Rainer Forst

Who is Rainer Forst?

Rainer Forst is a German philosopher and political theorist, and was named the "most important political philosopher of his generation" in 2012, when he won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Currently he is Professor of Political Theory at the Department for Social Sciences, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. He is often identified with the newest generation of scholars associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He received his doctorate under the supervision of Jürgen Habermas in 1993.

His main areas of research are political theory, pragmatism, tolerance, and political and social justice. His first book in English, Contexts of Justice, incorporated elements of Anglo-American liberal theory and communitarianism with German critical and social theory.