On Tuesday, I shall make my last trip of the semester to
LaGuardia, thence by M60 bus to Columbia.
Even if I can teach at Columbia next Fall, it will be nine months before
I again visit the Big Apple. I think I
had three sabbatical leaves during my fifty year career, but by my count I
taught twenty-three courses in that half century either as moonlighting or
during Summer sessions. Next semester, I
shall once more teach at UNC Chapel Hill in the Philosophy Department [“Karl
Marx’s Critique of Capitalism.”] I have
said here that I will also record a series of lectures on Hume’s Theory of
Knowledge, but at eighty-six [as I shall be then] that may be a trifle
ambitious.
The evidence suggests that I like to teach. I rather suspect that as I lie on my death
bed, my last words will be, “For next week, I would like you to read …”
7 comments:
No backing down from Hume. It is NOT permitted!
I feel qualified to comment on your teaching because I was (as I wrote in a comment a while back) your TA at Harvard Summer School in 1983. I stole a lot of your classroom presentation of Marx, Hobbes, and Socrates for my own classroom use. Even more important (this being my first TA experience) was my sense of a lecturer's engagement in the classroom: the energy, the improvisation, and the plentiful examples from daily life. I was studying a teacher's mode of teaching for the first time, and at some level I was conscious of thinking: So, you can be a philosophy professor and a human being talking at the same time.
Nick, that means more to me than I can say! To be a philosophy professor and a human being talking at the same time is a perfect summary of my greatest ambition. Thank you.
Nick says, "I stole a lot of your classroom presentation...". Finally, someone else (besides me) confesses to a theft of Prof. Wolff's intellectual property. I, at least, suffered for my sin: when I was running from the hounds of librarians from Rollins College (Deland, Florida, circa 1985), with the Prof.'s, "Kant's Theory of Mental Activity", under my arm, I tripped and broke my thumb. (this is in jest, though the story is true).
So that is where that copy went to!! :)
I second Nick Pappas' thoughts. When I was your TA for an Intro to Social and Political Theory class at UMASS I already knew you to be a great teacher, as I had taken your seminar on Marx, et.al. in the Fall of 1977 (or 78?). However, when I saw how you engaged and challenged the undergraduates with difficult material and made it understandable, I was blown away. I recently found the final exam for that class. Most of the questions could have been used in a graduate level comprehensive exam, but you had supplied the students with everything they needed. It is the reason I say do Hume lectures, but don't forget the bush beaters and rabbit whompers!! I have stolen that bit and used it many times. (Do I owe royalties?) But most important was the human side of the equation - the support, advice and encouragement you offered. Thank you.
Ah, Chris, those were the days! Prompted by your comment I went back and looked at the exam. Good grief!! I would not think of giving that exam to a group of Columbia seniors today. That course was created because the Freshmen and Sophomores signed up for STPEC [Social Thought and Political Economy] did not think they were ready for the Junior Seminar. Of course, with Sam Bowles, Herb Gintis, Rick Wolff, and Steve Resnick teaching Marx in the Econ Department, one could build on their work.
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