One sure fact of humanity is that we all cherish our opinions and will often strongly resist efforts by others to change them. Philosophers and politicians have long understood this, and whenever they have sought to get us to think differently they have often resorted to forms of camouflage that slip their unsettling thoughts into our psyche without raising alarm. In this fascinating examination of a range of writers and thinkers, Ralph Lerner offers a new method of reading that detects th...

Enlightenment and Secularism is a collection of twenty eight essays that seek to understand the connection between the European Enlightenment and the emergence of secular societies, as well as the character or nature of those societies. The contributors are drawn from a variety of disciplines including History, Sociology, Political Science, and Literature. Most of the essays focus on a single text from the Enlightenment, borrowing or secularizing the format of a sermon on a text, and are d...

In this elegant extended essay, Ralph Lerner concentrates on the politics of enlightenment — the process by which those who sought to set minds free went about their work. Eighteenth-century revolutionaries in America and Europe, Lerner argues, found that a revolution aimed at liberating bodies and minds had somehow to be explained and defended. Lerner first investigates how the makers of revolution sought to improve their public’s aspirations and chances. He pays particular attention to B...

"Because of the importance of Averroes (as a Muslim he is significant for both Platonic and Islamic thought), it is good to have Lerner's new and thoughtful interpretation, with lucid introduction, three helpful appendixes, glossary, and index."—Library Journal"This is a fine translation of a very difficult and important text, lost in its Arabic original but preserved in the awkward fourteenth-century Hebrew translation of Judah ben Samuel. Even in this summary form, the Republic i...

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 bro...

In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of Americ...

In Christian Reflections C.S. Lewis brings his vast and original intellect to bear on a wealth of subjects, including ethics, historicism, Christianity and culture. This selection of essays and papers, drawn from all stages of his career, presents Lewis at his most varied and profound.

The suicidal proclivity of our time, writes the acclaimed philosopher J. Budziszewski, is to deny the obvious. Our hearts are riddled with desires that oppose their deepest longings, because we demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible. Why? And what can we do about it?Budziszewski addresses these vital questions in his brilliantly persuasive new book, The Line Through the Heart. The answers can be discovered in an exploration of natural law—a ventur...

The theme of this volume was first presented as the Lyman Beecher Lectures On Preaching at the Yale Divinity School in 1945. Some of the same lectures were given, by arrangement, under the Warrack Lectureship On Preaching at the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen in Scotland in the winter of 1947. Some of the chapters were used as the basis of lectures given under the Olaf Petri Foundation of the University of Uppsala in Sweden. I sought to develop various portions of a general theme in ...

A provocative, personally curated anthology of the most influential writings on atheism, from the New York Times bestselling author of God Is Not Great**.**The Portable Atheist is an entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages—with never-before-published pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case...

From #1 New York Times bestselling author and radio host Mark R. Levin comes a searing plea for a return to America’s most sacred values.In Rediscovering Americanism, Mark R. Levin revisits the founders’ warnings about the perils of overreach by the federal government and concludes that the men who created our country would be outraged and disappointed to see where we've ended up.Levin returns to the impassioned question he's explored in e...

Gender scholarship during the last four decades has shown that the exclusion of women's voices and perspectives has diminished academic disciplines in important ways. Traditional scholarship in philosophy is no different. The 'recovery project' in philosophy is engaged in re-discovering the names, lives, texts, and perspectives of women philosophers from the 6th Century BCE to the present. Karen Warren brings together 16 colleagues for a unique, groundbreaking study of Western philosophy w...