Enlightening Revolutions : Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner

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.

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.