Lerner, Ralph

The Founders' Constitution ( Book )
13 editions published between 1987 and 2001 in English and held by 1,778 libraries worldwide
A comprehensive anthology of original historical documents relating to the legal and historical context of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Medieval political philosophy : a sourcebook by Ralph Lerner ( Book )
12 editions published between 1963 and 1991 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,110 libraries worldwide

The thinking revolutionary : principle and practice in the new republic by Ralph Lerner ( Book )
7 editions published between 1987 and 1988 in English and held by 871 libraries worldwide

Averroes on Plato's Republic by Averroës ( Book )
4 editions published between 1974 and 2005 in English and held by 751 libraries worldwide

Playing the fool subversive laughter in troubled times by Ralph Lerner ( Book )
5 editions published in 2009 in English and held by 647 libraries worldwide
The role of the fool is to provoke the powerful to question their convictions, preferably while avoiding a beating. Fools accomplish this not by hectoring their audience, but by broaching sensitive topics indirectly, often disguising their message in a joke or a tale. Writers and thinkers throughout history have adopted the fool's approach, and here Ralph Lerner turns to six of them--Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Gibbon--to elucidate the strategies these men employed to persuade the heedless, the zealous, and the overly confident to pause.

Readings in American democracy by Gerald Stourzh ( Book )
8 editions published between 1958 and 1966 in English and held by 543 libraries worldwide

Revolutions revisited : two faces of the politics of enlightenment by Ralph Lerner ( Book )
7 editions published in 1994 in English and held by 528 libraries worldwide
What happens after the revolution? In this elegant extended essay, Ralph Lerner explores how suchs enlightened revolutionaries as Franklin, Lincoln, and Tocqueville met the challenge of translating a revolution into lasting political and social change. 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. His analysis, anchored in the speeches and writings of profound thinkers who were also prominent and skilled practitioners of politics, broadens and deepens the conventional understanding of the Enlightenment. According to Lerner, revolutionaries in America and Europe brought different degrees of awareness and political savvy to their tasks and reaped highly distinctive results. Lerner first investigates how the makers of revolution sought to improve their public's aspirations and chances. He pays particular attention to Benjamin Franklin, to the tone and substance of revolutionaries' appeals on both sides of the Atlantic, and to the preoccupations of first- and second-generation enlighteners among the Americans. He then unfolds the art by which later political actors, confronting the profound political, constitutional, and social divisions of their own day, drew upon and reworked their national revolutionary heritage. Lerner's examination of the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, and Alexis de Tocqueville shows them to be masters of a political rhetoric once closely analyzed by Plato and his medieval student al-Farabi but now nearly forgotten. Theirs might be said to be enlightenment's other face.

Maimonides' Empire of Light : popular enlightenment in an age of belief by Ralph Lerner ( Book )
7 editions published in 2000 in English and held by 332 libraries worldwide
"Much of the writing of and about the twelfth-century jurist, philosopher, and theologian Moses Maimonides is addressed to an elite audience of philosophers and intellectuals. Here, Ralph Lerner's exploration of Maimonides' popular writings reveals that the eduction of the common man was one of the great teacher's chief concerns." "A reference for students of political philosophy and Jewish studies, Lerner's book also brings to life the richness and relevance of medieval Jewish thought for all those interested in the Jewish tradition."--Jacket.

Enlightening revolutions : essays in honor of Ralph Lerner ( Book )
4 editions published in 2006 in English and held by 134 libraries worldwide

Maimonides' Vorbilder menschlicher Vollkommenheit by Ralph Lerner ( Book )
3 editions published in 1996 in German and held by 72 libraries worldwide