Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.
I would willingly give up several of our petty virtues for this vice.
Ralph Hancock (PhD Harvard) is a Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University, where he teaches the tradition of political philosophy as well as contemporary political theory. He has taught three times as Visiting Professor at the University of Rennes, France, and was a Visiting Scholar at Liberty Fund in Indianapolis. He is the author of Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Saint Augustine’s Press, 2011; Cornell University Press, 1989) as well as The Responsibility of Reason: Theory and Practice in a Liberal-Democratic Age (Rowman & Littlefield 1999) and (with Gary Lambert) of The Legacy of the French Revolution (Rowman and Littlefield 1996) and translator of numerous books and articles from the French including Pierre Manent’s Natural Law and Human Rights (forthcoming from Notre Dame University Press). He has published many academic articles as well as articles in the press and online on the intersection of faith, reason, and politics. Professor Hancock is a Consulting Editor of Perspectives on Political Science and a member of the editorial board of Square Two, an online journal of “Faithful Scholarship by Members of the Restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on Contemporary Issues.” Ralph and his wife, Julie, are parents of five and grandparents of sixteen.
The Responsibility of Reason
Can we run our lives and govern our societies by reason? The question provoked Socrates to redirect philosophic inquiry in a political direction, and it has remained fundamental to Western thought. Martin Heidegger explored this problem in his profound critique of the Western metaphysical tradition, and Leo Strauss responded to Heidegger with an attempt to recover the classical idea of the rule of reason. In The Responsibility of Reason, Ralph C. Hancock undertakes no less than to answer the Heideggerian challenge
Keeping Faith in Provo
"The tragic result of BYU's movement from its distinctive, countercultural mission is that many good young Latter-day Saints feel that they have to choose between being thoughtful, reasonable, and well-informed and being loyal to fundamental moral and religious principles. Happily, many faculty provide living counterexamples to this generalization, but few take up the task of providing an intellectual alternative. The secular culture intimidates some of the best of the rising generation by presenting them with this alternative: You can be counted among the smart people, or you can cling to your groundless and cruel prejudices. BYU shows little interest in articulating a third choice: an intellectual defense of openness to unfashionable truths."
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