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Rational Control, or Life without Virtue Harvey C. Mansfield In what follows I shall make a very small beginning to describe a danger that appears, at ‹rst blush, to be an irritation at worst and at best, an actual bene‹t. It arises from what appears, again at ‹rst blush, to be a benign intent to improve the lot of not just one individual or another, or this society or that, but of everyone and all humanity. It employs the noblest faculty of man in tandem with the lowest, most spontaneous bodily reactions—both ends against the middle, where virtue resides. Reason, which is above virtue, makes friends with interest, which is beneath virtue. In itself proud and innocent, reason conceals something innocent-looking and bland but sinister. Modern reason has an agenda and an accomplice, with which it will expose our virtue as incompetent and naive. The reader will not ‹nd policy implications drawn from my analysis announcing and urging that we—or the government—do this or that. The reason is that almost all of what we today call “policy” is rational control of one kind or another. Almost every policy is designed to make society more rational and virtue less necessary. The “failed policies” that our political parties denounce at election time are countered with new policies having the same general aim, sure to be attacked by the opposing party for similar failings. Of course there are things we could do to support virtue, but one would have to attend to the dif‹culty that they too might be policies, presupposing the possibility and desirability of rational control. So, instead of offering policy implications from “philosophy,” I will draw philosophical implications from policy. The ‹rst requirement for deciding what to do is to see where we are going. In the brand-new building where I work the lights go on and off, the shades go up and down, and the toilets ›ush, automatically, without your having to turn a switch or push a handle. Rational control has replaced individual 238 / virtue, which is subject to vagaries and may not be active or awake. The old building where I used to work was shared with economists, who, living the sort of life they describe, had no incentive to ›ush and sometimes failed to do so. Such virtue is so minimal that it hardly deserves the name, but even actions that are very obviously in your self-interest may be done for you if there is a chance that you might not perform them. As instruments of rational control the seat belts in your car are inferior to air bags because the former you have to buckle up on your own and the latter save you without your having to lift a ‹nger. In this case your life is involved (though one wouldn’t say at stake), and the point is to save you the inconvenience of having to be mindful. All are treated as if they were absent-minded on the chance—of course, the good chance—that some of us might be. These examples are small matters of convenience, but they add up. In the ‹rst set of building controls you might save a lot of money; in the second , a good number of lives. But as intrusions into your privacy, your own control over your life, your virtue, they also add up. In their very minuteness they reveal the comprehensiveness of rational control. And another thing too: they often don’t work. This is particularly true of the automatic ›ush, just one measure in the never-ending war against the human smell. That the tools and formulas of rational control often don’t work, that we must constantly have recourse (‹rst, to husbands and then) to repairmen, does not, for us, cast doubt on the whole idea of rational control. With undaunted optimism we just try something else of the same kind. What is rational control? The examples I have given are the tail end of something very big, the idea of modernity. That idea requires subjecting our entire lives, holding nothing back—which means holding nothing sacred as exempt—to an examination by our reason as to whether we can live more effectively. What this means Francis Bacon said best: “The enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”This single idea was conceived and promoted by a group of philosophers, or rather, as I will suggest, ‹rst by...

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