Ralph Lerner is the Benjamin Franklin Professor Emeritus in the College and Professor Emeritus in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His books include Averroes on Plato's "Republic" (a translation), The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic, Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of Enlightenment, Maimonides' Empire of Light, and Naïve Readings: Reveilles Political and Philosophic.