After many weeks of fevered preparation and long nights
spent rehearsing my lectures while lying in bed, I went to Wilson Hall to
deliver the first of my lecture series on The Use and Abuse of Formal Methods
in Political Philosophy. I had arranged for a very helpful graduate student to
videotape the lectures and post the slides that I had prepared to accompany them
and I was ready to roll. I got there a bit early and the only person there when
I arrived was the young graduate student. 3:15 PM came and drifted to 3:20 PM
and only two people showed up – a senior philosophy major and a graduate
student who took my course last semester. That was it, the total audience for
my lectures. I delivered the lecture I had prepared, and was dutifully videotaped,
but I will confess that my heart was not in it. Later, I checked and the
associate chair had indeed sent out a circular memo reminding people of the
event. There was simply no interest.
I will freely admit that I was seriously bummed. I decided
that like a slightly over the edge container of yogurt, I had passed my sell by
date. This morning I formally canceled the lecture series.
One of the virtues of great age is that when you suffer a humiliating defeat, you can reach back to earlier days and remember other
humiliating defeats, thereby giving you perspective if not solace. In 1962, I
was a young assistant professor at the University of Chicago. I teamed up with
Sylvain Bromberger, a wonderful man with whom I had been a graduate student at
Harvard, to teach a graduate seminar on the philosophy of history. We chose a
nice seminar room with a table that would hold 20 or so students and prepared
for our first meeting. Two graduate students took the course, and for the
remaining weeks of the quarter, the four of us huddled together at one end of
the long table and whispered to one another in low tones about the philosophy
of history.
Then there is the talk I was invited to give the University
of Maryland Baltimore campus. When I arrived I was taken to a large impressive
lecture hall in which there were perhaps 10 people scattered around the several
hundred seats. During my talk one or two of them got up and left. Afterwards,
when I commented on the disappointing turnout, I was told by the member of the
department who had introduced me that he was impressed by the turnout. It
seemed that at the very same time the Baltimore Colts were playing a vitally
important game and he was surprised that anyone at all came to my talk. It was
he said evidence of my great attractiveness to the philosophers there. I remained silent.
And of course I will never forget the time during one of my
first trips to South Africa when I was invited to speak to the philosophy
department at the University of Cape Town. The member of the faculty
presiding over the affair introduced me as Richard Rorty.
As Pooh Bah says in the Mikado while holding a small bag of
money in his hand, “another insult, and by the feel of it, a light one.”
21 comments:
Prof. Wolff,
I fully sympathize with your deep disappointment, having had to dismiss a libel lawsuit last week after the jury had already been empaneled, at my client’s direction, because the judge reversed a critical ruling he had previously made on the inadmissibility of hearsay, and after having expended several hundred hours on motions, briefs and trial preparation. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and Man plans, and God laughs.
Post-script:
A suggestion - if your lectures have been reduced to writing, why not post them here, on your blog. You will fine a multitude of interested readers.
Pearls before swine, Professor.
Sorry, No, reading your lectures would not constitute a fine.
"You will find a multitude of interested readers."
Marc Susselman: A suggestion - if your lectures have been reduced to writing, why not post them here, on your blog.
Have you checked Prof Wolff's selection of papers that is linked to at the top of the blog (under "My Stuff")? See "The Use and Abuse of Formal Methods in Political Philosophy."
Too bad so few people showed up.
I would have continued with the lectures myself because those two people who showed up were probably genuinely interested in what you had to say.
Most people are only interested in what is going to advance their career or get them into a more prestigious graduate program or impress the other sex (or their own sex) at a party.
So if two people go out of their way to show interest in whatever one is really interested in, I'd go out of my way to teach them the subject in question.
That's my philosophy of life at least.
Since having vowed not to comment, but solely in hopes of cheering up the professor: A friend of mine was once on a panel discussion at an academic conference. There was only a single person in the audience, an elderly gentleman. Near the end of the session the gentleman got up to leave. One of the panelists implored: "Please, don't leave just yet. We're almost finished." The gentleman replied: "But I have to go to the bathroom."
Did you have a witticism ready to hand when you were mistakenly introduced as Rorty?
Or did you think of one later?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier
He should have taken Anonymous’s advice, supra, and stated that he was casting pearls before swine. That would have endeared him to the audience.
