What Is Political Theory? Special Guest: Nicholas Xenos

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 For Sheldon S.   Wolin, democracy and the work of political theory are inseparable. Wolin’s transformational Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought challenged the behavioral revolution in political science while reshaping the so-called canon of political studies. For Wolin, the rise of quantitative methodologies and the foreclosing approach of historicism threatened, and continue to threaten, the work of political theory and democracy. Always wrestling with the meaning of theory and political, Wolin’s work calls upon us to do the work of epic theory, before it is too late in the day.

Sheldon S. Wolin (August 4, 1922 – October 21, 2015) was one of the most important American political theorists of the 20^th century. Wolin authored critical works such as Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought, Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory, Presence of the Past: Essays on State and the Constitution, Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life, and Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, Wolin was the founding editor of the influential journal democracy (1981-1983), with the help Nicholas Xenos. The journal in its entirety can be found here: http://dja8183.org

Please join the Hannah Arendt Center on Feb. 18 at 5pm at the Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium for a conversation about the work of political theory in memory of Sheldon S. Wolin with Nicholas Xenos. 

Nicholas Xenos is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Director of the Amherst Program in Critical Theory. He is author of Cloaked in Virtue and Scarcity and Modernity, and has contributed essays and reviews to The Nation, Grand Street, The London Review of Books, and other periodicals. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Oral History Interview of Sheldon S. Wolin with Nicholas Xenos: Here

NYTimes Obituary: Here

Free & Open to the Public