Richard Wolin

Lore & Background

Richard Wolin was born at the Naval Station Great Lakes near North Chicago in Lake County, Illinois, as a son of Merle Wolin. In his senior year of high school, he attended the trial of the Chicago Seven, which he later recalled as a formative event. He earned a bachelor of arts from Reed College in 1974, where he helped circulate the writings of the Situationist International, graduating with a senior thesis on György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness. He received both his master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees from York University, Toronto, defending his PhD dissertation on Walter Benjamin under the supervision of Christian Lenhardt in 1980.

After returning to the United States, Wolin participated in Jürgen Habermas's lectures, possibly the Christian Gauss Lectures at Princeton in 1971, rather than the UC Berkeley lectures that were published in 1981 as The Theory of Communicative Action. He met Habermas and later acknowledged that the lectures formed an 'intellectual turning point' in persuading him away from Theodor W. Adorno's critique of late capitalism as a 'totally administered world' and towards a renewed appreciation of reason. This led him to re-examine the link between Martin Heidegger and Nazism. Wolin taught at Reed College from 1982 to 1984, and at Rice University from 1984 to 2000. Around 1991, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt, with Jürgen Habermas as his host. After the publication of his edited volume The Heidegger Controversy, he was embroiled in a public dispute with Jacques Derrida, who threatened to sue Wolin's publisher Columbia University Press over the inclusion of an interview that Derrida considered mistranslated and abused; the dispute reached a high point with an exchange between Wolin and Derrida in The New York Review of Books. In 2000, Wolin was appointed Distinguished Professor of History and Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Reader's Guide

Richard Wolin's significance lies in his sustained critical engagement with the political dimensions of 20th-century European philosophy, especially the relationship between Martin Heidegger's thought and Nazism, and the legacy of the Frankfurt School. His work, including The Politics of Being and Heidegger's Children, has shaped debates about the ethical and political responsibilities of intellectuals. The public dispute with Jacques Derrida over The Heidegger Controversy highlights the contentious nature of interpreting Heidegger's politics. Wolin's intellectual trajectory, influenced by Jürgen Habermas's communicative reason, represents a shift from the pessimism of Theodor Adorno toward a defense of democratic reform and critique. His contributions to journals such as The New Republic and Dissent, and his edited volumes, have made him a prominent voice in intellectual history. His legacy includes prompting scholars to confront the ideological entanglements of philosophy with authoritarianism, while his later work continues to address contemporary political issues, such as the 'Great Replacement' theory.

Did You Know?

• Wolin attended the trial of the Chicago Seven in his senior year of high school, which he recalled as a formative event.
• He helped circulate the writings of the Situationist International while a student at Reed College.
• Jürgen Habermas devoted a lecture at the CUNY Graduate Center in November 2001 to Wolin's book Heidegger's Children.
• Wolin was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt with Jürgen Habermas as his host around 1991.