While Rana Lehr-Lehnardt’s guest run continues, Times & Seasons is happy to introduce our next guest blogger, Ralph Hancock.<\/p>\n
Ralph is a long-time professor<\/a> of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics<\/em>, as well as of numerous edited volumes, articles and chapters.\u00a0 His forthcoming book, The Responsibility of Reason <\/em>(Rowman & Littlefield), \u00a0addresses the meaning and limits of reason through a triangulation involving de Tocqueville, Heidegger and Strauss.\u00a0\u00a0 Ralph has also translated\u00a0three books (including one with his son Nathaniel) and numerous chapters and articles from French, and has organized and directed more than a dozen scholarly conferences and colloquia concerning philosophical and religious dimensions of public issues. He holds degrees from BYU and from Harvard University.<\/p>\n Ralph is also the founder and president of the John Adams Center for The Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs<\/a>, which aims to resist the\u00a0 narrowing of the notion of \u201creason\u201d to the blind expansion of certain purported \u201crights\u201d and instead encourage the exploration of the philosophical and religious dimensions of public issues so as to enrich individual understanding and public debate.\u00a0 Just this past weekend, the John Adams Center sponsored an academic symposium in Duck Beach, North Carolina on \u201cMormons and the Public Square<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n As if this was not enough, Ralph recently helped to found the online journal SquareTwo<\/a>, which focuses on LDS thought concerning the important issues of the world today.\u00a0 SquareTwo is meant as a forum on current issues for those building upon \u201csquare one,\u201d the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n