Laurence Cooper is Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. Most of his research has addressed the question of human flourishing—what it is, how we can know what it is (if indeed we can know), what it requires from education and politics, and the risks that arise from misunderstanding it. In addition to a number of scholarly articles and chapters, he has published two books: Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (1999) and Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche: The Politics of Infinity (2008). His present research is an inquiry into the possibility of popular enlightenment.