Decline of Rational Control

Harvey Mansfield argues that modern political thought is built on a project of 'rational control' whose assumptions have unraveled, tracing that intellectual genealogy from Machiavelli through Nietzsche and diagnosing consequences for politics and education. The symposium brings conservative readings to bear on how we teach and legitimize civic life. — Framing modernity as a crisis of 'rational control' shifts debates about political reform toward questions of moral education, institutional culture, and the limits of technocratic governance.