Thinker

Albert Einstein

1879–1955 · German-American · scientist

Albert Einstein was a pacifist and socialist who fled Nazi Germany, championed civil rights, and after Hiroshima became an advocate for world government and international control of nuclear weapons

Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist of the 20th century, whose theories of relativity revolutionized physics and whose name became synonymous with genius. Born in Germany to a secular Jewish family, Einstein developed special relativity in 1905 and general relativity in 1915, fundamentally changing our understanding of space, time, and gravity.

Einstein was also a public intellectual who spoke on political issues. A pacifist who fled Nazi Germany in 1933, he reluctantly signed the letter to FDR recommending atomic research, fearing the Germans might develop the bomb first. After Hiroshima, he became an advocate for international control of nuclear weapons and world government.

Einstein supported socialist economics, Zionism (while criticizing Israeli treatment of Arabs), and civil rights (befriending Paul Robeson). His FBI file ran thousands of pages. He spent his final decades at Princeton, seeking a unified field theory he never found. Einstein died in 1955, having transformed physics and become an icon of intellectual conscience.

Major works2

'Why Socialism?' (Monthly Review, 1949)
Einstein on Peace (collected writings)

Traditions2

Liberal Political Thought Marxism

Where Liberal Political Thought sits

Descends fromBritish Idealism Classical Liberalism Social Contract Theory Utilitarianism

Gave rise toCapabilities Approach Keynesianism Multiculturalism Neoconservatism Value Pluralism

Provoked a reaction inCommunitarianism Neoconservatism Populism Postmodernism

Archetypes1

Archetype

Democratic Socialist

Einstein set physics aside to make a moral argument in 'Why Socialism?' — that unregulated capital cripples the individual it claims to free, and only democratic planning secures real freedom. That conviction, from the century's most famous mind, sits inside your politics.

Influences & connections5

A selection of notable, documented connections — not an exhaustive map.

Intellectual lineage

Baruch Spinoza
The 17th-century pantheist whose Ethics gave Einstein his lifelong creed: he professed belief in 'Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists,' not one concerned with human affairs.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Einstein hung his portrait in his Berlin study and quoted his maxim 'a man can do what he wants but cannot will what he wants'; Schopenhauer's determinism grounded Einstein's denial of free will.
David Hume
The Scottish skeptic whose Treatise of Human Nature Einstein read before 1905; Hume's attack on self-evident absolute concepts, Einstein said, helped free him to discard Newton's absolute time in special relativity.
Immanuel Kant
The young Einstein devoured the Critique of Pure Reason; Kant's treatment of space and time as forms of intuition framed the problem Einstein wrestled with, even as relativity broke with the Kantian a priori.

Influenced

Karl Popper

Sources & further reading2

Primary material and secondary scholarship on Albert Einstein — not necessarily written by them.

Scientific papers
Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe

Back to the library