Yesterday, by way of an anonymous comment on this blog, I learned for the very first time the devastating news that Noam Chomsky a year ago had a massive stroke and is still recovering slowly from it. There is really nothing I can say save to hope that he makes a full recovery in time. Norm is five years older than I and I suppose it is hardly surprising that he is having serious health problems, but if anybody wants further proof of the nonexistence of a good God one can simply reflect that Henry Kissinger lived to be 100. Lord knows, it is long past the time when my prayers would have any effect even if I knew to whom or to what to direct them. If anyone has recent news of how Norm is doing. I would appreciate an email.
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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
My Stuff
https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0
Coming Soon:
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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.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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- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
11 comments:
ICYMI (and have not heard of Joy Milne), the NYT Magazine has a long piece on her. Her husband had Parkinson's, and she (and her mother) have an unusual allele that gives her a spectacularly powerful sense of smell (by human standards). At meetings of patients, she realized that she could identify Parkinson's patients by the odor they gave off. According to the article, she unknowingly identified someone who would develop the disease about a year before they showed any symptoms and before their doctor had diagnosed it.
The Woman Who Could Smell Parkinson’s
One concern I have as someone much younger than Chomsky's 95 years is that there doesn't seem to be anyone to take up his mantle. Who among younger folks could be a public intellectual of Chomsky's sort? I can't think of anyone.
As to taking up Chomsky's mantle, first of all, Chomsky has a genius IQ and there are few that high. I don't think I've ever listened to anyone (I've read people) who strikes me as being as intelligent as Chomsky is.
However, the age of the public intellectual is past, I fear. When Chomsky becomes known in the 60's, we have thinkers like Marcuse and Hannah Arendt in the U.S., Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in France, Bertrand Russell in the U.K., etc.
Why that breed of human being no longer has the same role in our culture is not a question I have an answer to, but nowhere are there public intellectuals of the caliber of those the 60's.
Dear Professor Wolff,
I would like to thank you for your Youtube lectures on Kant. Listening to these lectures has brought me great joy. I am currently reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and having your lectures to refer to makes understanding the book so much easier.I wish you great health and a strong spirit.
Leonard Cohen asked me to pass on a greeting to all you paternal dudes on the internet: 'It's Father's Day and all the men are wounded.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4DH49LFfi8
s. wallerstein -- I think that probably this phenomenon has many causes, but surely one of them must be modern university culture (which is its own very complicated phenomenon, of course). Hyper-specialization among the faculty is a big contributor. You're trained from very early on as a graduate student to carve out your specialized niche; otherwise you run the very real risk of not getting a job at all. And so, faculty don't work with members of different departments nearly as much, are not even curious about what their colleagues are doing even within the same discipline, often enough. The kind of synoptic view you need to say worthwhile things about life in general is heavily disincentivized.
And while overt political engagement and even activism is encouraged in a way it wasn't a generation or two ago, in practice I think there are lots of pressures to make that "activism" mostly performative and certainly to make it fall in line with what the majority of intellectuals already think (especially but not only about race and sex issues). Real courage of the kind that it takes to be an actually effective public intellectual is extraordinarily rare, in my experience.
I’d have thought, Jordan, that the really difficult matters to address were not such obviously much-debated things such as race and sex issues, but those things which are so broadly and deeply accepted as common sense that they seem to brook no discussion. I think—to go back all those decades to when Chomsky came on the scene—that it was his capacity to identify where common sense attitudes were actually problematical and to try to challenge these things in highly articulate, thoughtful ways, which elevated him in the minds of many. He rendered certain things, whether wrt human language, American politics, foreign policy, and one shouldn’t forget Israel, problematical in thoughtful and interesting ways. In doing so, he, as you perhaps suggest, also broke down some of the academic hyper-specialization you refer to.
Anonymous,
Right.
Chomsky has this incredible intellectual indepence that one finds in someone like Marx, without the illusion that Marx has that he's speaking for the "real" working class.
On the other hand, unlike Nietzsche, who is intellectually independent too, Chomsky is totally sane and mentally balanced.
Back in 1974 75 I wrote a letter to Noam Chomsky concerning a dispute I was having with my brother-in-law's interpretation of early language learning and how If black Americans were in power of the social structure of society their language would be the dominant language of the day. Chomsky wrote back to my surprise agreeing with what I said. I was thrilled beyond belief that I would ever get a response.
Years later thanks to YouTube watching and listening to Noam's many many talks about the innate property of language, the count down on the dooms day clock, the onus of responsibility about man made global warming, the lies of the presidents, the manufactor of consent as co-author with E Hermann, and 100's more articles,of discussions, topics and remarks on the politics of the day.
Chomsky is a towering figure and the most dominating force I've never seen in my life time.
I wish the best for him and his family and I hope he receives the care he needs. I could only imagine his gesture with his left hand showing some anger at the genocidal barbarity and ethnic cleansing in Gaza that his wife reported.
Very sadly I just saw on X that NOAM CHOMSKY passed away today. A great loss for humanity.
I am surprised that anyone takes seriously anything that Chomsky says about politics. This is the man who maintains "Jeremy Corbyn won an enormous victory in 2017...yes, the biggest victory that Labour had won in a generation" see 0.24 onwards of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7euc5WZbCw
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