A bit less than three years ago, In September 2016, I began a series of nine weekly public lectures at UNC Chapel Hill on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The lectures were recorded by Alex Campbell and posted on YouTube as they were delivered. A few moments ago, the first lecture had its one hundred thousandth view. As is, I think, customary in such situations. each subsequent lecture has had fewer views, with the concluding ninth lecture currently recording a bit more than 7400 views.
Over the intervening years, I have heard from a good many folks who have watched some or all of the lectures. The people who have been kind enough to write have been here in the United States, in England, in Australia, in Scotland, in India, in Iran, in Turkey, and in many other parts of the world. For some time now the views have held steady at about 2,500 a month, and it seems conceivable that this will continue even after I am dead.
Those of you who are teachers will understand what an extraordinary experience it is to reach so large and dispersed an audience with lectures devoted to one of the most difficult books in the philosophical canon. I joke from time to time that these views cannot compete with the views of Big Bang clips, but this is Kant, for heaven's sake!
No kidding, I am way proud.
I don't even know what "views of Big Bang clips" means, and I'm afraid to look, so I won't. But congratulations! I tend to be a Luddite, rather skeptical of technological hype, but you have described one concrete example that tips the balance in favor of the Internet and the Web.
ReplyDeleteI certainly wouldn't Google "big bang clips" without 'Safe Mode' on, but in this case, the good Prof. is referring to the (heinous*, IMNSHO) sitcom, The Big Bang Theory.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the views Prof. Wolff! It certainly must be immensely gratifying.
*"Heinous" in an aesthetic, not a moral, sense.
Now that's fine news! Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteWhile we're celebrating your influence, you might appreciate this from the Nice Nihilist earlier this month.
ReplyDeleteAs long as I am slogging through an account of the Temporal Single-System Interpretation of Marx, it would be a tremendous oversight not to read Wolff, Robert Paul. "A Critique and Reinterpretation of Marx's Labor Theory of Value." Philosophy & Public Affairs 10, no. 2 (1981): 89-120. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2264974. Prof Wolff is an engaging writer-- even when he does linear algebra--and an important Marxist scholar.
https://nicenihilist.blogspot.com/2019/07/read-robert-paul-wolff-on-marx.html
Your lectures deserve at least a million views easy.
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