Rainer Forst (born August 15, 1964, Wiesbaden) is a German philosopher and political theorist, and was named the "most important political philosopher of his generation" in 2012, when he won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Currently he is Professor of Political Theory at the Department for Social Sciences, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. He is often identified with the newest generation of scholars associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.