Robert Edward Norton (born October 27, 1960) is an American cultural and intellectual historian who specializes in European, and especially German, history and thought from the Enlightenment to the early twentieth century.
His work ranges across a variety of disciplines, including moral philosophy, political theory, aesthetics, and literary history.
He is a professor at the University of Notre Dame and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Having taught for nine years at Vassar College in New York, Norton joined Notre Dame in 1998, where he is a professor with appointments in the Departments of German, History, and Philosophy.
[2] He won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History awarded by the American Philosophical Society in 2003 for his book, Secret Germany.