Michael Thompson Professor • Political, Legal and Urban Studies Michael J. Thompson is Prof. of Political Theory in the Dept. Political Science at William Paterson University. He studied languages and literature for his BA at Rutgers College and political and social theory for his PhD at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.He offers courses in the history of political thought, Greek, Roman, Medieval and Modern political philosophy as well as courses in democratic theory, Marxism, critical theory and psychology and politics. He is the author of numerous books including The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in American Political Thought (Columbia, 2007); The Domestication of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016); The Specter of Babel: A Reconstruction of Political Judgment (SUNY, 2020); Twilight of the Self: The Decline of the Individual in Late Capitalism (Stanford, 2022); and Decline of the Dialectic: Patterns of Disfigurement in Modern Reason (Routledge, 2023). Languages (other than English) French German Italian Latin Greek Mandarin Degrees Specialization Political Theory, Political Philosophy Representative Publications Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in the Age of Nihilism; New York, NY; Routledge; 2025 Twilight of the Self: The Decline of the Individual in Late Capitalism; Palo Alto, CA; Stanford University Press; 2022 The Specter of Babel: A Reconstruction of Political Judgment; Albany, New York; State University of New York Press; 2020 Email 973 720 3874 437 Raubinger Hall By appointment
