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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





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Sunday, July 3, 2016

HOME AGAIN

Well, I have seen Alaska, or at least the tiny sliver of it that reaches down the coast of British Columbia.  I cannot say I was thrilled, and No, from where I sat on the deck, I could not see Russia.  However, I did start a systematic re-reading of the entire Critique in preparation for my lectures.  As I opened the book to begin, I realized that it has been in all probability half a century since I last read it from cover to cover.  I had forgotten how much there is to say.  These lectures may go on for a good deal more than one semester.


Picking up the Critique and starting with the Preface in A was like coming home.  This is going to be fun.  I got through the Prefaces, the Introduction, and most of the Transcendental Aesthetic on the cruise.  Today I shall finish the Aesthetic and launch into the Analytic.

4 comments:

wallyverr said...

Well, I've made it to the "Table of Principles" (B200 / A161).

In the midst of the Brexit train wreck -- my London borough voted 3:1 to remain -- I am ever more sympathetic to Hannah Arendt's comment that "it is so much nicer to spend time with Kant".

But it is getting harder and harder to see how the first Critique all hangs together. Perhaps I should go back to the Introduction and start over again.

Robert Paul Wolff said...

You will be reassured to learn that it does NOT all hold together. Well done.

Austin Haigler said...

I imagine this will be covered in the lectures, which I am excited for, but in your opinion, does one aim to make sense of everything holding together (as good as can be held), reading all the way through, or following the patchwork theory and attempting to put it together and Kant himself was putting it together over the preceding decade? I've asked myself that question from a few different vantage points within the Critique over the past year.

Like lots within the Critique, and Kant in general, I am sure there are proponents of both trains of thought.

Robert Paul Wolff said...

I will talk about this at length, but the short answer is that there is no way it can all be held together, and no reason to try, save piety. The only interesting question is this: Can we find in the CRITIQUE a coherent, straightforward argument that really answers Hume's scepticism about causal inference? The answer, I argue, is yes, and I shall lay it out in precise, step by step logical form, from premise to conclusion. Stay tuned.