Robert Wokler


Robert Lucien Wokler was a British historian who was a leading scholar of the political thought of the Enlightenment.

Biography

He was born in Auch, France, to Isaac and Ilona Wochiler, both war refugees; the family was allowed entry to Switzerland several months later because he was an infant. They would later move to Paris and San Francisco during his childhood.
Wokler found an interest in political thought after meeting political philosopher Leo Strauss. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1964, his master's from the London School of Economics in 1966, and DPhil from Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1968. John Plamenatz and Isaiah Berlin, both refugees themselves, served as his supervisors at Oxford and were significant influences. Wokler wrote his doctoral thesis on the thought of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a topic that would be a focus for much of his career. The Guardian writes: "He saw in the Enlightenment a profound response to experiences of religiously-inspired violence all too similar to the events of his own time; he believed that the Enlightenment's calls for toleration and personal freedom, and its opposition to sectarianism and fanaticism, remained urgently needed."
Beginning in 1971, he taught at the University of Manchester, becoming a reader in 1994. He held fellowships at Trinity and Sidney Sussex colleges at the University of Cambridge. Wokler later became a senior lecturer at Yale University, retiring in 1998.
He died of cancer in Cambridge in 2006.
A number of works from his collection on Rousseau and Diderot are held by the University of Cambridge.
Wokler's works include Man and society: political and social theories from Machiavelli to Marx, Rousseau: a very short introduction, Rousseau and Liberty, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, The Enlightenment: the nation-state and the primal patricide of modernity, and Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, a collection of essays.

Publications

Books and monographs

Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, B. Garsten, intro. by C. Brooke, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 400pp.Rousseau on Society, Politics, Music and Language: An Historical Interpretation of his Early Writings, New York: Garland, 520pp.Rousseau, in the ‘Past Master’ series, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, reissued 1996, 132pp.; revised, expanded and illustrated edition for the ‘Very Short Introduction’ series, 2001, 172pp.; German translation by Michaela Rehm, Freiburg: Herder, 1999, 186pp.; Japanese translation by Shuji Yamamoto, Osaka: Koyo Shobo, 2000, 215pp.; Italian translation by Simona Ferlini, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001, 165pp.; Korean translation by Sigongsa Co. Ltd., Seoul: Eric Yang Agency, 2001, 224pp.; Hungarian, Portuguese and Turkish translations in progress.
  • ‘Rameau, Rousseau and the Essai sur l’origine des langues’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century CXVII pp. 179–238.
  • ‘The influence of Diderot on the political theory of Rousseau’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century CXXXII pp. 55–111.

Scholarly editions

Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, édition critique établie par R.A. Leigh, revue par Robert Wokler, tome XLVII, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 319pp.Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, R.A. Leigh, revue par Robert Wokler, tome XLVIII, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 277pp.Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, R.A. Leigh, revue par Robert Wokler, tome XLIX, including ‘avertissement’, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 328pp.Diderot's Political Writings with J.H. Mason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 218pp.Man and Society, by John Plamenatz, 3 vols., a new edition, expanded and revised by M.E. Plamenatz and R. Wokler, vol. I: From the Middle Ages to Locke, London: Longmans reprinted 1993, 1996, 408pp.Man and Society, by John Plamenatz, a new edition, expanded and revised by M. E. Plamenatz and R. Wokler, vol. II: From Montesquieu to the Early Socialists, London: Longmans reprinted 1993, 398pp.Man and Society, by John Plamenatz, a new edition, expanded and revised by M.E. Plamenatz and R. Wokler, vol. III: Hegel, Marx and Engels, and the Idea of Progress, London: Longmans reprinted 1993, 1996, 375pp.

Edited collections

Rousseau and the Eighteenth Century. Essays in memory of R.A. Leigh, M. Hobson, J. Leigh and R. Wokler Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 446pp.Inventing Human Science with C. Fox and R. Porter Berkeley: University of California Press, 386pp.Rousseau and Liberty, R. Wokler Manchester: Manchester University Press, 299pp.The Enlightenment and Modernity with N. Geras New York: Macmillan and St Martin's Press, 232pp.Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment with J. Mali , Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 93, part. 5, March 2004, 196pp.The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, with M. Goldie Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ca 919pp.

