I have returned from the Northland. The trip was a delight. Aside from the two talks, which I shall say something about in a moment, I saw an old, old friend, Sylvain Bromberger, who at ninety-one is bright, lively, and as delightful as ever; I spent an hour and a half with Charles Parsons reminiscing about old times at Harvard; and Charles and I ran into Amelie Rorty in the street in Harvard Square -- I have not seen Amelie in decades. All in all, a real homecoming.
The Brown and MIT events were great fun -- a good turnout at both, with lively conversation. Alex Gourevich of Brown organized the first event, and arranged to have it videotaped, so once it is posted on the Brown site I will share a link, should anyone want to watch it. Alex then came to the MIT event the next day [he lives in Boston], although that one was organized by Lucas Stanczyk of MIT, so Alex had to listen to my stories twice, poor soul.
The young people -- doctoral students at Brown, MIT, and Harvard -- were bright, intense, and asked good questions. One especially nice thing -- the distinguished Kant scholar Paul Guyer. who teaches at Brown, came to that event. I had never met him and was quite touched that he showed up.
The Brown talk started at 4 p.m. on Thursday, and the MIT talk ended [including lunch] at 2 p.m. on Friday, so in the space of twenty-two hours, I engaged in more high-level discussion of my work than I have experienced in the preceding twenty-years or more. Remarkable.
I have started brooding about the possibility of undertaking an extended book-length integration of the extensive work I have done on the thought of Karl Marx in the past forty years. I am not sure anyone would want to read it, and I cannot imagine that any press would want to publish it, but I shall think about the idea for a bit.
Now, about Donald Trump ...
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9 comments:
Welcome back.
I don't know you well enough to know whether when you express insecurities about publishing your work, you want feedback or not, but....
I would say that if universities with the prestige of MIT and Brown invite you to speak about Marxism and if there's a good turnout at both events, then there seems to be sufficient interest in work for an academic press to publish it and for your work to find a certain reading public.
Given that you talk about your work on Marx as an two parts of a trilogy, I would be more surprised if you didn't ever finish it!
(I liked the Guyer comment :] )
On the marx book: What Wallerstein said.
Glad you got to see Sylvain, a teacher of mine whom I am very fond of.
Once at the UCLA Philosophy Colloquium, a man from the street who had wandered in asked Bromberger, "Can you boil water on the moon?". His instant answer was, "Why not? There are a lot of lunatic things going on there."
David, Sylvain is a treasure!
I'd pre order your book and read it the day it came out.
I'm glad to hear that Paul Guyer came to the talk, but not surprised. One thing that I know is missed at Penn (where he was a teacher of mine) is his contributions to talks, not just in the philosophy department, but also in the law school's legal philosophy group. He always had great questions (even if many of them were Kant related, regardless of the topic of the talk!)
Professor Wolff --
I argue that you should do the book for a number of reasons. First, it would probably be greatly rewarding to you as a key accomplishment in your life. You also have the additional experience and reflection time to flesh it out in a very thoughtful way. Second, I believe there actually is an audience for it. Third, since you are someone who once had published books "falling from my sleeves like tribbles," I don't see why you could not get it published (just remember to include footnotes [or endnotes -- and if you need help with that, just let me know. It is one of my favorite things to do]). Finally, although I know you did not get the memo, I think there may be a Marx resurgence on the horizon. Like Chris, I would without hesitation pre-order the book. Well, that's my two cents.
-- Jim
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