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 this camouflage and offers a way toward deeper understandings of some of history’s most important—and most concealed—messages.             Lerner analyzes an astonishing diversity of writers, including Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, Edward Gibbon, Judah Halevi, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Moses Maimonides, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He shows that by reading their words slowly and naïvely, with wide-open eyes and special attention for moments of writing that become self-conscious, impassioned, or idiosyncratic, we can begin to see a pattern that illuminates a thinker’s intent, new messages purposively executed through indirect means. Through these experimental readings, Lerner shows, we can see a deep commonality across writers from disparate times and situations, one that finds them artfully challenging others to reject passivity and fatalism and start thinking afresh.    

Naïve Readings: Reveilles Political and Philosophic

Politics & Social Sciences

Lerner, Ralph

Philosophy

University of Chicago Press

Much of the writing of and about the twelfth-century rabbi, 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 education of the common man was one of the great teacher's chief concerns.Lerner describes the brilliant and sometimes wily ways in which Maimonides sought to break through the despair and superstition that gripped the Jewish people's minds, without sacrificing the dignity and core of his message. These writings—presented here in uncommonly accurate, mostly new translations—also reveal that Maimonides was willing to risk the scorn of his contemporaries to enlighten both his own and future generations. By addressing the writings of Maimonides' disciples, including Shem Tov ben Joseph Ibn Falaquera in the mid-thirteenth century and Joseph Albo in the fifteenth century, Lerner shows how this technique was passed on.In striking contrast to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Maimonides' enlightenment is premised on the inequality of understandings and other differences between the elite and the common people. Instead of scorning the past, Lerner shows, Maimonides' enlightenment invests it with a new and ennobling dignity. A valuable reference for students of political philosophy and Jewish studies, Lerner's elegantly written book also brings to life the richness and relevance of medieval Jewish thought for all those interested in the Jewish tradition.

Maimonides' Empire of Light: Popular Enlightenment in an Age of Belief

Religion & Spirituality

Judaism

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 and reconsider.
As Playing the Fool makes plain, all these men lived through periods marked by fanaticism, particularly with regard to religion and its relation to the state. In such a troubled context, advocating on behalf of skepticism and against tyranny could easily lead to censure, or even, as in More’s case, execution. And so, Lerner reveals, these serious thinkers relied on humor to move their readers toward a more reasoned understanding of the world and our place in it. At once erudite and entertaining, Playing the Fool is an eloquently thought-provoking look at the lives and writings of these masterly authors.

Playing the Fool: Subversive Laughter in Troubled Times

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic

Politics & Government

NCROL

Cornell University Press

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 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. Originally published in 1994. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of Enlightenment

The University of North Carolina Press

Revolutions Revisited

Univ of North Carolina Pr

Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of Enlightenment (Unc Press Enduring Editions)

University of North Carolina Press Enduring Editions

Originally published by the University of Chicago Press to commemorate the bicentennial of the United States Constitution, The Founders’ Constitution is arguably the most important of all resources on the principles of the Framers of the American republic. As the editors explain, the work consists of “extracts from the leading works of political theory, history, law, and constitutional argument on which the Framers and their contemporaries drew and which they themselves produced.” In cooperation with University of Chicago Press, Liberty Fund has prepared this new paperback edition of the entire work in five volumes: Volume 1: Major Themes Volume 2: The Preamble Through Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 Volume 3: Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, Through Article 2, Section 1 Volume 4: Article 2, Section 2, Through Article 7 Volume 5: Amendments I Through XII. The documentary sources and inspirations reach to the early seventeenth century and extend through those Amendments to the Constitution that were adopted by 1835—that is, through the end of the era of Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. Philip B. Kurland was the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor in the College and Professor in the Law School, University of Chicago. Ralph Lerner is the Benjamin Franklin Professor in the College and Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago.

The Founders' Constitution : Major Themes, Volume 1

History

Kurland, Philip

Inc., Liberty Fund

Americas

Liberty Fund

Widely acknowledged as the cornerstone reference for visual art professionals and their attorneys since it was first published in 1989, Art Law provides unsurpassed legal, business, financial, tax, and estate planning information and guidance for this major sector of the creative arts. Written by two of America’s foremost art law authorities, the new fourth edition of Art Law enables you to • Draft effective agreements clearly defining the rights and obligations of the parties involved, whether they’re artists, dealers, collectors, investors, appraisers, museums, or auction houses • Create tax-advantaged strategies for collectors and artists — with the help of detailed coverage of complete and partial inter vivos charitable transfers, noncharitable transfers, deductions of expenses when selling collections, outright bequests of artwork, and income tax deductions for expenses when creating art • Minimize the legal exposure of clients — by helping collectors avoid valuation errors, dealers avoid conflicts of interest, artists avoid copyright infringement, and auction houses avoid antitrust violations and other illegal practices. Just published, the new fourth edition has been completely updated to reflect the most recent legal developments and business trends and includes new material on such areas as Holocaust-looted art, stolen art claims by sovereign entities, and the liability of sellers and current owners in such cases. Art Law includes a host of step-by-step, field-tested checklists and a vast storehouse of adaptable model agreements involving collectors and dealers, owners and dealers, and dealers and dealers, as well as forms for appraisals, fine art licenses, property exchanges, tax-free exchanges, loans and promised gifts from artists’ estates, dealings with auctionhouses, private and public commissions, and museum donations. Distilling an immense body of law into two practical, transaction-oriented volumes, the new fourth edition of Art Law is required reading for anyone who buys, sells, collects, appraises, authenticates, exhibits, restores, invests, or advises in the visual art world.

Art Law

Bressler, Judith

Humor & Entertainment

UNKNO

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