Description: Harvey C. Mansfield traces the birth of modern political philosophy to Machiavelli's brief on behalf of rational control of human affairs, which became the basis of liberalism. But Rousseau, Kant, Marx, and Hegel all issued challenges, and finally Nietzsche doubted reason entirely. Mansfield asks how we can extract ourselves from Nietzsche's trap.
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes: 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