Avshalom Schwartz / Political Theory Workshop

Avshalom is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Civics Initiative at Stanford University studying political theory. His research focuses on the role of imagination in politics, the conceptual history of the imagination, and questions of legitimacy and political stability in classical and early modern political thought.

His book manuscript, Democratic Phantasies: Political Imagination and the Athenian Democracy, offers a new theoretical perspective on the role played by the imagination in politics. It identifies the unique dynamic of imagination in democratic Athens and explores the ways in which the challenges posed by the imagination have informed and shaped Plato’s and Aristotle’s critiques of democracy and their construction of alternative political regimes.

He is also interested in the role of imagination in the history of philosophy, especially in classical, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern scientific and political thought. His work in this area has focused on Hobbes’s theory of the imagination, its historical and intellectual context, and its relationship to his political thought.

His work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, History of Political Thought, and History of European Ideas, among others. 

He is a former Gerald J. Lieberman fellow, one of Stanford University’s highest distinctions for doctoral students. He was also a Ric Weiland Graduate Fellow and held graduate fellowships with Stanford’s Center for Ethics in Society and the Stanford Basic Income Lab. In 2020, He received an M.A. in classics from Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, He received a B.A. in political science and economics and an M.A. in political science from Tel Aviv University, both Summa cum Laude.