Mark Blitz

Mark Blitz is Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. His research interests include political science, American politics, ancient political philosophy (particularly Plato and Aristotle), and 2Oth-century philosophy (particularly Heidegger).

Blitz received his BA and PhD in Political Science from Harvard University. He served during the Reagan Administration as associate director of the United States Information Agency and as a senior professional staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He has also been vice president of the Hudson Institute and has taught political theory at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on several boards, including the Society of Scholars at Princeton University, and the Delba Winthrop Prize committee.

Blitz has received numerous teaching awards, including the American Political Science Association Award for Outstanding Teaching (2008), the Crocker Award for Merit from Claremont McKenna College (2007), and was a three-time nominee for the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Pennsylvania.

He is the author of many articles and book chapters, including “What is a People,”, which appeared in Polis, Nation,, Global Community (2022), “Understanding Heidegger on Technology,” in The New Atlantis (2014); “Hegel and Secularism” in Enlightenment and Secularism (2013); and “Conservative Philistines” in Defining Ideas (2013). He has published numerous books, including Aristotle’s Political Philosophy (2026), Reason and Politics (2021), Conserving Liberty (2011), Plato’s Political Philosophy (2010), Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life (2005), and Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (1981, 2017). Together with William Kristol, he is co-editor of Educating the Prince (2000)

Research interests:
Political Science
Political Philosophy
American Politics
Ancient Philosophy
20th-Century Philosophy