Contributions to books

  • ‘Rousseau's Perfectibilian Libertarianism’, in A. Ryan The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, Oxford: Oxford University Press 20pp.
  • ‘Rousseau on Rameau and Revolution’, in R.F. Brissenden and J.C. Eade Studies in the Eighteenth Century, Canberra: Australian National University Press 33pp.
  • ‘The Discours sur les sciences et les arts and its offspring: Rousseau in Reply to his Critics’, in S. Harvey, M. Hobson, et al ''Reappraisals of Rousseau, Studies in honour of R A Leigh, Manchester: Manchester University Press 29pp.
  • ‘L’Essai sur l’origine des langues en tant que fragment du Discours sur l’inégalité: Rousseau et ses ‘mauvais’ interprètes’, in M. Launay Rousseau et Voltaire en 1978, Geneva: Slatkine 25pp.
  • ‘From the Orang-utan to the Vampire: Towards an Anthropology of Rousseau’ ’, in R.A. Leigh Rousseau after Two Hundred Years: Proceedings of the Cambridge Bicentennial Colloquium, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 21pp.
  • ‘Rousseau and Marx’, in D. Miller and L. Siedentop The Nature of Political Theory: Essays in Honour of John Plamenatz, Oxford: Oxford University Press 29pp.
  • ‘Rousseau’, in Political Thought from Plato to Nato, London: Ariel Books/British Broadcasting Corporation 15pp.
  • ‘Rousseau's Two Concepts of Liberty’, in G. Feaver and F. Rosen Lives, Liberties and the Public Good, London: Macmillan 40pp.
  • ‘Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to Social Science’, in Anthony Pagden The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 17pp.
  • ‘Our Illusory Chains; Rousseau's Images of Bondage and Freedom’, in M. Cranston and L.C. Boralevi Culture et politique, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 10pp.
  • ‘Natural Law and the Meaning of Rousseau's Political Thought’, in G. Barber, C. Courtney and D. Gilson Enlightenment Essays in Memory of Robert Shackleton, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation 18pp.
  • ‘From Apes to Races in the Scottish Enlightenment: Kames and Monboddo on the History of Man’, in P. Jones Science and Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh: John Donald 18pp.
  • ‘Preparing the definitive edition of the Correspondance de Rousseau’, in Rousseau and the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution 19pp.
  • ‘Democracy's Mythical Ordeals: The Promethean and Procrustean Paths to Popular Self-rule’, in M. Moran and G. Parry Democracy and Democratization, Oxford: Routledge 22pp.
  • ‘Taking stock of the Leigh edition of the Correspondance de Rousseau’, Proceedings of the 1991 Bristol Congress of the Enlightenment, Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation 4pp.
  • ‘Hegel's Rousseau: the General Will and Civil Society’, Deutscher Idealismus, Göteborg: Arachne 38pp.
  • ‘Projecting the Enlightenment’, in J. Horton and S. Mendus After MacIntyre, Cambridge: Polity Press 19pp.
  • ‘The Nexus of Animal and Rational: Sociobiology, Language and the Enlightenment Study of Apes’, in S. Maasen, E. Mendelsohn and P. Weingart Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors, Sociology of the Sciences, A Yearbook, Vol. XVIII, 22pp.
  • ‘Enlightening Apes: Eighteenth-Century Speculation and Current Experiments on Linguistic Competence’, Ape/Man, Proceedings of the 1993 Leiden Pithecanthropus Centennial, Leiden, 14pp.
  • ‘Anthropology and conjectural history in the Enlightenment’, in Inventing Human Science, 21pp.
  • ‘The Enlightenment Science of Politics’, in Inventing Human Science, 23pp.
  • ‘Rousseau and his critics on the fanciful liberties we have lost’, in Rousseau and Liberty, 22pp.
  • ‘Regressing towards post-modernity’, in Rousseau and Criticism,, Trent 12pp.
  • ‘Deconstructing the Self on the Wild Side’, in T. O’Hagan Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Sources of the Self, London 14pp.
  • ‘Dr Besterman, I presume’, in U. Kölving and C.Merveaud Voltaire et ses combats, Vol. 1. Oxford 16pp.
  • ‘The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity’, in L. Magnusson, B. Wittrock and J. Heilbron The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity: Conceptual Change in Context, 1750–1850, Sociology of the Sciences, A Yearbook, Vol. XX, 26pp.
  • ‘The Enlightenment, the nation-state and the primal patricide of modernity’, Discussion paper series no. 46 of the Collegium Budapest, 1999, adapted as Wokler's own contribution to The Enlightenment and Modernity, 28pp.
  • ‘Multiculturalism and ethnic cleansing in the Enlightenment’, in O.P. Grell and R. Porter Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 17pp.
  • ‘The Enlightenment Project on the eve of the Holocaust’, in B. Sträth Enlightenment and Genocide, Contradictions of Modernity, Brussels: Presses Universitaires Européennes 21pp.
  • ‘The professoriate of political thought in England since 1914: a tale of three chairs’, in D. Castiglione and I. Hampsher-Monk, The History of Political Thought in National Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 26pp.
  • ‘Ancient Postmodernism in the Philosophy of Rousseau’, adapted from Wokler's contribution to Pensée libre, no. 8, in P. Riley The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, New York: Cambridge University Press 26pp.
  • ‘Repatriating modernity's alleged debts to the Enlightenment: French Revolutionary social science and the genesis of the nation-state’, in P. Joyce The Social in Question, London: Routledge 19pp.
  • ‘Political Modernity's Critical Juncture in the Course of the French Revolution’, in N. Witoszek and L. Trägårdh Culture and Crisis: The Case of Germany and Sweden, New York and Oxford: Berghan Books 17pp.
  • ‘Isaiah Berlin's Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment’, in J. Mali and R. Wokler Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 93, part. 5, March 2004, 19pp.
  • ‘Ideology and the Origins of Social Science’, in M. Goldie and R. Wokler The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 23pp.

