Machiavellian roots of rational control

Mansfield argues that Machiavelli’s break with ancient and medieval political thought planted the intellectual seed for a modern project of ‘rational control’—a tendency in later thinkers to systematize and then try to fix the political consequences of earlier fixes. The book traces how Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche each advance-and-correct that project, producing modern dilemmas about power, authority, and technocratic governance. — This genealogy reframes contemporary disputes over executive power, technocracy, and political realism as the long-term aftereffects of a single intellectual turning point, shifting focus from isolated policy fights to deep philosophical lineage.