Some of you [we few, we happy few] have been readers of this
blog almost from its inception, but most of you have joined me somewhere along
the way. I frequently refer the
materials “archived at box.net, accessible via the link at the top of the page,”
but my guess is that many of you have not been moved to check out that
archive. The purpose of this post is to
alert you to what you have been missing.
Shortly after I began blogging, I wrote, and posted
serially, an extremely long 260,000 word Memoir, or Autobiography. Divided into three volumes, it begins with my
memories of the Sunnyside Progressive School in 1936 and ends with my
retirement and move with my wife to North Carolina in 2008. As it unfolded day by day, the memoir
achieved a certain succes de scandale
in the academic community when Brian Leiter’s attention was caught by my gossip
about prominent university Philosophy departments. All three volumes of the Memoir are available
on box.net.
While I was writing and posting the memoir, I also wrote and
posted seriatim a short book entitled
The Use and Abuse of Formal Methods in
Political Philosophy, in which I give a rigorous introduction to Rational
Choice Theory, Collective Choice Theory, and Game Theory, with applications. This too is available on box.net.
When the Memoir had concluded, my fingers still itched to
write, so I conceived the idea of writing several lengthy essays or monographs,
which I called Tutorials, each in daily segments to be posted on this
blog. The first was entitled The Thought of Karl Marx, and it ran
some 30,000 words. This was followed by The Thought of Sigmund Freud, 20,000
words, The Philosophy of David Hume,
27,500 words, an Introduction to the
Critique of Pure Reason, 30,000 words, and Afro-American Studies, 24,500 words. All are available on box.net
By now, I was addicted to the charms of my own words, and
cast about for other topics to address.
I decided to write several shorter essays, which I called
Mini-Tutorials. These included “The
Study of Society” [which actually began as a response to a commenter who
described herself as “Luke’s Mom”], “Ricardo’s Principles,” “One-Dimensional
Man,” “Durkheim’s Suicide,” and “Plato’s
Gorgias.” Finally, I added several “Appreciations,” discussions
[of books] so brief they did not rise to the level of mini-tutorials.
All of this is available on box.net, together with a number
of my published and unpublished essays on a variety of topics, and four annual
collections of lesser blog posts which I call “Pebbles from The Philosopher’s
Stone.”
This material has not gone completely unnoticed. Box.net tells me that the monograph on the
thought of Karl Marx has been accessed 1232 times, the introduction to the Critique 809 times, and even my little
satirical review of Allan Bloom’s The
Closing of the American Mind has had 608 visitors. But if any of the above piques your
curiosity, I invite you to use the link at the top of this page and browse for
a bit. It is all open source, so use it
or abuse it as you see fit.
8 comments:
I was glancing at your memoirs. Do you recall a guy called Robert Finkel, a philosophy student at Columbia during the early and mid 60's, a really brilliant guy, but very rebellious and "looking for something", as people used to say then? He was a friend of mine and I lost track of him. I'm not sure if he ever finished college, but I tracked him down through Google. He had just died and I found that he had spent most of his adult life as paramedic in some small town in New England (I forget the state) and was considered a kind of village saint. That seemed so right to me, considering what a "conflictive" young man he was. He redeemed himself as a paramedic.
The name does not ring abell, as they say, but I got there in '64, so maybe we missed one another. Let me check my records and see whether he took a course with me.
Bob was still there in 1964 and I know that he was a "friend" of Nagel. Bob was ultra-brilliant, but difficult, so to speak....
nope, he did not take a course with me at Columbia
Ok. Thanks for looking. Be well.
Dear Professor Wolff,
How about stringing together your memoirs as one big searchable pdf (or perhaps three big searchable pdfs)? That way those of us with an interest in in the history of twentieth century philosophy (aka academic gossip) could do word-searches.
Regards
Charles Pigden
Charles Pigden, it is on box.net under the title "Total Memoir in One File"
Off topic, but a much more nuanced view of how Putin sees the U.S. election and how he is playing is hand than you are ever going to see in the New York Times:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/16/vladmir-putin-donald-trump-ties-russia-us-election
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