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020 _a9780674298859 (HB)
040 _ckul
082 _a320.01
_bMAN/R
084 _2Colon Classification
100 _aMansfield, Harvey C
_910792
245 _aRise and Fall of Rational Control:
_bThe History of Modern Political Philosophy
260 _aCambridge:
_bThe Belknap Press of Hardvard University Press,
_c2025
300 _axii, 323p.
520 _aThe Rise and Fall of Rational Control is a bold interpretation of centuries of intellectual revolutions. Based on Harvey C. Mansfield’s legendary Harvard course, taught for decades to rapt classrooms, this volume is both a grand work of ideas and an elucidating reflection on liberalism, its eclipse, and the possibility of renewal. Mansfield locates the birth of modern political philosophy in the work of Niccolò Machiavelli, the first to assert that the objective of politics is not to achieve wishful ideals of justice or virtue—as the ancients had it—but to manipulate the brute facts of the world in service of interests. Here rational control, free from the order of gods or God, is the key to achieving the modern order, which can liberate humans from slavery and conflict. Hobbes and Locke later develop Machiavelli’s modern idea, laying foundations for liberalism. Then comes the first crisis in the form of Rousseau, who introduces historical change into the very idea of reason, which itself is said to evolve. After Rousseau, history takes center stage, as witnessed in Kant, Marx, and Hegel. The second crisis of modernity arrives with Nietzsche, who casts doubt on reason itself. Ever since, political thought has been stranded in the desert of postmodernism, where Machiavelli’s necessities are replaced by faded subjectivity.
650 _aPolitical Philosophy
650 _aNiccolo Machiavelli
_910793
650 _aThomas Hobbes
_910794
650 _aJohn Locke
_910795
650 _aJean Jacques Rousseau
_910796
650 _aImmanuel Kant
_98617
650 _aHegel
650 _aKarl Marx
_91738
650 _aFriedrich Nietzsche
_910797
942 _2ddc
_cBK
999 _c756879
_d756879