Benjamin Lorch

Benjamin Lorch (Ph.D., Boston College) is Visiting Assistant Professor and Jack Miller - Veritas Fund Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science and the Symposium on Science, Reason and Modern Democracy. His research focuses on classical political thought, particularly the classical understanding of virtue and its place in politics and in the life of the individual. He has published articles in The Review of Politics and POLIS, and his current research project is a study of Plato's Republic, which examines the doubts that the dialogue raises about the possibility of creating a perfectly just society and the way that these doubts inform Plato's view of how politics should be conducted. Ben is teaching three courses in the Department of Political Science this year, focused on the theoretical foundations of liberal democracy, including a course on Alexis de Tocqueville's classic studies of American democracy and democratic revolutions. A citizen of Israel, he has also written and lectured on Jewish philosophy and contemporary Israeli politics, and he is currently preparing a public lecture on the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem, which he will deliver at MSU later this year.