Robert Lucien Wokler (6 December 1942 – 30 July 2006) was a British historian who was a leading scholar of the political thought of theEnlightenment.

He was born inAuch, France, to Isaac and Ilona Wochiler, both war refugees; the family was allowed entry to Switzerland several months later because he was an infant.^[1] They would later move toParis andSan Francisco during his childhood.

Wokler found an interest in political thought after meeting political philosopherLeo Strauss.^[2] He received his bachelor's degree from theUniversity of Chicago in 1964, his master's from theLondon School of Economics in 1966, and DPhil fromNuffield College, Oxford, in 1968.John Plamenatz andIsaiah Berlin, both refugees themselves, served as his supervisors at Oxford and were significant influences. Wokler wrote his doctoral thesis on the thought of philosopherJean-Jacques Rousseau, a topic that would be a focus for much of his career.^[1]The Guardian writes: "He saw in the Enlightenment a profound response to experiences of religiously-inspired violence all too similar to the events of his own time; he believed that the Enlightenment's calls for toleration and personal freedom, and its opposition to sectarianism and fanaticism, remained urgently needed."^[2]

Beginning in 1971, he taught at theUniversity of Manchester, becoming a reader in 1994. He held fellowships atTrinity andSidney Sussex colleges at the University of Cambridge. Wokler later became a senior lecturer atYale University, retiring in 1998.^[1]

He died of cancer in Cambridge in 2006.^[3]

A number of works from his collection on Rousseau andDiderot are held by the University of Cambridge.^[4]

Wokler's works includeMan and society: political and social theories from Machiavelli to Marx (1992),Rousseau: a very short introduction (1995),Rousseau and Liberty (1998),Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (1998),The Enlightenment: the nation-state and the primal patricide of modernity (1998), andRousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies (2012), a collection of essays.

• Goldie, Mark; Hampsher-Monk, Iain (Winter 2006)."In Memoriam: Robert Wokler's Enlightenment Project".History of Political Thought.27 (4):737–742.JSTOR 26222117.
• "Robert Wokler: Eloquent and highly regarded scholar of Rousseau and the Enlightenment".The Times. 3 August 2006. Retrieved6 July 2023.

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