Richard L. Velkley (born March 17, 1949) is an American philosopher and Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University.

Velkley's writing treats questions about the status of philosophic reason and its relation to society and politics since the late 18th century: the principles of Enlightenment thought and their revision, criticism and sometimes complete rejection; conceptions of freedom and their role in attempts to address social and psychic division and alienation; the turn to aesthetic experience and aesthetic education; criticisms of modernity inspired by ancient thought; the meaning and the consequences of the historical turn in modern philosophy; accounts of crisis in the philosophical tradition and critical analyses of the grounds of the tradition.

He conceives the study of the history of philosophy as a way to become aware of persisting perplexities in human life that remain unresolved in the modern period.

[2][3][4][5][6][7] He has lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad (Canada, France, Germany, China, Belgium, Brazil, Italy, Denmark, Israel, Czech Republic, Poland and Japan) on these topics.

Rousseau continues to exert a powerful pull on European philosophy, partly through Kant, by his interpretation of the modern self in terms of the dialectical striving of an antinomic reason seeking unity with itself.