tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post8167189515740296118..comments2024-03-29T03:19:09.227-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: ADDENDARobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-54151097972028055362011-04-17T19:05:05.956-04:002011-04-17T19:05:05.956-04:00Perhaps I will some day create a new chapter from ...Perhaps I will some day create a new chapter from the more than a hundred pages of letters that I omitted. Like the moment, riding my motorcycle home from a folk dancing evening when I slid and fell with my kilt up around my ears. Or Christmas Eve Mass in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Or the philosophical parable I wrote about Plato.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-40638590875860328462011-04-17T19:02:48.305-04:002011-04-17T19:02:48.305-04:00Would you believe that I originally had no "e...Would you believe that I originally had no "e" on the end of Magdalen and carefully went through the text adding it! I am the world's worst copy-editor.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-32353585350198385312011-04-17T08:12:30.867-04:002011-04-17T08:12:30.867-04:00Magdalen seems to have a long-term affinity for Ka...Magdalen seems to have a long-term affinity for Kant. Ralph Walker, yet another Kant expert, has been there for many years. <br /><br />It is fair to say that individual reactions to Oxford (and Cambridge) vary widely. George Stigler, possessor of the best literary style of any economist since Keynes, commented in his autobiography that <br /><br />"it is a pronounced advantage for a university to be located in a great city. Such a city is populated with a wide variety of able people: lawyers, merchants, artists, musicians, among the many occupations, and a rich variety of nationalities and languages. An isolated college tends to become homogeneous -- in types of people, types of cultural tastes, in types of activity -- in part because university faculties tend to recruit people like themselves. This homogeneity is much weakened when the university is set in the rich sea of talents and temperaments of the city, and the excesses of scholasticism are contained."<br /><br />Though in Oxford's defense, recruiting Gerald Cohen to the Chichele professorship of social and political theory was hardly an act of blinkered parochialism, and Oxford at the time also had a very able Marxist in the economics sub-faculty (Andrew Glyn).wallyverrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358344785499490511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-26530833329337542472011-04-13T18:06:06.605-04:002011-04-13T18:06:06.605-04:00As I said when you finished off the autobiography,...As I said when you finished off the autobiography, the selections from the letters were among my very favourite passages out of the work, and that says quite a bit.Marinushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13492009758043047531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-37568151652822885652011-04-13T17:01:45.739-04:002011-04-13T17:01:45.739-04:00I second the request for more.I second the request for more.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13068383050573818153noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-51233589155634205122011-04-13T12:01:44.283-04:002011-04-13T12:01:44.283-04:00Good stuff! I hope you post more.
Two things:
1)...Good stuff! I hope you post more.<br /><br />Two things:<br /><br />1) It's Magdalen College, with no "e" at the end. <br /><br />2) The entrance to the College President's lodgings is indeed inside the college quad. I've had coffee with the (current) President there a couple of times.Juhani Yli-Vakkurihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16935218187888401781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-16128369419760228092011-04-13T10:20:35.049-04:002011-04-13T10:20:35.049-04:00Yea! More! More! Surely, Bob, you can easily add a...Yea! More! More! Surely, Bob, you can easily add another volume to your autobiography? Dworkin, Weldon (I did find his Kant commentary beautifully clear), Strawson - omitted from the earlier version? What other gems might yet see the light of day?Aliyahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13638737388359449666noreply@blogger.com