Next spring semester, starting in early January, I will be teaching an advanced undergraduate course in the UNC philosophy department. The title of the course is “Advanced Political Philosophy” but apparently that is a placeholder into which I can put anything I choose. I have decided to teach a very traditional course with a twist.
The course will be divided into three roughly equal parts
and the theme of the entire course will be the theory of the social contract
and what has become of it as it has evolved. In the first portion of the
course, we will read Locke’s Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government, and
then Rousseau’s Of the Social Contract, after which we will read my little book In
Defense of Anarchism.
In the second part of the course, we will read portions of
John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, focusing on his effort to resolve the
conflict between utilitarianism and intuitionism by reviving social contract
theory in a modern form. Then we will read most of my little book Understanding
Rawls.
In the third part of the course, we will read The Racial
Contract by Charles Mills, a devastating ideological deconstruction of the
social contract tradition in Western political theory. Mills does not
particularly concentrate on the United States in that book so after we have
read it, we will conclude the course by reading chapters two and three of my
book Autobiography of an Ex-White Man.
The course is scheduled to meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from
9:30 AM to 10:45 AM and if I can still climb the steep stairs to the second
floor of Caldwell Hall [I will be 88], I will give it my best shot. The UNC Chapel Hill philosophy department has
been extremely welcoming to me since Susie and I moved down here 13 years ago
and I am looking forward to returning to their classroom.
21 comments:
The first part of Locke’s Two Treatises Concerning Civil Gov't is so anti-filial that one can't help think he had issues with his family.
Of course, the Good Book says don't judge, so I take back what I said about Locke. Anyway Locke was a much better person than I ever was, so it's stupid of me to judge Locke in the first place.
The categorical-imperative would hold me accountable too. If I look condescending towards Locke & judge him, everyone else can do the same to me. I have many faults, so it would not turn out good at all. However, if I apologize to Locke, hopefully the world may forgive me for "over stepping the line" as Confucius might say.
Michael,
It appears that you suffer from a severe case of theological/existential guilt. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I am sure that Locke, Kant and all of the other philosophers whom you have wronged in one way or another would forgive you.
Dear Mr Wolff,
As a 57 year old music teacher with no background in metaphysics or philosophy of any kind I have stumbled across your lectures in the same way that an ant might stumble across The Parthenon. I became interested in Kant’s Critique after reading Bryan Magee’s ‘Confessions..’. In your lecture 1 you mention Leibnitz’s monads. Are they just the fevered imaginings of a disenchanted reject of the Hanoverian court or do they have any basis in fact? Why should we pay them any heed except as an alternative theory to that of the atom which did gain a legitimate foothold in real science and which has existence in space and time?
Loved your story about meeting Betrand Russell who perhaps may have felt the same scepticism regarding Leibnitz’s monads as he made that scathing comment regarding Kant as dealing in the realm of fiction. One is reminded of his tiny teapot orbiting around Mars analogy.
Professor Wolff --
This post has reminded me once again to thank you for introducing me to Charles W. Mills. I use portions of Mills' text in my courses which have proved quite helpful.
-- Jim
AM
Perhaps you have just become my personal judge and higher authority concerning that which I need most now? Socrates once sought refuge from Meletus & his thugs through Euthyphro. Now I seek refuge from my conscience through your words. However, if I ever go to Elysium, I don't care if Locke loves me or hates me. But I wish and hope to the stars that Kant would hate my guts! Then I would know I truly made my personal contribution to philosophy indeed. But perhaps it is just another one of those castles in the air of mine...
Michael,
I offer the following words written by one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century to inspire you in your quest for air castles, from the last book he wrote before he passed away, “Brief Answers To The Big Questions,” in which Stephen Hawking wrote:
“I hope that science and technology will provide the answers to these questions, but it will take people, human beings with knowledge and understanding, to implement these solutions. Let us fight for every woman and every man to have the opportunity to live healthy, secure lives, full of opportunity and love. We are all time travellers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit.
“Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds, It can be done.”
According to a friend, Locke was "vain, lazy and pompous".
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/24/lost-memoir-paints-revered-philosopher-john-locke-as-vain-lazy-and-pompous
Re. Leibniz's monads -
Russell definitely had some disdain for the Monadology: "a kind of fantastic fairy tale, coherent, perhaps, but wholly arbitrary." But he did have enough respect for Leibniz to write a whole book about his philosophy, which argued for a distinction (now out of favor, I think) between Leibniz's "popular" philosophy - insincere, but safe for mass consumption - and Leibniz's "esoteric" philosophy, which represented his "real" and more "dangerous" views. Sorry I'm too foggy on this to elaborate at the moment...
I don't think Leibniz would've been an atomist; he's too friendly to the ideas of infinite divisibility and continuity, IIRC. But he wouldn't have intended for the monads to be a substitute for atoms, either. His belief in monads isn't informed by considerations of interest to the physicist per se; I think it's just the result of his asking something like, "If the subject (a device of the logician, as in 'subject-predicate') really does correspond to something in reality - i.e., if there is something in reality deserving of the name 'substance' - then what must that 'something' be like?" And he concludes that it must be, well, a monad (and that there must be infinitely many of them, each "mirroring" the totality of the rest, one of which (God) being privileged as the creator of all the rest).
Bryan Magee is great, by the way.
AM
Thank you for the encouragement. I believe Hawking deserved the Nobel. At least for his belief that radiation escapes out of black holes. Of course, it may be just a theory. I don't think science has yet a way to investigate it.
s. wallerstein
Thanks for the information on Locke. But now the question is was Tyrrell a true friend of Locke or not? Perhaps not. Although written down, it all sounds like hearsay.
Michael,
It is because there is no way to investigate Hawking's theory of radiation escape from black holes that he was not awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. The Nobel Prize is only awarded for scientific theories that can be experimentally confirmed. Einstein was not awarded the Nobel for his special or general theories of relativity (which were in fact later confirmed via the observation of solar eclipses), but for his theory regarding Brownian motion.
AA
Sorry for the AM label. I got confused & thought your codename was AM.
Michael,
No big deal.
Correction:
The year 1905 was named the annus mirablis in recognition of the four papers which Einstein published that year. The four papers were about (1) special relativity; (2) the photoelectric effect; (3) Brownian motion; (4) the mass-energy equivalence, E=mc2.
He was awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in physics for his work on the photoelectric effect, not, as I incorrectly stated above, for his explanation of Brownian motion (the haphazard movement of particles in air and water due to the impact of atoms).
Professor Wolff --
If you are not already familiar, a good companion piece to Mills' book is "Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-first Century" (2011) by Dorothy Roberts.
-- Jim
Professor Wolff --
Would you be willing to share your syllabus for this course? I would love to see how you structure it.
-- Jim
I will happily post the syllabus for my course once I make it up. I amm not big on elaborate syllabi, however, for there will be a great deal there.
Michael (2)
So Leo Strauss and his followers got their distinction betw. overt and "hidden" messages from Russell on Leibniz? ;)
Will you be posting lectures on Youtube?
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