Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. The contributors write in awareness that a loss of confidence in reason similar to the one we are witnessing today when the desirability and possibility of guiding our lives by the enduring, normative truths that reason attempts to discover had occurred at the time of Socrates, who realized that the existence of genuine limits to what is knowable by reason opened up the possibility that our world, instead of having the kind of intelligible necessities that science seeks to uncover, could be the work of mysterious, creative gods or god as devoutly religious citizens claimed it to be. His grasp of this great difficulty led him and his students ancient and medieval to attempt to ground the life of reason by means of a pre-philosophic, preliminary investigation of political-moral questions. Modern political philosophers later attempted to ground the life of reason in a considerably different, 'enlightening' way. These essays examine both of these attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor. The volume is divided into five parts. The essays in Part I examine the moral-political problems through which Socrates came to ground the philosophic life as those problems first appeared in earlier, pre-Socratic writers. Part II explores those problems in their Platonic and Aristotelian presentations, and in the work of two medieval thinkers. Part III addresses the thought of Leo Strauss, the thinker upon whose work the recovery of both ancient and modern political philosophy in our day has been made possible. Part IV explicates the writings of modern political philosophers and thinkers with a view to uncovering their alternative approach to science and political life. The volume concludes in Part V with essays addressing contemporary problems enlightened by the study of political philosophy.

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. The contributors write in awareness that a loss of confidence in reason similar to the one we are witnessing today when the desirability and possibility of guiding our lives by the enduring, normative truths that reason attempts to discover had occurred at the time of Socrates, who realized that the existence of genuine limits to what is knowable by reason opened up the possibility that our world, instead of having the kind of intelligible necessities that science seeks to uncover, could be the work of mysterious, creative gods or god as devoutly religious citizens claimed it to be. His grasp of this great difficulty led him and his students ancient and medieval to attempt to ground the life of reason by means of a pre-philosophic, preliminary investigation of political-moral questions. Modern political philosophers later attempted to ground the life of reason in a considerably different, "enlightening" way. These essays examine both of these attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor. The volume is divided into five parts. The essays in Part I examine the moral-political problems through which Socrates came to ground the philosophic life as those problems first appeared in earlier, pre-Socratic writers. Part II explores those problems in their Platonic and Aristotelian presentations, and in the work of two medieval thinkers. Part III addresses the thought of Leo Strauss, the thinker upon whose work the recovery of both ancient and modern political philosophy in our day has been made possible. Part IV explicates the writings of modern political philosophers and thinkers with a view to uncovering their alternative approach

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.

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.

Can the education which so many search for today on our college campuses be found in the works of a past author? On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues uncovers the education that Socrates sought on his own behalf and, in so doing, made available to others. Sixteen dialogues are discussed, each considered on its own, but also placed within the context of Plato's account of the Socratic quest. The aim of the book is to make Socrates' investigation and resolution of the questions that still concern us as human beings more accessible to serious contemporary readers.

In this book, 19 prominent representatives of each side in the basic division among Strauss's followers explore his contribution to political philosophy and Jewish thought. The volume presents the most extensive analysis yet published of Strauss's religious heritage and how it related to his work, and includes Strauss's previously unpublished 'Why We Remain Jews, ' an extraordinary essay concerned with the challenge posed to Judaism by modern secular thought. The extensive introduction interrelates the major themes of Strauss's thought