Alas, LFC, no, I was so stunned I did not know what to say. I could of course have observed that I knew Richard Rorty before he was Richard Rorty. The philosophy departments in the white English language apartheid South African universities were rather odd in those days.
I just checked. Here is what I had to say in my autobiography:
The Department was rather strange, I must say. The premier scholarly effort then under way by one of the senior members was a collection of jokes and anecdotes contributed by famous philosophers from around the world. Quine had contributed a joke, as I recall. When the time came for my talk, the Chair of the Department rose to introduce me. As he launched into an effusive welcome, everyone in the room froze. He apparently thought I was Richard Rorty. I must say, he had some very nice things to say about Dick, whom I had known, as the saying goes, since before he became Richard Rorty. It was a little hard to figure out just exactly what to say when my turn came, so I just launched into my talk.
Professor Wolff, I’d have come to your lectures if I were a student at UNC, or even if I was just passing by, but, alas, I’m too far north
If its any solace, the students I'm teaching over at NC State have been enjoying reading The Ideal of The University. We've been covering multiple selections from it, this week and last. I've met with a couple students already brainstorming for their final papers and a couple have mentioned drawing on The Ideal. Yesterday we went over your intro to the second edition and a student asked, given your comment on how your ideas had changed in the interim between first and second writings, had they changed in any significant ways since that time? I told her I would ask you.
I have 39 students eager to hear your response :)
Isaac Newton, it has been alleged, sometimes gave his scheduled lectures to empty lecture halls. Formal Methods sounds as intimidating to most of us today as perhaps Newton’s mathematico-physics did way back when. And Russell et al. aside, philosophers are mostly verbal reasoners.
that is a great pity dear professor, I was actually looking forward to your lectures on Youtube. Especially since the topic is really very interesting and I enjoyed your lessons on Kant, Marx and ideological critique. I do not want to hold back my egoism and would like to ask you to check if it does not seem possible for you to add to these 3 wonderful video lectures, one more.
I seriously wonder how else I can examine your fresh haircut, which would undoubtedly enable me not to confuse you with Noam Chomsky.
I don't know but isn't it said that one should know one's audience? It seems like every talk, class, show, or other forms of entertainment has to have a link to sexiness, at least to grab the interest of non-philosophers. Which loops back to know thy audience. Sorry for your disappointment, but as you say it wasn't the first time you have had some type of letdown.
I'm very sorry for the professor; they are the normal backhands that life offers us with great generosity at any age ... and in any case this story reminds me of a comment I wrote after seeing the film " Les Amants de Montparnasse " on the painter Amedeo Modigliani who lived in the last period of his life with his wife in Paris in conditions of great financial straits. Finally, thanks to the interest of a friend, he gets a meeting with an American billionaire who has just bought a painting by Cézanne and is about to return to America
"You don't paint cathedrals..."
" no, as Van Gogh says, I prefer to paint people's eyes, there is more spirituality...."
"I really like this one with the girl without the eyes and this one with the blue-eyed girl and I could do my campaign for the new perfume with it..."
" No, no -- Modigliani gets angry -- my art is not for sale to advertise ...."
A few hours later, pushed by his wife who reminds him that they have almost nothing to eat, he takes to the streets to try to sell his drawings, his caricatures to the customers of a bar for little money but without success... because the customers of a bar they know everything about football or sports but understand little or nothing about art
So a possible moral lesson is this: "if you have a stock of sickles don't try to sell them to fishermen..."
Forgive them, Professor, for they know not what they do.
Like AK, I was looking forward to watching your lectures via video, but now I see that I can sit down and read them instead.
“Professor, I served with Richard Rorty. I knew Richard Rorty. Richard Rorty was a friend of mine. Professor, I’m no Richard Rorty.” (with apologies to Lloyd Bentsen—who’s he?)
Undergraduate here—I really enjoyed your first lecture and am sorry to hear the series won’t continue and more sorry still about the poor turnout; I tried to repost the flier in the philosophy club and parr center for ethics group chats. It’s a shame more people couldn’t have joined us.
Dear Professor Wolff,
I am - with Achim Kriechel and others - part of your online readership and wiewership. As I have written to you before, both your blog posts and online lectures are very enligthening and inspirational. I learn a lot about issues that interest me, and I also get inspiration for the presentations that I do as part of my social science researcher job. You are a great teacher, even at a long distance.
Best regards,
trane
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