Sheldon Wolin - Political Theorist

Political Theorist

Wolin made his name with the 1960 publication of Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (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 judgement which needs to be wrested away from its close association with the megastate.

As leading political theorist William E. Connolly 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 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 governance and towards a political system based on democratic principles.