The essays in this book reflect on the paradoxical relationship of liberal education and liberal democracy. Liberal education emphasizes knowledge for its own sake, detached from all instrumental purposes. It also aims at liberation from the manifold sources of unfreedom, including political sources. In this sense, liberal education is negative, questioning any and all constraints on the activity of mind. Liberal democracy, devoted to securing individual natural rights, purports to be the regime of liberty par excellence. Since both liberal education and liberal democracy aim to set individuals free, they would seem to be harmonious and mutually reinforcing. But there are reasons to doubt that liberal education can be the civic education liberal democracy needs. If liberal education is in tension with all instrumental purposes, how does it stand toward the goal of preparing the kind of citizens liberal democracy needs? The book's contributors are critical of the way higher education typically interprets its responsibility for educating citizens, and they link those failures to academia's neglect of certain founding principles of the American political tradition and of the traditional liberal arts ideal.

Leon R. Kass has been helping Americans better understand the human condition for over four decades as a teacher, writer, scholar, public champion of the humanities, and defender of human dignity. From bioethics to civic education, from interpreting the Bible to weighing the moral implications of modern science, Kass has offered wisdom, guidance, and instruction. In this volume, fifteen of Kass's admirers, including students, colleagues, and friends, honor his work by reflecting on the broad range of subjects to which he has devoted his life's work. Some of the essays offer interpretations of great works of literature and philosophy from Homer, Sophocles, and Plato to Rousseau, Franklin, Jane Austen, Hawthorne, and Henry James. Others examine the significance of Leon Kass's work as a bioethicist and Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and as an interpreter of the Book of Genesis. The essays collected in Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver offer a sense of the breadth of Kass's interests and insights and of the influence he has had on generations of scholars. The reader is further acquainted with the career of Leon R. Kass by a biographical introduction and a comprehensive listing of his published writings and the courses he has taught."

The astonishing success of the natural sciences in the modern era has led many thinkers to assume that similar feats of knowledge and power should be achievable in human affairs. That assumption, and the accompanying notion that the methods of modern science ought to be applied to social and political questions, have been at the heart of a number of prominent philosophical schools in the modern age, and much of the politics of the past century. Is the application of scientific logic to the study of human affairs philosophically defensible? Does it aid or hinder our efforts at a genuine understanding of the human world? Why have so many modern ideologies, including those responsible for some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, advanced themselves under the banner of science? Why, in other words, do we assume that modern science holds the key to an understanding of human affairs? Are we right to make this assumption? And what does the assumption mean for contemporary society and politics? Tyranny of Reason, which is designed for the interested lay reader and for undergraduate or beginning graduate students in the social sciences, attempts to answer these important questions in the context of the history of philosophy.

Leon R. Kass has been helping Americans better understand the human condition for over four decades as a teacher, writer, scholar, public champion of the humanities, and defender of human dignity. From bioethics to civic education, from interpreting the Bible to weighing the moral implications of modern science, Kass has offered wisdom, guidance, and instruction. In this volume, fifteen of Kass's admirers, including students, colleagues, and friends, honor his work by reflecting on the broad range of subjects to which he has devoted his life's work. Some of the essays offer interpretations of great works of literature and philosophy from Homer, Sophocles, and Plato to Rousseau, Franklin, Jane Austen, Hawthorne, and Henry James. Others examine the significance of Leon Kass's work as a bioethicist and Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics and as an interpreter of the Book of Genesis. The essays collected in Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver offer a sense of the breadth of Kass's interests and insights and of the influence he has had on generations of scholars. The reader is further acquainted with the career of Leon R. Kass by a biographical introduction and a comprehensive listing of his published writings and the courses he has taught."

Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics are polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campuses, social media, and sometimes in the streets and public squares. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities. Left and right alike have responded with anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cancelling, defunding, draining the swamp. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription, rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us and militate against alienation. In A Time to Build, now updated with a new epilogue, Levin argues that today is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.

For more than two centuries, our political life has been divided between a party of progress and a party of conservation. In "The Great Debate," Yuval Levin explores the origins of the left/right divide by examining the views of the men who best represented each side of that debate at its outset: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. In a groundbreaking exploration of the roots of our political order, Levin shows that American partisanship originated in the debates over the French Revolution, fueled by the fiery rhetoric of these ideological titans.
Levin masterfully shows how Burke's and Paine's differing views, a reforming conservatism and a restoring progressivism, continue to shape our current political discourse--on issues ranging from abortion to welfare, education, economics, and beyond. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Washington's often acrimonious rifts, "The Great Debate" offers a profound examination of what conservatism, liberalism, and the debate between them truly amount to.

From stem cell research to global warming, human cloning, evolution, and beyond, political debates about science have raged in recent years - and, to the chagrin of most observers, have increasingly fallen into the familiar categories of America's culture wars. In Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, Yuval Levin explores the complicated meanings of science and technology in American politics and finds that the science debates have a lot to teach us about our political life. These debates, Levin argues, reveal some serious challenges to American self-government, and put on stark display the deepest strengths and greatest weaknesses of both the left and the right. "American life has been profoundly shaped by science and technology, and will be all the more so in the coming decades, making it crucial that we understand how to think and speak about science in politics. Yuval Levin's smart and eminently well-reasoned book makes the important point that the purpose of science is a moral one -- to improve human life -- and that judging what that involves is sometimes a job for more than science alone in a democratic society. Levin's insights speak directly to today's political debates and make his book a must-read for policymakers and all those who care about science and society." --Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House "Imagining the Future goes far beyond the contemporary polarized debates over science to unpack the moral premises of the modern scientific project and its consequences for American democracy. In the process, Yuval Levin provides us with a deep understanding of policy issues from genetic engineering to global warming." --Francis Fukuyama, Johns Hopkins University "This book is important to the thinking of both progressives and conservatives. Clearly and incisively, it shows how science and technology are shaping humanity's future and world views. Levin alerts democratic societies that human dignity and equality are imperiled unless we provide political and moral guidance to prevent the submergence of humanity in its own ingenuity." --Edmund Pellegrino, Chairman, President's Council on Bioethics

Americans today are frustrated and anxious. Our economy is sluggish, political polarization is at an all-time high, our government seems paralyzed and our politics has failed to rise to these challenges. No wonder, then, that voters and politicians alike are nostalgic for a better time. The Left is attempting to recreate the middle of the twentieth century, when social movements and anti-poverty programs were at their height, while the Right pines for the Reagan Era, when taxes were low and Americans were optimistic. But America has changed over the past half century. The institutions that once dominated our economy, politics, and culture have fragmented and become smaller, more diverse, and personalized. Individualism, dynamism, and liberalization have come at the cost of dwindling solidarity, cohesion, and social order. This has left us with more choices in every realm of life but far less security, stability, and national unity. The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin calls for a modernizing politics that can answer the dysfunctions of our fragmented national life. By embracing individualism and diversity and rejecting extremism and nostalgia, we can revive the middle layers of society and enable an American revival

Religion and the American Future is a lively, learned dialogue on the role of religion in American society. The contributors raise their voices in opposition to the tide of cynicism and constraint that often overwhelms religion in public life and argue that tolerance, respect, and free expression must define the future of religion in America.