Enlightening Revolutions Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner

by Minkov, Svetozar; Douard, Stéphane; Berns, Laurence; Bolotin, David; Brubaker, Lauren; Bruell, Christopher; Butterworth, Charles E.; Dannhauser, Werner J.; Faulkner, Robert; Fradkin, Hillel; Galston, Miriam; Gannett, Robert T., Jr.; Hanley, Ryan Patrick;

• ISBN13: 9780739122556
• ISBN10: 073912255X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-01
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

The essays collected in this volume make a serious, enlightened contribution to the history of political philosophy. While offering striking new interpretations of crucial texts and events in the history of the West, they illuminate fundamental questions of politics, religion, and philosophy.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
The Medieval Renaissance
The Moral Status of Teaching and Writing	p. 3
Averroes on Law and Political Well-Being	p. 23
Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides	p. 31
Averroes, Dante and the Dawn of European Enlightenment	p. 57
The Modern Revolution
Law and Innovation in Machiavelli's Prince	p. 77
Resistance to Punishment: Controversies Old and New	p. 91
The Right to Life and Human Dignity	p. 127
The Place of Philosophy in Modernity
Swift Sailing	p. 145
Montesquieu's Prelude: An Interpretation of Book I of The Spirit of Laws	p. 161
Adam Smith on Natural Liberty and Moral Corruption: The Wisdon of Nature and Folly of Legislators?	p. 191
Equality and Greatness in Tocqueville and America
Who Is Publius? The Debate Over the Constitution and the American Revolution	p. 221
Benjamin Franklin's Biblical Parable on Toleration	p. 229
Tocqueville as Politician: Revisiting the Revolution of 1789	p. 235
Tocqueville's Understanding of "Conditions of Equality" and "Conditions of Inequality"	p. 259
Democratic Greatness in the Founding	p. 281
Learning from Antiquity and the Thought of Leo Strauss
Justice Overruled: The Ambition of Xenophon's Cyrus the Great	p. 289
Plato and Relativism	p. 309
Is There a Right to Live as We Please? (So Long as We Respect the Right of Others to Do the Same)	p. 319
Two Nations Were in Her Womb: Contemporary Liberal Democracy and the Political Teaching of the Bible	p. 335
Leo Strauss in His Letters	p. 355
How Strauss Became Strauss	p. 363
The Writings of Ralph Lerner	p. 385
Index	p. 391
About the Contributors	p. 395
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