Robert Paul Wolff
Encyclopedia
Robert Paul Wolff is a contemporary American political philosopher
and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
. Wolff has written widely on many topics in political philosophy such as Marxism
, tolerance
(he wrote against liberalism
and in favor of anarchism
), political justification and democracy
. Wolff is also well known for his work on Kant
. Wolff is of Jewish heritage. His great-grandfather, Wolf ('Velvyl') Zarembovitch, immigrated to New York from Eastern Europe, when the family name was changed to Wolff.
Wolff was an Instructor in Philosophy and General Education at Harvard University, 1958–1961; Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1961–64;
Associate Professor and then Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1964–71; Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1971–1992, Professor of Afro-American Studies, 1992–2008, and Professor Emeritus, 2008–Present.
's A Theory of Justice
, Wolff made pointed criticisms of this work from a roughly Marxist perspective. In 1977, Wolff published Understanding Rawls: A Critique and Reconstruction of A Theory of Justice, which takes dead aim at the extent to which Rawls's theory is cued to existing practice, convention
and status quo
social science. Insofar as A Theory of Justice forecloses critiques of capitalist
social relation
s, private property
and the market economy
, Wolff concludes that Rawls's project amounts to a form of apology for the status quo. According to Wolff, markets and capitalist social relations are founded on exploitation and injustice, and Rawls does not give arguments to defend his theory from these charges.
In The Poverty of Liberalism (ISBN 0-8070-0583-5), Wolff pointed out the inconsistencies rife in twentieth century liberal
and conservative
doctrines. In this text, Wolff takes John Stuart Mill
's seminal works, On Liberty
and Principles of Political Economy
as starting points.
Also widely read is In Defense of Anarchism
(The first two editions sold more than 200,000 copies, ISBN 0-520-21573-7). The argument in this work is that if we accept a robust conception of individual autonomy
, then it appears that there can be no de jure legitimate state. Wolff would later recall that he received all sorts of unlikely praise for this work, particularly from the likes of many on the political right such as libertarians
and anarcho-capitalists
. Although Wolff makes a case for how, assuming a roughly Kantian conception of autonomy, liberal democratic states are internally unable to justify themselves, he is by not claiming that there shouldn't therefore be states. To put this very clearly, Wolff is precisely not of the view that capitalism or market economies (which he has attacked elsewhere for their alleged fundamental injustice and exploitative character) are what is left over when the liberal democratic state is extinguished.
Wolff extended his advocacy of radical participatory democracy
to university governance in The Ideal of the University (Boston: Beacon, 1971, ISBN 0-8070-3189-5), in which he argues, against rising marketization and external encroachment, that universities should be primarily governed by faculty and students.
Within the profession, Wolff is better known for his work on Kant
, particularly his books Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason and The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (ISBN 0-06-131792-6). He is also a noted commentator on the works of Karl Marx
, where his works include Understanding Marx: A Reconstruction and Critique of Capital (ISBN 0-691-07678-2) and Moneybags Must Be So Lucky: On the Structure of Capital (ISBN 0-87023-616-4 ), an analysis of the rhetorical and literary techniques employed by Marx in Das Kapital
. His textbook About Philosophy (ISBN 0-13-085393-3) is used widely in introductory college philosophy courses.
Wolff is also distinguished as a white man who transitioned from the philosophy department to the department of Afro-American studies of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, which is chronicled and discussed in his book Autobiography of an Ex-White Man: Learning a New Master Narrative for America (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005, ISBN 1-58046-180-8).
In 1990, Wolff founded University Scholarships for South African Students, an organization devoted to promoting opportunities in higher education within South Africa
for disadvantaged South African students. Since its creation, USSAS has assisted in providing funding and educational opportunities for thousands of students in South Africa. The program is, in many ways, a realization of the democratic values about which Wolff has written for much of his career.
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
. Wolff has written widely on many topics in political philosophy such as Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, tolerance
Toleration
Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...
(he wrote against liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and in favor of anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
), political justification and democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. Wolff is also well known for his work on Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
. Wolff is of Jewish heritage. His great-grandfather, Wolf ('Velvyl') Zarembovitch, immigrated to New York from Eastern Europe, when the family name was changed to Wolff.
Education
Robert Wolff graduated from Harvard University with a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1953, 1954 and 1957 respectively.Wolff was an Instructor in Philosophy and General Education at Harvard University, 1958–1961; Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1961–64;
Associate Professor and then Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1964–71; Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1971–1992, Professor of Afro-American Studies, 1992–2008, and Professor Emeritus, 2008–Present.