Journal articles

  • ‘Tyson and Buffon on the orang-utan’, Studies on Voltaire, CLV: 2301–2319.
  • ‘L’orango e l’uomo secondo Tyson e Buffon’, Ethos V: 20pp.
  • ‘Perfectible apes in decadent cultures: Rousseau's anthropology revisited’, Daedalus , 107–134.
  • ‘The ape debates in Enlightenment anthropology’, Studies on Voltaire CXCII: 1164–1175.
  • ‘A reply to Charvet: Rousseau and the perfectibility of man’, History of Political Thought I.i : 81–90.
  • ‘Rousseau e Marx’,, Bollettino di Storia della filosofia March: 33pp.
  • ‘La Querelle des Bouffons and the Italian Liberation of France: a study of revolutionary foreplay’, published in a special issue of Eighteenth-Century Life 116–194.
  • ‘From l’homme physique to l’homme moral and back: towards a history of enlightenment anthropology’, History of Human Sciences, 6.i : 121–138.
  • ‘Rousseau's Pufendorf: natural law and the foundations of commercial society’, History of Political Thought XV: 373–402.
  • ‘Ralph Alexander Leigh’, obituary notice, Proceedings of the British Academy, 84: 369–392.
  • ‘Hegel versus Kant: from the Enlightenment project to post-modernity’, Australasian Studies in the History of Philosophy 2: 85–99.
  • ‘Situating Rousseau in his world and ours’, the Arthur Wilson Memorial Lecture presented at Dartmouth College, January 1995, Social Science Information 34.4: 515–538.
  • ‘Todorov's otherness’, New Literary History, 27.1: 43–57.
  • ‘The French Revolutionary roots of political modernity in Hegel's philosophy, or the Enlightenment at dusk’, Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, 35: 71–89.
  • ‘The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary birth pangs of modernity’, Sociology of the Sciences, 35: 35–76.
  • ‘Rousseau et la liberté’, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau XLII, 23pp.
  • ‘The Enlightenment project and its critics’, Poznan Studies 58 13–31.
  • ‘Contextualizing Hegel's phenomenology of the French Revolution and the terror’, Political Theory, 26.1: 33–55.
  • ‘The subtextual reincarnation of Voltaire and Rousseau’, The American Scholar 67 : 55–64.
  • ‘Pistols for two and coffee for one: rekindling Voltaire's and Rousseau's quarrel in footnotes’, Studies on Voltaire, CCCLXII: 1–10.
  • ‘The Enlightenment project as betrayed by modernity’, History of European Ideas, 24.4–5: 301.
  • ‘The manuscript authority of political thoughts’, History of Political Thought, XX.1, 107–124.
  • ‘Ernst Cassirer's Enlightenment: an exchange with Bruce Mazlish’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 29: 335–348.
  • ‘From the moral and political sciences to the sciences of society by way of the French Revolution’, Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik, 8: 33–47.
  • ‘Ancient Postmodernism in the Philosophy of Rousseau’, Pensée Libre, 8, 24pp.
  • ‘Der besondere Charakter der ländlichen Aufklärung des Nordens’, The Cultural Construction of Norden, review essay of Bo Stråth et al, in Bernd Henningsen, ed. Wahlverwandtschaft, 9, Das Projekt Norden: Essays zur Konstruktion einer europäischen Region 7pp.
  • ‘Isaiah Berlin's Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment’, Jewish Studies Yearbook, Central European University, 2, 9pp.
  • ‘Rousseau's reading of the book of genesis and the theology of commercial society’, Modern Intellectual History, 3: 85–94.

