick up where the revolutionary Italian left off. Hobbes, who “would be the founder of modern political science” if not for Machiavelli, domesticated Machiavellianism, recasting it in abstract, scientific terms and orienting it toward the modest goal of self-preservation. Man uses his reason not to discern and conform to nature (as in a Christian natural law thinker like Aquinas), but to escape from the “state of nature” regardless of the will of God. Locke’s project of rational constitutionalism is along the same lines, and the fact that his teachings are more palatable than Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’s only means that his fraud was more subtle and complete than theirs.
The turning point of the narrative comes with Rousseau, who called the modern project into question by pointing out the historicity of reason itself. For Rousseau, man’s radical freedom within history, not his reason, is his defining characteristic. The discovery of “History” as a central category leads to a radicalization, not a rejection, of the project of rational control. Now we must make ourselves as rational beings before we can remake our world, and both actions are understood primarily as expressions of human freedom, unbounded by nature and God.
The remainder of the book is devoted to German thinkers. Kant, Hegel, and Marx develop the Rousseauian discovery of History, which now becomes an inevitable vehicle of human progress, reintroducing a secularized teleology into human development. For Hegel, the proud author of World History, history (still more of a problem than a promise for Kant) is the progressive actualization of a reason that replaces nature and God.
Nietzsche’s “postmodernism” finally exploded the modern ideal of freedom without transcending modernity. Mansfield calls him “the fundamental philosopher of our time.” Nietzsche announced that the developments of modern history had led, not to the culmination of human reason and freedom, but to nihilism—the end of history in a negative sense. Nietzsche rebuked the dead end of historicism in favor of a human creativity that soars above history, and in doing so he returned to a conception of nature and to a corresponding “philosophy-religion.” In the old age of the modern idea, freedom comes to mean “the escape from human necessities, from the history we have made for ourselves, back into the arms of God and nature.”
Mansfield quietly concludes that the failure of the ideal of rational control should lead us to wonder whether “the original mistake was to define an opposition between freedom and nature”—whether, after all, we ought to return to ancient virtue in accordance with nature. History cannot be undone, so we might aim for a “reworked liberalism” that maintains something of the modern emphasis on individual rights and bodily welfare, but reintegrates the concerns of the soul.
As an apprentice in the practice of political philosophy, I owe masters like Professor Mansfield a great respect and deference. Without pretending to offer a wholesale evaluation or critique of the book, I will pose a few questions and critical comments from the standpoint of an inquisitive student.
Mansfield speaks candidly about being an intellectual heir of Leo Strauss, but I remain puzzled about his pedagogical purposes (being without formal Straussian training myself). For example, what is the reason for expounding Machiavelli’s ideas—including the secrets and contradictions—with such seductive force? There are moments when one forgets that Mansfield is deeply critical of the modern project Machiavelli founded. On the one hand, maybe such a compelling reconstruction of a dangerous thinker’s ideas could have the indirect result of corrupting the youth, who are too easily dazzled by a transgressive genius. On the other hand, by the logic of esotericism, to bare Machiavelli’s veiled agenda before the public (if that is what Mansfield aims to do) would be to neuter him. More generally, does Mansfield think that public philosophy is a tenable and prudent undertaking, as the publication of this book for a general audience would seem to imply? Or must the true activity of philosophical education continue to take place in private, between a trusted teacher and his select students?
Another lingering question concerns the relationship of Christianity and modernity. To the prodigal sons of modernity who have exhausted themselves in their flight from nature and God, Mansfield exhorts a return to nature—but not, we must note, to God. He ascribes to modern philosophy and society a fundamental hostility to God and religion, and he seems to find modern critiques of Christianity to be powerful and modern reinterpretations of Christianity (such as Hegel’s) to be dishonest and unconvincing. He briefly acknowledges an important counternarrative in his discussion of Hegel, who points to Machiavelli’s contemporary Martin Luther as the true father of modernity. Perhaps there is more to unpack in Hegel’s claim that “The essence of the Reformation [is that] man is in his very nature destined to be free.”22. See, for example, the thesis of Ernst Troelstch, who interpreted Luther (along with Calvin) as the unwitting father of a wayward stepchild, modern freedom. Luther’s proclamation of the freedom of the individual conscience before God was dislodged from its theological and institutional context to become the inspiration for a radical reformation of religion, politics, and society that eventually overturned medieval Church-civilization. Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress: A Historical Study of the Relation of Protestantism to the Modern World, trans. W. Montgomery (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). Certainly Machiavelli pays lip service to traditional Christianity to serve unor anti-Christian ends. But how might we read Hobbes, Locke, or Hegel differently if we do not presume an inherent incompatibility between modern philosophy and Christian theology? Might Christianity in fact contain the seeds of modernity, granted that they were transplanted from their native soil by thinkers whose philosophical and political concerns outweighed strictly theological ones?
