Arthur Melzer

Arthur Melzer is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. He is also a co-founder and co-director of the Symposium on Science, Reason, and Modern Democracy, an independent research center, housed in the Political Science Department, which is dedicated to the study of the theory and practice of modern democracy. In 2004 the Symposium was a warded a “We The People” Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

From 1992-94, Prof. Melzer was a visiting professor and visiting scholar at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1971 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978. His dissertation won the Toppan Prize from Harvard’s Government Department and the Strauss Prize from the American Political Science Association. He has been awarded research fellowships by the Mellon Foundation, the Institute for Educational Affairs, the Earhart Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Professor Melzer is primarily interested in studying the cultural discontents that modern liberal democratic capitalism has generated and the counter-ideals spawned by those discontents. His research has focused largely on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of almost all modern culture criticism and the originator of such counter-cultural ideals as Romanticism, bohemianism, sincerity or authenticity, secular compassion, and historical relativism. Professor Melzer also has a strong interest in the ethical writings of Aristotle. He teaches courses on the whole history of Western political philosophy.

His writings include The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1990), “The Problem with the ‘Problem of Technology’” (in The Problem of Technology in the Western Tradition, ed. Melzer, Weinberger and Zinman, Cornell University Press, 1993), “The Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity” (American Political Science Review, June, 1996), “Anti-anti-Foundationalism: Is a Theory of Moral Sentiments Possible?” (Perspectives on Political Science, Summer 2001) and “Tolerance 101”(The New Republic, July 10, 1991).