Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner: Laurence Berns: Lexington Books

Enlightening Revolutions

Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner

Enlightening Revolutions

Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner

Description

Enlightening Revolutions-a collection of outstanding essays by highly prominent scholars-examines the different ways in which the relation between politics and philosophy has been understood and enacted over the ages. The volume sheds light on key theoretical and historical issues: the intriguing position and historical influence of medieval Jewish and Islamic rationalism; the advent of modernity in the thought of Machiavelli and Hobbes; the prospects for greatness in modernity as seen by Adam Smith, Jonathan Swift, the Founding Fathers, and Alexis de Tocqueville; and the prospects for philosophic excellence in modern times as seen by, among others, Montesquieu and Leo Strauss, as well as through the eyes of Plato and the Bible. The volume is dedicated to Ralph Lerner, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. It honors Lerner's splendid teaching and scholarship over half a century, and testifies in some measure to his enlightening, enlivening, gracefully witty, and humanizing activity and example.

1 Part I: The Medieval Renaissance
Chapter 2 The Moral Status of Teaching and Writing
Chapter 3 Averroes on Law and Political Well-Being
Chapter 4 Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides
Chapter 5 Averroes, Dante and the Dawn of European Enlightenment
6 Part II: The Modern Revolution
Chapter 7 Law and Innovation in Machiavelli's Prince
Chapter 8 Resistance to Punishment: Controversies Old and New
Chapter 9 The Right to Life and Human Dignity
10 Part III: The Place of Philosophy in Modernity
Chapter 10 Adam Smith on Natural Liberty and Moral Corruption: The Wisdom of Nature and Folly of Legislators?
Chapter 11 Swift Sailing
Chapter 12 Montesquieu's Prelude: An Interpretation of Book I of The Spirit of Laws
Chapter 14 Tocqueville's Understanding of "Conditions of Equality" and "Conditions of Inequality"
14 Part IV: Equality and Greatness in Tocqueville and America
Chapter 15 Who is Publius? The Debate Over the Constitution and the American Revolution
Chapter 16 Benjamin Franklin's Biblical Parable on Toleration
Chapter 17 Tocqueville as Politician: Revisiting the Revolution of 1789
Chapter 18 Is There a Right to Live as We Please? (So Long as We Respect the Right of Others to Do the Same)
Chapter 19 Two Nations Were in Her Womb: Contemporary Liberal Democracy and the Political Teaching of the Bible
Chapter 19 Democratic Greatness in the Founding
20 Part V. Learning from Antiquity and the Thought of Leo Strauss
Chapter 21 Justice Overruled: The Ambition of Xenophon's Cyrus the Great
Chapter 22 Plato and Relativism
Chapter 25 Leo Strauss in His Letters
Chapter 26 How Strauss Became Strauss
Chapter 27 The Writings of Ralph Lerner

Product details

Published	May 01 2007
Format	Paperback
Edition	1st
Extent	412
ISBN	9780739122556
Imprint	Lexington Books
Dimensions	230 x 153 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Anthology Editor

Svetozar Minkov

Anthology Editor

Stéphane Douard

Contributor

Laurence Berns

Contributor

David Bolotin

Contributor

Lauren Brubaker

Contributor

Christopher Bruell

Contributor

Charles E. Butterworth

Contributor

Werner J. Dannhauser

Contributor

Robert Faulkner

Contributor

Hillel Fradkin

Contributor

Miriam Galston

Contributor

Robert T. Gannett Jr.

Contributor

Ryan Patrick Hanley

Contributor

Leon R. Kass

Contributor

Joel L. Kraemer

Contributor

Harvey C. Mansfield

Contributor

Heinrich Meier

Contributor

Joshua Parens

Contributor

Thomas S. Schrock

Contributor

Gerald Stourzh

Contributor

Nathan Tarcov

Contributor

Stuart D. Warner

Contributor

Michael Zuckert

A powerful collection of essays-scholarly and humane, probing and elegant-that honors by imitating the great virtues of Ralph Lerner as a teacher and scholar.

Arthur Melzer, Michigan State University
An outstanding group of essays on an unusually rich array of topics ranging from medieval political philosophy to Tocqueville. . . This deeply informed collection constitutes a worthy tribute to an extraordinary teacher and scholar.

Susan Shell, Boston College
This richly varied collection of essays on the problematic relationship of political theory and practice pays due honor to Ralph Lerner and to the enlightening stimulus of his lifework of scholarship and teaching.

Thomas Pangle, University of Toronto