Scholarship
After the enormous renewal of interest in normative political philosophy in the Anglo-American world after the publication of John RawlsJohn Rawls
John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....
's A Theory of Justice
A Theory of Justice
A Theory of Justice is a book of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 and 1999. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social...
, Wolff made pointed criticisms of this work from a roughly Marxist perspective. In 1977, Wolff published Understanding Rawls: A Critique and Reconstruction of A Theory of Justice, which takes dead aim at the extent to which Rawls's theory is cued to existing practice, convention
Convention (norm)
A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom....
and status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
social science. Insofar as A Theory of Justice forecloses critiques of capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
social relation
Social relation
In social science, a social relation or social interaction refers to a relationship between two , three or more individuals . Social relations, derived from individual agency, form the basis of the social structure. To this extent social relations are always the basic object of analysis for social...
s, private property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
and the market economy
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
, Wolff concludes that Rawls's project amounts to a form of apology for the status quo. According to Wolff, markets and capitalist social relations are founded on exploitation and injustice, and Rawls does not give arguments to defend his theory from these charges.
In The Poverty of Liberalism (ISBN 0-8070-0583-5), Wolff pointed out the inconsistencies rife in twentieth century liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
doctrines. In this text, Wolff takes John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
's seminal works, On Liberty
On Liberty
On Liberty is a philosophical work by British philosopher John Stuart Mill. It was a radical work to the Victorian readers of the time because it supported individuals' moral and economic freedom from the state....
and Principles of Political Economy
Principles of Political Economy
Principles of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill was arguably the most important economics or political economy textbook of the mid nineteenth century. It was revised until its seventh edition in 1871, shortly before Mill's death in 1873, and republished in numerous other editions...
as starting points.
Also widely read is In Defense of Anarchism
In Defense of Anarchism
In Defense of Anarchism is a 1970 book by Robert Paul Wolff regarded as a classical work in anarchist scholarship. Wolff specifically defends individualist anarchism; the book is premised on the idea that individual autonomy and state authority are mutually exclusive and, as individual autonomy is...
(The first two editions sold more than 200,000 copies, ISBN 0-520-21573-7). The argument in this work is that if we accept a robust conception of individual autonomy
Autonomy
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
, then it appears that there can be no de jure legitimate state. Wolff would later recall that he received all sorts of unlikely praise for this work, particularly from the likes of many on the political right such as libertarians
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
and anarcho-capitalists
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism is a libertarian and individualist anarchist political philosophy that advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty in a free market...
. Although Wolff makes a case for how, assuming a roughly Kantian conception of autonomy, liberal democratic states are internally unable to justify themselves, he is by not claiming that there shouldn't therefore be states. To put this very clearly, Wolff is precisely not of the view that capitalism or market economies (which he has attacked elsewhere for their alleged fundamental injustice and exploitative character) are what is left over when the liberal democratic state is extinguished.
Wolff extended his advocacy of radical participatory democracy
Participatory democracy
Participatory Democracy, also known as Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy and Real Democracy , is a process where political decisions are made directly by regular people...
to university governance in The Ideal of the University (Boston: Beacon, 1971, ISBN 0-8070-3189-5), in which he argues, against rising marketization and external encroachment, that universities should be primarily governed by faculty and students.
Within the profession, Wolff is better known for his work on Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
, particularly his books Kant's Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason and The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (ISBN 0-06-131792-6). He is also a noted commentator on the works of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, where his works include Understanding Marx: A Reconstruction and Critique of Capital (ISBN 0-691-07678-2) and Moneybags Must Be So Lucky: On the Structure of Capital (ISBN 0-87023-616-4 ), an analysis of the rhetorical and literary techniques employed by Marx in Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
. His textbook About Philosophy (ISBN 0-13-085393-3) is used widely in introductory college philosophy courses.
Wolff is also distinguished as a white man who transitioned from the philosophy department to the department of Afro-American studies of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, which is chronicled and discussed in his book Autobiography of an Ex-White Man: Learning a New Master Narrative for America (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005, ISBN 1-58046-180-8).
In 1990, Wolff founded University Scholarships for South African Students, an organization devoted to promoting opportunities in higher education within South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
for disadvantaged South African students. Since its creation, USSAS has assisted in providing funding and educational opportunities for thousands of students in South Africa. The program is, in many ways, a realization of the democratic values about which Wolff has written for much of his career.