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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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.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, March 26, 2018

UPDATE


Well, Duke lost, the Stormy Daniels interview was interesting but somewhat disappointing, and I decided to make today’s lecture the last in the series.  So much for anticipation.

I must confess I liked Stephanie Daniels.  She came across as tough, pulled together, and utterly in charge of her life, a stand up kind of person, unlike Trump.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Today’s lecture will be my thirtieth videotaped YouTube lecture, a considerable pedagogical effort when you think about it.  Even if you have not seen the first six Marx lectures, you might want to watch this one, because it will follow a line of argument that no one else, to my knowledge, has ever developed concerning Marx.

Three weeks from now I will begin a short six week course of lectures here at Carolina Meadows under the auspices of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute branch at Duke, an Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato.  Then back to Paris for the Brussels lecture, after which I will prepare for my Fall Columbia course.

I am about to score an enormous triumph here at Carolina Meadows, a first for me:  I will next month be elected to serve for two years as the Precinct Representative of Building Five.  How do I know I will win the election?  Because I am the only candidate.  I tried this once before in 1977, when I put my name in for one of two at-large seats on the Northampton, Massachusetts School Committee.  I had heard on the radio that there were no candidates, and with two seats I thought I could win running unopposed.  But after I threw my hat in the ring, two other folks did also, and it was a real race.  I played up the fact that I was the Cubmaster of the local Cub Scout Pack and also a veteran of the Massachusetts National Guard, but when the votes were counted, I had run third, losing by 16 votes.  A recount cut my loss to 12 votes, but there it was.  So unless one of my neighbors in Building Five decides to make a run, I will, at eighty-four, finally fulfill my lifelong ambition to win an election.

7 comments:

Jerry Fresia said...

Congrats on all of the above. As I enter my 70s, I look for hope and for signs that it is in the later years, for some people at least, that one's best work is produced. So I am happy to hear about this last and ground-breaking lecture. I also remember back when you were debating doing youtube lectures. I hope you are pleased that you decided in the affirmative. I think you ought to begin plotting a graph which measures total youtube views (YT probably does that for you!). Also, I have personally caved regarding FB. I have my own "business" page and do "boosts." It is quite amazing. For about 20 bucks (and posts can include links, videos,photos...whatever), you can target an audience (a la Cambridge Analytica) over whatever period you wish and you'd be surprised at the response. Arise Gray "Social Media" Panthers. (I think to have a business page you also have to have a personal page. I'm not sure about the rules.)

Jerry Fresia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Ho hum

LFC said...

Still in the midst of watching lecture 6 on Marx (doing it in pieces, but am toward the end), and will then watch the last one.

Among other things these lectures were, for someone (in my case) who read Capital v. 1 a long time ago, a good review of some of the bk's key points and passages, and I look forward to the last lecture, whether or not I end up being convinced by its argument.

----

Totally off-topic: Am reading a recent biography of Freud (originally published in French) that I stumbled on in a local lib. Freud as a young man studying in Paris wrote some revealing (and politically quite reactionary) letters to his fiancé about his dislike of aspects of Paris and its revolutionary history and 'spirit,' in the biographer's words (and this was not that long after the Paris Commune). Given your interests in both Freud and Paris, thought worth mentioning.

Charles Perkins said...

Good luck with the election!! CP

Jim said...

Professor Wolff --

Have you (or any other readers of this blog) ever heard of Moishe Postone? A colleague brought him to my attention due to his recent passing. I have read a good deal of Marx commentary but had never encountered him:

https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2018/03/22/moishe-postone-leading-interpreter-marx-and-scholar-european-intellectual-history

-- Jim

LFC said...

Definitely heard of Postone.

(there was a commenter on another blog I read who referred to him fairly regularly. That commenter on that particular blog hasn't been around for a while, come to think of it.)