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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
My Stuff
https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0
Coming Soon:
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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.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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Philosopher's Stone
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2017
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April
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- OUR FIRST HUNDRED DAYS
- INITIAL RESPONSE: QUESTIONS FOR I. M. FLAUD
- A REPLYTO AN OLD QUESTION
- BALM FOR THE SOUL
- I AM GROWING WEARY OF THIS
- I WEEP
- THE KUSHNER KONNECTION
- THE INTERNET IS EXTRAORDINARY
- LAUDATE DOMINUM
- NETWORKING
- A SAD DAY
- SOME HELPFUL FACTS TO GO WITH MY MAUNDERINGS
- A SUNDAY MORNING CRI DE COEUR
- OVERDETERMINATION
- FRIDAY LIST 12 [GOOD GRIEF, HAVE I BEEN DOING THIS...
- A TECHNICAL QUESTION FOR THE CROWD
- THE DAY AFTER
- WHEW!
- OK, THIS IS WEIRD
- WAITING FOR NEWS
- EXPLANATION
- VERY BAD NEWS
- REALLY GOOD NEWS
- FRIDAY LIST 11
- ONE MORE TIME
- MY APOLOGIES
- SOME ADVICE FROM AN OLD HAND
- A NEW GIG
- WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
- THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE HAS GOT TO GO
- MORE FREUD
- SHAMEFUL PLEASURES
- WAIT FOR IT
- MYTHOLOGICAL PERAMBULATIONS
- WHILE I WAS AWAY
- FRIDAY LIST 10
- I'M HOME
- A CHALLENGE TO MY READERS
- WOW!
- DELICIOUS
- A REPLY TO TALHA
- MORE FREUD
- A MEDITATION ON BLOGGING
- TODAY
- TIME OUT
- HI HO, HI HO, IT'S OFF TO WORK I GO
- CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER, AS THE REVEREND DODGSON SAID
- HOW COME?
- WHERE WE ARE
- WHO KNEW?
- RUSHING PELL MELL INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
- UPDATE
- THE SINGLE MOST HILARIOUS TIDBIT OF THE POLITICAL ...
- ASK, AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN YOU, SEEK AND YE SHALL ...
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April
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About Me
- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
7 comments:
Thank you for these wonderful lectures, professor Wolff. Having previously only encountered Freud in a less-than-kind light, as a source of easy parody or subject of philosophical censure, these lectures were an interesting change of pace and helped me appreciate his significance. Rest assured your wisdom is evident in every word.
Thank you! I am delighted they helped.
Of all the wise things that I've learned from you, mostly about politics, your last words to your father, which are not about politics, are certainly the wisest and maybe the wisest ever I've heard about what it means to be a good father.
Thank you very much.
Just masterful in so many ways:
Your lectures are so well organized, intense intellectual rigor mixed with humor and storytelling.
They flow effortlessly and are engaging throughout.
In this lecture, I enjoyed the part about the use of drugs in therapy and how, regardless of their effectiveness,
deny the patient of self-knowledge.
You ending comments about your father reveal just how developed and secure you have become. Rare indeed. Something
I envy.
A question: can you say something about the audience. How many people came? Were they regular attendees? Elderly?
Professor Wolff,
I remember in your Rawls book, you had a criticism of Rawls's original position and veil of ignorance in that it totally ignored the works of Marx and Freud. What exactly do you think Freud theoretically offers us that renders Rawls's work suspect?
I've always abhorred rational choice theory based off my readings of Freud...Is that what you're getting at?
Freud is interesting stuff, but also I some somehow quite distracted, when you say that Sidney Morgenbesser was 'famous throughout the philosophical world', and it appears that this was for his wit, though he published little -- he rarely wrote anything. His caustic irreverence and razor-sharp tongue produced, well, not academic prestige. Also, I read that Morgenbesser became something of a legend at the time of the 1968 student uprising for being beaten up when he joined a human chain protesting the police. I locate some book reviews in 'Commentary' in the forties, and this scans as anti-Stalinist left, Although many or even most of the editors and writers had been socialists, Trotskyites, or Stalinists in the past. Furthermore, 'Commentary' went notoriously to the right and toward the Republican Party in the 1970s and 1980s.
Just reading about this a bit and connecting the dots, I learn for the first time that Cohen suffered from mental illness and committed suicide and in connection with this, in the late 1950s the magazine sagged. However, I think I was vaguely familiar already with how the magazine became a mainstay of the Washington liberal elite in the heyday of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Commentary has been referred to in several Woody Allen films. For me, this has been an opportunity to muse on what 'top American intellectuals' means -- one can think of those top American intellectuals who have been attracted by this magazine. I'm mentioned the politics, but I haven't got all of my dots...quite...connected...
OK, I do not usually say anything like this, but I have been reading Daniel Langlois' lengthy comments with increasing bewilderment, and I have to say that they seem to me to be incoherent. I am not going to comment on them seriatim, but I felt I had to say something about this response to my recollections of Sidney Morgenbesser. And yes, Sidney was beaten by the Tactical Police Force in '68.
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