COMPENSATIONS

Let me tell again a story I have told here before, five years ago [which is, I believe, in the world of social media more than several lifetimes.]  Here it is:  I had a brief encounter with Hannah Arendt in the late 60's, during my time as a Columbia University philosophy professor.  I gave a lecture on John Stuart Mill at a session of a faculty seminar series at Columbia, and Arendt, whom I knew casually, attended.  My lecture was taken from an essay I had published as my contribution to a little volume called A Critique of Pure Tolerance authored by Herbert Marcuse, Barrington Moore, Jr., and myself, in which I beat up on old J. S. pretty bad.  At the end of the lecture, Arendt came up to say hello.  She was clearly not too thrilled with my talk, but she asked, politely, what I was working on.  I replied that I was hard at work on a book on Kant's ethics.  When I said this she brightened visibly, smiled, and said, "Ah, yes.  It is so much better to spend time with Kant!"

Much of my day is spent staying current with the appalling doings of Trump and his henchmen, but part of each day is devoted to my lectures.  If I may echo Arendt [although not in a way she would have approved], it is so much better to spend time with Marx.