The Rise and Fall of Rational Control

[This book] is an exercise in the liberal education that was already threatened when Mr. Mansfield began teaching History of Modern Political Philosophy in the 1960s. You cannot get answers to the questions Mr. Mansfield raises in a textbook or on ChatGPT, or even by examining important passages. The only way to find them is to read, reflect and compare whole books. – Sam Goldman * Wall Street Journal *
Mansfield’s work is immensely clever, subtle and thought-provoking. The Rise and Fall of Rational Control merits generous applause of the sort we give to a jazz interpretation whose enchantment lies in its ingenious departure from an original score. – Colin Kidd * London Review of Books *
With elegant prose and sparkling aphoristic insights, this Virgil of Cambridge guides his readers along the winding, sometimes confusing, and often dark paths of modern thought. – Glenn Ellmers * New Criterion *
Beautifully and engagingly written. It is easy to imagine enraptured college students hanging on his every word. – Geertje Bol * Times Literary Supplement *
In his methodical, exacting, and teacherly prose, Mansfield presents the insight that ‘modern’ is something new with a changed idea of reason, of nature and the natural world, and therefore of science, including a science of politics…He is a teacher whose commitments to rigor, to plucky and puckish truthfulness, to political philosophy, and to Harvard University have become suitably legendary. And his effectual truth includes generations of students whose ways of thinking and indeed ways of living he has influenced. In The Rise and Fall of Rational Control, Professor Mansfield keeps teaching. – Sarah Gustafson * Public Discourse *
Through this narrative of the history of political ideas, Mansfield allows his readers to confront modern political philosophy on its own terms—to see a recapitulation of the modern mind…[this book] is far more serious, complicated, and funny than my review can describe…We need great teachers like Harvey Mansfield who understand both great books and political life better than we can. Political philosophy, the study of great books, is not an academic discipline among others, but the record of an inquiry into the fundamental human activity that is manifest always and everywhere. Mansfield opens this inquiry for us all. – Rachel Mackey * Law & Liberty *
Will invite years of further reflection…Mansfield does a marvelous job of extracting what is essential for political philosophy. – Ralph C. Hancock * Claremont Review of Books *
Mansfield does a masterful job of demonstrating just how these philosophers upended centuries, if not millennia, of accepted political thought and practice…this book is an absolute treasure. – Dustin Bass * Epoch Times *
Mansfield’s new book is a reminder of what liberalism stands for, the many indulgences we get to enjoy because of it, and why (with good reason) we ought to be thankful for its existence. – Guillaume A. W. Attia * Liberal Currents *
Mansfield’s moderns, especially the early ones, are all devious, therefore dangerous. They always seem to be casting sideways glances; the careful reader’s job is to catch them out. Mansfield excels at this, because he is an unfailingly careful reader. Even if one rejects the larger argument, it is always full of penetrating observations. – Ian Tuttle * Hedgehog Review *
The magisterial Harvey Mansfield of Harvard has given us a splendid new book…The reader will be struck—I certainly was—by how refined [the lectures] are. Well, they are refined because he refined them over half a century…Every chapter is penetrating and illuminating. – Robert P. George * Washington Free Beacon *
Harvey Mansfield is a Harvard treasure, a one-man antidote to liberal complacency. – Michael J. Sandel
Harvey Mansfield is a legend—not to say a myth. These days, of course, a conservative on the political science faculty of an Ivy League college may sound as mythical as the Minotaur. Perhaps [his] critics viewed him with the same mixture of astonishment and fear as they would the mythical beast. Unfortunately for them, [he] was all too real. – Tom Cotton, United States Senator for Arkansas
An unblinkingly courageous social commentator, Harvey Mansfield is a superb teacher who has fostered a generation of influential students. – Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man
Professor Mansfield’s influence extends beyond the walls of the academy. His insights have deep practical and political importance. Throughout his career Harvey Mansfield has taught us important things about self-government; we need, now more than ever, to heed his wise counsel. – William J. Bennett, former US Secretary of Education and author of The Book of Virtues

Harvey C. Mansfield is William R. Kenan, Jr., Research Professor of Government at Harvard University. The author and translator of many books, he has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships and is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

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