Sheldon Wolin
Encyclopedia
Sheldon S. Wolin is a political philosopher. He is professor emeritus of Princeton University
and a writer on contemporary politics. He is married to Emily Purvis Wolin.
as an undergraduate. During World War II
, he was a bomber pilot.
doctorate for a dissertation titled Conservatism and Constitutionalism: A Study in English Constitutional Ideas, 1760-1785. After teaching briefly at Oberlin College, Wolin taught at the University of California, Berkeley
, from 1954 to 1970. In a political science department that was largely composed of empirical studies of micro-political issues, Wolin was a political theorist who managed to build that component of the program by bringing Norman Jacobson, John Schaar
, and Hanna Pitkin into the department. He was a major supporter and interpreter to the rest of the world of the theory behind the Free Speech Movement
, and he became a mentor to one of the FSM's more prominent activists, Michael Lerner
on whose Ph.D. committee he served.
From 1973 through 1987 Wolin was Professor of Politics at Princeton University where he mentored a large number of students who have subsequently become leading figures in contemporary political theory, including most notably: at Berkeley, Hanna Pitkin (Emeritus, Berkeley), J. Peter Euben (Duke University) and Harlan Wilson (Oberlin), and at Princeton, Uday Mehta (Amherst College), Wendy Brown (Berkeley), Dana Villa (Notre Dame), Nicholas Xenos (Massachusetts), Kirstie McClure (UCLA) and Cornel West
(Princeton). At Princeton, Wolin led a successful faculty effort to pass a resolution urging university trustees to divest from endowment investment in firms that supported South African apartheid.
Aside from Oberlin, UC Berkeley and Princeton, Wolin has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, UC Los Angeles, Cornell University, and Oxford.
(Princeton 1960, 2nd Ed. 2004). He published some articles that challenged positivist political science and enlivened the field of political theory. In addition to the usual canon of Plato
, Hobbes, Locke
, Machiavelli and Rousseau, Wolin wrote penetrating essays on Augustine of Hippo
, Richard Hooker
, David Hume
, Martin Luther
, John Calvin
, Max Weber
, Friedrich Nietzsche
, Karl Marx
, and John Dewey
as well as books on the American Constitution and Alexis de Tocqueville
.
Wolin defended a radical account of democracy
. He took it not as a form of government, but as a form of political judgment which needs to be wrested away from its close association with the liberal megastate.
As leading political theorist William E. Connolly
notes,
Wolin's work addresses participatory democracy
with primary focus on the United States
. He makes a distinction between democracy as system of governance and any of the formal political institutions of the state
. In other words, he decouples democracy from any particular political party
and towards a political system based on democratic principles of governance.
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
and a writer on contemporary politics. He is married to Emily Purvis Wolin.
Early life
He attended Oberlin CollegeOberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
as an undergraduate. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was a bomber pilot.
Academic career
In 1950 Wolin received his Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
doctorate for a dissertation titled Conservatism and Constitutionalism: A Study in English Constitutional Ideas, 1760-1785. After teaching briefly at Oberlin College, Wolin taught at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, from 1954 to 1970. In a political science department that was largely composed of empirical studies of micro-political issues, Wolin was a political theorist who managed to build that component of the program by bringing Norman Jacobson, John Schaar
John Schaar
John H Schaar is a scholar and political theorist. He is a Professor Emeritus at the [University of California, Santa Cruz]. Schaar was born in Montoursville, PA, USA and raised on a farm in a Lutheran family....
, and Hanna Pitkin into the department. He was a major supporter and interpreter to the rest of the world of the theory behind the Free Speech Movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
, and he became a mentor to one of the FSM's more prominent activists, Michael Lerner
Michael Lerner (rabbi)
Michael Lerner is a political activist, the editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish interfaith magazine based in Berkeley, California, and the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue of San Francisco.-Family and Education:...
on whose Ph.D. committee he served.
From 1973 through 1987 Wolin was Professor of Politics at Princeton University where he mentored a large number of students who have subsequently become leading figures in contemporary political theory, including most notably: at Berkeley, Hanna Pitkin (Emeritus, Berkeley), J. Peter Euben (Duke University) and Harlan Wilson (Oberlin), and at Princeton, Uday Mehta (Amherst College), Wendy Brown (Berkeley), Dana Villa (Notre Dame), Nicholas Xenos (Massachusetts), Kirstie McClure (UCLA) and Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....
(Princeton). At Princeton, Wolin led a successful faculty effort to pass a resolution urging university trustees to divest from endowment investment in firms that supported South African apartheid.
Aside from Oberlin, UC Berkeley and Princeton, Wolin has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, UC Los Angeles, Cornell University, and Oxford.
Political theorist
Wolin made his name with the 1960 publication of Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political ThoughtPolitics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought
Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought is a work of political theory by Princeton Emeritus Professor Sheldon S. Wolin. Part One, consisting of ten chapters and first published in 1960, distinguishes political philosophy from philosophy in general and traces...
(Princeton 1960, 2nd Ed. 2004). He published some articles that challenged positivist political science and enlivened the field of political theory. In addition to the usual canon of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, Hobbes, Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, Machiavelli and Rousseau, Wolin wrote penetrating essays on Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
, Richard Hooker
Richard Hooker
Richard Hooker was an Anglican priest and an influential theologian. Hooker's emphases on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition came to exert a lasting influence on the development of the Church of England...
, David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
, John Calvin
John Calvin
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...
, Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, and John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
as well as books on the American Constitution and Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
.
Wolin defended a radical account of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. He took it not as a form of government, but as a form of political judgment which needs to be wrested away from its close association with the liberal megastate.
As leading political theorist William E. Connolly
William E. Connolly
William E. Connolly is a political theorist known for his work on democracy and pluralism. He is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His 1974 work The Terms of Political Discourse won the 1999 Benjamin Lippincott Award.-Biography:Connolly was raised in...
notes,
Politics and Vision did not simply tell us how important it is to address the “tradition” of Western political thought, it engaged comparatively a series of exemplary political thinkers in pre-Christian thought, Christendom, and the modern world in a way that revivified the energy, confidence, and vision of an entire generation of political theorists.’ (Democracy and Vision, Princeton 2001).
Wolin's work addresses participatory democracy
Participatory democracy
Participatory Democracy, also known as Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy and Real Democracy , is a process where political decisions are made directly by regular people...
with primary focus on the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He makes a distinction between democracy as system of governance and any of the formal political institutions of the state
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
. In other words, he decouples democracy from any particular political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
and towards a political system based on democratic principles of governance.
Books
- Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Expanded Ed. (1960; Princeton University Press, 2004). ISBN 978-0691126272
- The Berkeley Student Revolt: Facts and Interpretations, edited with Seymour Martin LipsetSeymour Martin LipsetSeymour Martin Lipset was an American political sociologist, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and...
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965). - The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond: Essays on Politics & Education in the Technological Society, with John H. Schaar (Vintage BooksVintage BooksVintage Books is a publishing imprint founded in 1954 by Alfred A. Knopf. Its publishing list includes world literature, fiction, and non-fiction...
/New York Review Books, 1970). - Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (1989)
- Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton University Press, 2001). ISBN 978-0691114545
- Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0691135663 (Trad. esp.: Democracia S. A., Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores S.A, 2008, ISBN 9788496859463)
Articles
- "Inverted Totalitarianism" by Sheldon Wolin Article published in The NationThe NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
magazine May 19, 2003 - "A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy" by Sheldon S. Wolin Article published on Friday, July 18, 2003 by Long Island NY Newsday, archived at Common Dreams website