Contributions to encyclopedias and dictionaries

  • ‘Perfectibility of Man’, in W. F. Bynum and R. Porter Dictionary of the History of Science, London: Macmillan 1p.
  • ‘Introduction and The Enlightenment’, in M.A. Riff Dictionary of Political Ideologies, Manchester: Manchester University Press 18pp.
  • ‘Sixteen contributions ’, in R. Porter and J. Yolton The Blackwell Companion to the Enlightenment, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • ‘Diderot’, in Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia, New York: Garland 8pp.
  • ‘Edward Tyson, Rousseau and Monboddo’, in F. Spencer History of Physical Anthropology: An Encyclopedia, New York: Garland 16pp.
  • ‘Rousseau’, in T. Mautner Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell 2pp.
  • ‘Two contributions ’, in J. Black and R. Porter A Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century World History, Oxford: Blackwell 2pp.
  • ‘Four contributions ’, in E. Craig Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London: Routledge.
  • ‘Voltaire’ and ‘Rousseau’, in R.L. Arrington A Companion to the Philosophers, Oxford: Blackwell.
  • ‘Two articles ’, in Adam and Jessica Kuper The Social Science Encyclopedia, London: Routledge.
  • ‘The Enlightenment’, in Dinah L. Shelton The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, Macmillan: New York.

