Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Robert Paul Wolff (1933-2025)

When John Silber died in September of 2012, Robert Wolff expressed his contempt for the conservative Boston University president in an ironically entitled notice, De Mortuis. Wolff's title alludes to the Latin saying de mortuis nil nisi bonum.  Literally translated: "About the dead, nothing except the good," which is to say, "Speak no evil of the dead." I have criticized Wolff with trenchancy and sarcasm on more than one occasion, and he richly deserved it;  on this occasion, however, I will not follow his example but heed the Latin injunction and refer you to On Books and Gratitude wherein I say something nice about the man. I will add that his writings on anarchism and on Kant are well worth the time and effort.  Here are my Substack articles on Wolff on anarchism:

Notes on Anarchism I

Notes on Anarchism II

Notes on Anarchism III

Robert Paul Wolff on Anarchism and Marxism

Here is an obituary. (HT: Dave Lull)

R P Wolff

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Bill Vallicella

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3 responses to “Robert Paul Wolff (1933-2025)”

  1. EG Avatar
    EG

    Hi Bill,
    It speaks to your character that you can acknowledge Wolff. I have learned however much we can disagree or argue with another, in Death, we are all of us equal, and we should honestly acknowledge this. Cheers.

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Thanks, EG.
    Death is the Great Equalizer. I recall an Italian proverb to the effect that, at game’s end, King and pawns go into the same box.
    I took an even tone re: Wolff not only out of respect for the freshly dead as per the Latin saying, but also because he is a good philosopher. I just now pulled his The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals from the shelf. I wrote on the flyleaf: “I first read this book in the Fall of 1980. It is an excellent study!” I consulted it in connection with a Kant seminar I taught at the time.

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    But the man went off the deep end later on. One of his titles is Autobiography of an Ex-White Man.

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