What makes Niccolò Machiavelli the founder of modern politics? How did liberal thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, and the American founders modify Machiavelli’s inventions? How did later thinkers like Kant and Hegel attempt to save reason? How stands rational control today? How stands the case for liberalism? Is there a path forward for a revived liberalism?

Drawing on his recent book The Rise and Fall of Rational Control—based on lectures given for over fifty years at Harvard—Mansfield discusses liberalism, reason in politics, and forms of rational and irrational control. This conversation is altogether a tour-de-force introduction to the history of modern political philosophy.