Thomas Rockmore (March 4, 1942 – August 6, 2026) was an American philosopher. Although he denied the usual distinction between philosophy and the history of philosophy, he had strong interests throughout the history of philosophy and defended a constructivist view of epistemology. The philosophers whom he studied extensively were Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Lukács, and Heidegger.
Rockmore was a strong critic of representationalism in epistemology. This is the view that the mind has access to external reality via copies of that reality that the mind receives from the object. It assumes a metaphysical realism, in which there is an external reality independent of the knower. Instead, Rockmore argues for a constructivist view on the basis of which the mind, on the basis of its experience, forms concepts and ideas that become the basis of its knowledge. This shift has significant consequences for phenomenology, aesthetics, and political philosophy. It further questions the transcendental claims particularly of early phenomenology.
As a historian of philosophy, Rockmore showed how German idealism influenced the development of both continental and analytic philosophy. He claimed that Marx, in particular, was influenced by the thought of Kant, Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. However, he argued that Marx's thought was significantly misunderstood by Engels, whose influence led to the development of versions of Marxism inconsistent with much in Marx's original thinking.
Rockmore's political philosophy focused on the effect of representational thinking on certain ideological strains that cause problematic political decisions in both Western and non-Western states.
