Paul Piccone (January 17, 1940 – July 12, 2004) was an Italian-American philosopher, critical theorist, intellectual historian, and most notably the founder and long-time editor of the journal Telos.
He immigrated to the United States with his family at age 14, and they settled in Rochester, New York.
He was appointed to a position in the Department of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, and published Telos from his office there until he was denied promotion and tenure in 1977.
Following a tumultuous administrative and legal struggle to reverse that decision, he left the Midwest to set up shop in New York's East Village in the 1980s.
For over three decades, Telos survived as an independent "quarterly journal of critical thought" under his editorship.