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Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle
Rowman and Littlefield, 2010
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 thepossibility 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 Aristotelianpresentations, 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 problemsenlightened by the study of political philosophy.
Recovering Reason presents a delightful challenge for all those readers interested in the history of philosophy and the subtleties of important philosophic texts. In five parts, the book offers essays in the areas of political philosophy, where Thomas Pangle has made a deep and lasting contribution. With students and friends like Pangle's, it is no surprise that there are many excellent essays in this collection. Thomas Pangle is a shining example of what it is to be committed to the recovery of that invaluable civic and philosophic health, and this collection of essays is a testament to his influence in the field of political philosophy.
-The Review of Metaphysics
The best way to honor a great scholar is with more great scholarship. Over the last few decades, Thomas Pangle has been one of the most illuminating and prolific commentators on the history of political philosophy. As a teacher, he has educated several generations of wonderfully talented students. The discipline of political philosophy has been hugely enriched both by Pangle's own work, and by the work he has helped inspire in students and colleagues-as this excellent volume so powerfully testifies.
-Ronald Beiner, University of Toronto
An extraordinarily fine collection of essays—wide-ranging, yet coherent and profound—that pays fitting tribute to the work of Thomas Pangle, one of the truly great scholars and teachers of our generation.
-Arthur Melzer, Michigan State University
This bold and spirited volume provides a vivid tribute to the teaching of ThomasPangle. Over a long career at Yale, Toronto, and now the University of Texas, Pangle has attracted students devoted to carrying on the legacy of his teacher, Leo Strauss, and bringing it to its current height of influence. Pangle's own writings, whether on Plato dialogues, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, or the Hebrew Bible have contributed both to our understanding of these texts and to the esteem in which Strauss's legacy is held today.
-Steven B Smith, Yale University
