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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Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.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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Saturday, September 28, 2013

PASS THE POPCORN

One of the memes [I hope I am using this term correctly] in the comment sections of the political blogs and websites is "pass the popcorn" and its variations.  The idea is that when, say, the Republicans are acting in flamboyantly self-destructive ways, the only thing to do is to treat it as a reality TV show, make some popcorn, sit back on the couch, and just enjoy it.

There is an idea floating about in the past twenty-four hours, growing out of Senator Ted Cruz's very public attempts to whip up the frenzy of House right-wing Republicans against Speaker Boehner, that perhaps they will choose Cruz as Speaker of the House!  It seems that the Constitution specifies that there will be a Speaker of the House, but does not require that the Speaker be a member of the House.

To which there is only one possible response:

Pass the popcorn.

1 comment:

Magpie said...

Prof.

While everybody else is busy enjoying the TV and popcorn (our equivalent to bread and circus), I'll venture some off-topic questions. :-)

Upon reading your "One-Dimensional Man" tutorial, which is very instructive and excellent, I came up with a few questions.

I got the general impression, from the tutorial, that the process of combining the insights of Freud and Marx by Western Marxists in a way is an attempt to provide micro-foundations to Marxist thought.

The Marginal Revolution (from Menger, Jevons and Walras), for instance, was supposed to trace economic behaviour back to individual's "rational" decision-making.

Similarly, Freud would, within Marxist thought, provide the "micro" theory: "Freud took the larger social and economic world of himself and his patients as a given fact, to which, as a medical doctor, he gave very little thought. His realm of investigation was the individual unconscious, with heavy emphasis on the development of the unconscious in early childhood".

My question is: must social science be ultimately grounded on individual human behaviour? What about "structures"? I suppose I am trying to query about your views on the ontology of social sciences and Marxism implied by Freud.

More generally, as a Marxist philosopher active and participating in theoretical debates during the 20th century, how do you evaluate developments such as the New Left?