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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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.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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Monday, July 11, 2016

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

I am now working my way through the second edition version of the chapter in the Critique entitled "Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding," the so-called Deduction in B.  Yesterday I read the Deduction in A.  For me, this is a stroll down Memory Lane.  Here are all the familiar terms and arguments with which I wrestled more than half a century ago -- old friends, I feel.  But as I read, a part of my mind imagines how these passages will appear to my audience, for most of whom they will be completely new, and I realize with dismay just how mysteriously difficult, nay impenetrable, they are.  How on earth can I get my audience to sit still for the elaborate explanations and clarifications that will be necessary?  And how many lectures will I require to do these passages justice?  In the Kemp-Smith translation, the A and B Deductions run 49 pages.  My discussion of them, in Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, occupies 127 pages!

I hope I have not bitten off more than they can chew.


1 comment:

s. wallerstein said...

Did you ever see the movie "Philadelphia"?

There the defense attorney, played by Denzel Washington, asks various witnesses to explain things to him as if he were a 4 year old or a 5 year old or a 6 year old child.

That's a great strategy. By the way, 4 year old children are generally very bright, much brighter than adults because society has had less time to fill their heads with dreck.