Biography

Professor Emeritus Stephen White continues to pursue his research interests, including critical social and political theory, philosophy of social science, and continental political thought. He is the former editor of the journal Political Theory.  

He has received research grants from Fulbright, American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, Alexander Von Humboldt, and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. He has been a visiting scholar or professor at University of Konstanz, Goethe University, Frankfurt, and Erasmus University, Rotterdam.  Currently, he is working on a book entitled The Two Faces of Democracy: Between Agonism and Deliberation (with Molly Scudder).

Books Include: A Democratic Bearing: Admirable Citizens, Uneven Injustice and Critical Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2017); The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen (Harvard University Press, 2009), and Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2001). The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, 1988; Portuguese trans. by Icone, 1996) and Political Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge, 1991; Japanese trans by Showado, 1996; Chinese trans. by Liaoning, 2004); Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics and Aesthetics (Sage, 1994; 2nd ed. in 2002, Roman and Littlefield). Edited volumes include, (with J. Donald Moon) of What is Political Theory? (Sage 2004); Cambridge Companion to Habermas (Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Lifeworld and Politics: Between Modernity and Postmodernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).

Essays include: “Agonism, Democracy, and the Moral Equality of Voice,” Political Theory (forthcoming); “Varieties of Agonism,” Contemporary Political Theory (2019); “Response to Critics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism (2018); “Deliberation, Accountability and Legitimacy: A Case Study of Police-Community Forums,” Polity (2017);“A More Democratic Bearing: Re-envisioning the Sensibility and Script of the Middle Class,” Political Theory (2015); “Continental and Analytic Lenses in Relation to the Communicative Action Paradigm: Reconstructive Thoughts,” European Journal of Political Theory (2015) “The Virtual Patriot Syndrome: Tea Partyers and Others,” in Radical Futures Past (Kentucky, 2014); “’No Saying’ in Habermas,” in Political Theory (2012); “Fullness and Dearth: Depth Experience and Democratic Life,” in the American Political Science Review (2010); “Violence, Metaphysics, and Weak Ontology” in Political Theory (Dec. 2009).