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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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.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 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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Wednesday, August 5, 2015

THOSE, THOSE WERE THE DAYS


At the crack of dawn on Friday, we fly off to San Francisco for my sister's eighty-fifth birthday party, which I am hosting.  Naturally, I shall make a speech.  I plan to read a few passages from the hundreds of letters Barbara wrote home to our parents from Swarthmore College, where she matriculated in the Fall of 1948.  Re-reading those letters evokes some feeling for what a first-class college education could be back then.  I don't wish entirely to tip my hand [my sister sometimes reads my blog], but this line caught my attention.  It is from her junior year, dated Nov. 6, 1950: 

"Guess what?  T. S. Eliot is coming to speak here.  I may go to hear him.  What with Russell [Bertrand], and Sandburg [Carl], and the madrigal concerts and Alexander Schneider [a great classical violinist] and the [William] Saroyan reading I've been doing, I feel quite intellectual and artistic."

1 comment:

Jim said...

Professor Wolff --

I think a college education, for the most part, can still be like that. The thing is, it is really the responsibility of the student to take advantage of all that college life has to offer. For example, did your sister wind up going to see Eliot speak, or did she, like probably many others in her campus community at the time, pass on that opportunity? Despite all the changes in university life over the past half century, many opportunities continue to remain for the earnest and sincere student.

-- Jim