Martin Saar has been Professor of Social Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2017. He received his M.A. from the Free University of Berlin in 1997 and his Ph.D. and Habilitation from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2004 and 2011, respectively. He has served as a visiting professor of political theory and philosophy in Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin, has studied and taught at the New School for Social Research in New York, and was Professor of Political Theory at Leipzig University. In Frankfurt, he is affiliated with the Institute for Social Research and the research center “Normative Orders.”
His research interests include contemporary political and social philosophy and the history of political thought, with a special focus on Spinoza, Nietzsche, Marxism, Foucault, Critical Theory, post-structuralism, and interdisciplinary work on memory, affect, ideology, history, nature, democracy, and power.

Publications

Saar, Martin. Immanenz der Macht: Politische Theorie nach Spinoza. 2nd ed., Suhrkamp, 2019.

Saar, Martin. Was ist Sozialphilosophie? Suhrkamp, 2025.

Saar, Martin, et al., editors. Das Politische (in) der Politischen Theorie. Nomos, 2021.

Saar, Martin. “Heterogene Demokratie”. Philosophische Rundschau, vol. 61, no. 3, 2014, pp. 183–205.

Saar, Martin. “Power, Powerlessness and the Politics of Hope”. Contemporary Political Theory, vol. 20, no. 1, 2021, pp. 223–28.

Saar, Martin. “Rethinking Resistance: Critical Theory before and after Deleuze”. Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power, vol. 4, no. 6, 2020, pp. 68–80. Coils of the Serpent article

Saar, Martin. “Ultimate Grounds, Political Power, Philosophical Intervention: Inheriting the Tractatus theologico-politicus”. Crisis & Critique, vol. 8, no. 1, 2021, pp. 354–62.

Saar, Martin. “Gegen-Politik: Zur Negativität der Demokratie”. Negativität: Kunst – Recht – Politik, edited by Thomas Khurana et al., Suhrkamp, 2018, pp. 281–92.

Saar, Martin. “Muss die Demokratie erst demokratisiert werden?”. Was bedeutet Demokratie in der EU im 21. Jahrhundert?, Schriftenreihe des Center for Applied European Studies (CAES), vol. 3, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, 2020, pp. 60–67.

Saar, Martin. “Gesang einer Lebensform: Demokratie zwischen Ethik und Biopolitik”. Horizonte der Demokratie: Offene Lebensformen nach Walt Whitman, edited by Till van Rahden and Johannes Voelz, transcript, 2024, pp. 87–91.

Saar, Martin. “Identitätspolitik”. Glossar der Gegenwart 2.0, edited by Ulrich Bröckling et al., Suhrkamp, 2024, pp. 185–96.

Saar, Martin. “Roundtable on Democracy, Public Reasoning and the Education of the Imagination: Martin Saar and Mogens Lærke with Dan Taylor”. New Perspectives on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: Politics, Power and the Imagination, edited by Dan Taylor and Marie Wuth, Edinburgh University Press, 2025, pp. 209–39.