Other publications

  • ‘On the Death of Malcolm X’, Clare Market Review, LXII.i, 4 pp.
  • ‘On the Los Angeles Race Riots’, Clare Market Review, LXII.ii, 4 pp.
  • ‘Rousseau’s Politics’, Government and Opposition, VII.iv, 5 pp.
  • Review of several books on Rousseau, Philosophical ''Quarterly, XXIV, 4 pp.
  • ‘Rousseau’s Paradox’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 20 September 1974, 1 p.
  • Review article of two books on Burke, Political Studies, XXIV.iv, 5 pp.
  • ‘The analogies of Nature’, Times Literary Supplement, 11 March 1977, 2 pp.
  • ‘The Enlightenment and the Revolution: Some Notes on Norman Hampson’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Darnton’, British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Newsletter, XIII, 4 pp.
  • ‘The very rhythm of Rousseau’, Times Literary Supplement, 19 August 1977, 1 p.
  • ‘The Enlightenment Hostilities of Voltaire and Rousseau’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 29 September 1978, 2 pp.
  • ‘Descending into paranoia’, Times Literary Supplement, 6 February 1981, 1 p.
  • ‘The Apes and Us’, Quarto, XV, 3 pp.
  • ‘The great dissimulator’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 10 April 1981, 1 p.
  • ‘Eminently enlightened’, Times Literary Supplement, 16 October 1981, 1 p.
  • ‘Adrift in a gene pool’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 February 1982, 1 p.
  • ‘A polity of nature’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 July 1982, 1 p.
  • ‘Critical dialectic’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 30 July 1982, 1 p.
  • ‘Natural slavery’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 11 February 1983, 1 p.
  • ‘Balance of life’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 25 March 1983, 1 p.
  • ‘The vagabondage of the philosophe’, Times Literary Supplement, 2 September 1983, 2 pp.
  • ‘Founding a school for statesmanship’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 9 March 1984, 1 p.
  • ‘Look to nature’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 30 November 1984, 1 p.
  • Obituary notice for R.A. Leigh, The Daily Telegraph, 2 January 1988, 1 p.
  • Review article of J. Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy, Journal of Modern History, LXI.2, 2 pp.
  • ‘Liberty, egality and fratricide’, a feature article published in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 14 July 1989, 2 pp.
  • ‘Introduction’ to A Catalogue of Saint Simon and Saint Simonianism, Wickmere, Norfolk, 1989, 4 pp.
  • ‘Vagabondage’, New Statesman, 12 April 1991, 2 pp.
  • ‘Introduction’ to A Catalogue of John Wilkes, Wickmere, Norfolk, 1991, 4 pp.
  • ‘Prop forward’, New Statesman, 8 May 1992, 1 p.
  • ‘Keeping it in the family’, review of P. Cavalieri and P. Singer The Great Ape Project, Times Literary Supplement, 17 September 1993, reprinted in James Koobatian, The Thinking Reader, Belmont, Ca. 2002, 2 pp.
  • Review article of Iain Hampsher-Monk, A History of Modern Political Thought, Political Studies, XLI.iv, 2 pp.
  • ‘Introduction’ to A Catalogue of Benjamin Franklin, Wickmere, Norfolk, 1994, 3 pp.
  • ‘Singular Praise for a Pluralist’, review of John Gray, Isaiah Berlin, Times Higher Education Supplement, 3 March 1995, 1 p.
  • Review article of Claude Galipeau, Isaiah Berlin's Liberalism, Political Studies, XLIII.iii, 2 pp.
  • Review article of Yves Glaziou, Hobbes en France au XVIIIe siècle, History of European Ideas, 21.3, 2 pp.
  • ‘Arguments for a deeper shade of green’, review of several works on ecology and environmental ethics, Times Literary Supplement, 8 September 1995, 1 pp.
  • ‘Music and the moral voice’, review of volume V of the Pléiade Oeuvres complètes de Rousseau and of Michael O’Dea, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Music, Illusion and Desire, Times Literary Supplement, 3 May 1996, 2 pp.
  • ‘Laying the Enlightenment to Rest’, review of John Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake, Government and Opposition, 32.1, 6 pp.
  • Review of William Sewell, A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbé Sieyes and What is the Third Estate?, Contemporary Sociology, 26.2, 2 pp.
  • Review of Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel’s Account of ‘Civil Society’, Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, 35, 2 pp.
  • ‘A modern Candide’, review of Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin, and György Dalos, The Guest from the Future: Anna Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin, Times Literary Supplement'', 18 December 1998, 2 pp..
  • Catalogue of a book exhibition commemorating Rousseau and Voltaire in the bicentenary year of their deaths, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, February 1978, 18 pp.
  • Numerous book reviews on Rousseau, Burke, Bentham, Tocqueville, the Enlightenment, utopian socialism, the philosophy of history, the history of modern political thought, French political theory, 1500 1800, on the political thought of Jürgen Habermas, and modern republicanism, in Political Studies; on Shaftesbury, Rousseau and Kant, in Ethics; and on the philosophy of history in History.