Robert Paul Wolff

Robert Paul Wolff is a radical twentieth century

Related Topics:
Radical - Twentieth century

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political philosopher who criticizes both

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conservative and liberal currents of thought.

Related Topics:
Conservative - Liberal

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Wolff is most widely known outside professional philosophy for his

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advocacy of unanimous consent democracy, a concept on which he published

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several books. These includeThe Poverty of Liberalism (ISBN 0807005835), which pointed out the inconsistencies rife in twentieth

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century liberal and conservative doctrines. In this text, Wolff

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takes John Stuart Mill's seminal works, On Liberty and

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Principles of Political Economy as starting points. Also widely read

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is In Defense of Anarchism (ISBN 0520215737). He extended his advocacy of democracy to university governance in The Ideal of the University (Boston: Beacon, 1971, ISBN 0807031895), in which he argues that universities should be governed by faculty and students.

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Within the philosophy profession, Wolff is better known for his Kant scholarship, 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 0061317926). His textbook About Philosophy (ISBN 0130853933) is used widely in introductory college philosophy courses.

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Wolff is also distinguished as a white man who transitioned from a university philosophy department to a department of Afro-American studies, 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 1580461808).

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