I am also curious about Mansfield’s comments on liberalism at the end of the book. Is his suggestion that we tutor liberalism rather than reject it based on a normative judgment about the truth and value of liberalism, or a prudential judgment informed by a sense of historical constraint? Maybe a more spiritual and virtue-oriented reinterpretation of liberalism would do violence to the essential idea of liberalism—similarly to how, on Mansfield’s telling, modern reinterpretations of Christianity impose alien schemes of thought onto traditional theological claims to make the latter more politically salutary. If that were the case, would tutored liberalism necessarily involve a certain benevolent deception? Granted, this book is primarily an exercise in historical and philosophical self-understanding, not a proposal for action. Mansfield directs us to study Tocqueville, Aristotle, and the U.S. Constitution for a fuller understanding of the possibilities of reforming liberalism. But his terse and suggestive conclusion still provides much food for thought.
Finally, as Mansfield traced the dramatic development and demise of modernity, I kept wishing for a more satisfying account of why the idea of modern freedom should emerge late in human history to revolutionize the world. If nature is real and does not change, such that the human capacity to rebel against God and nature originates in human nature, is there not something unaccountable in history having a distinct shape? To be sure, we can never adequately “explain” a great philosopher or founder (as Machiavelli may be), and such men may indeed have the power to shape epochs. But it still seems mysterious that modernity would take on the aspect of a great unfolding drama, a narrative whole in which individual actors and events carry out their assigned roles. Would not the author of such a drama be a kind of god?
Perhaps such riddles are unanswerable, at least in the domain of philosophy (as Straussians define it). In that case, we could make peace with leaving them unresolved. However, we might also turn to the tradition of Christian political thought, which claims to be inspired and guided by a “sacred history” authoritatively revealed.33. For an excellent treatment of the concept of sacred history from an Augustinian perspective, see R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge University Press, 1970), ch. 1. On this premise, it can claim to out-narrate some of the elements of modernity elucidated so profoundly by Mansfield.
To take one example, Augustine’s account of earthly politics as the realm of necessity, coercion, and violence is not unlike Machiavelli’s. Augustine observes that political communities are rarely oriented by a substantive common good, but more often by a shared commitment to worldly ambition and the satisfaction of conflicting private desires. The tower of Babel expressed man’s desire to dominate the entire world in a usurpation of God’s office; the confusion of languages is a fitting punishment and mechanism of restraint, since “a ruler’s power of domination is wielded by his tongue.”44. Augustine, City of God XVI.4, trans. Bettenson (Penguin, 2004), 658. Notice the anticipation of “modern” developments as Mansfield interprets them: technological progress that enables man to wield control over his world is the logical fruition of his deadly idea—that of asserting his freedom and mastery over and against God and the limitations of his nature.
For Luther’s great teacher Augustine, the lust for domination (libido dominandi) and other vicious desires that corrupt politics are always latent in fallen man, but the gradual triumph of man’s imperial ambitions permitted by divine providence constitutes a tangible historical development. As Oliver O’Donovan writes, “[w]orld history…does assume a shape, and the evolution of a pacified and civilized world government is the key to it.”55. Oliver O’Donovan, “The Political Thought of City of God 19,” in Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present (Eerdmans, 2003), 69. Though God works through the history of human kingdoms to achieve his redemptive purposes, that history considered in itself is “a demonic history… What appears to be civilizational progress is, in fact, on the moral and spiritual level, self-defeating.” Augustine’s problem, then, “is not to conceive of progress within the political realm, but to distance himself from it, retaining the perspective that God brings the pretensions of the proud to naught.” Elsewhere, O’Donovan suggests that the idolatrous and imperialistic aspect of history is all the more pronounced in our own age—the age between Christ’s triumphal ascension and his second coming—as the human and demonic rebellion against the Kingdom of God revealed once and for all in Christ grows to a fever pitch.66. See Oliver O’Donovan, “History and Politics in the Book of Revelation,” in Bonds of Imperfection, 25–47, esp. 35–36. If we take such theological insights seriously, the history of man’s self-defeating attempts to assert his prideful freedom—which is called “progress”—is contextualized in a greater story. This act of the drama is bracketed by other crucial events: man’s creation by God in true freedom according to his nature; his catastrophic original rebellion and fall; and the restoration and perfection of his fallen nature through the grace of Christ, which makes the true politics of virtue and fellowship possible once again—though not fully until the end of the age.
Professor Mansfield has masterfully traced the rise and fall of an idea within a philosophical tradition. But the great Christian theologians warn us to expect no decisive fall of man’s hubristic desire for control, which he expresses in his philosophy, his politics, and his scientific and technological innovations, until the true King returns who will judge the nations and “rule them with a rod of iron” (Rev. 2:27).
