Robert Paul Wolff
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Robert Paul Wolff is a twentieth century political philosopher who has criticized both conservative and liberal currents of thought from the basis of philosophical anarchist theory.
Wolff is most widely known outside professional philosophy for his advocacy of unanimous consent democracy, also known as "pure" or "absolute" tolerance a concept on which he published several books. These include The Poverty of Liberalism (ISBN 0-8070-0583-5), which 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). He extended his advocacy of democracy to university governance in The Ideal of the University (Boston: Beacon, 1971, ISBN 0-8070-3189-5), in which he argues that universities should be governed by faculty and students.
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 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.
