An Introduction to the Use of Formal Methods in Political Philosophy

by Robert Paul Wolff

Overview

Political Theory has been transformed in the last thirty years by the introduction of methods of analysis imported from mathematics and economics. Modern students of the subject need to know something about Rational Choice Theory, Game Theory, and Collective Choice Theory if they are to be able to master contemporary discussions. This little book, by well-known philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, lays out the elements of these technical subjects in a precise fashion that achieves a sprightly accessibility without sacrificing formal rigor. In the second part of the book, Wolff applies the formal materials to the writings of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and others with a penetrating and sceptical wit. A useful supplement to the standard readings in undergraduate and graduate courses.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940044602663
Publisher:	Society for Philosophy & Culture
Publication date:	06/16/2013
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Paul Wolff received a doctorate in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1957. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of Massachusetts, where he has been a faculty member since 1971. He has published twenty-one books on the history of modern philosophy, social and political philosophy, the philosophy of education, economics, and Afro-American Studies. Among his best-known books are Kant's Theory of Mental Activity and In Defense of Anarchism, which has just been translated into Croatian, Korean, and Malaysian. In 1992, he was invited to join the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies to assist in the establishment of a doctoral program, which he has coordinated since it was established in 1996. Wolff is now the director of the new university- wide Program for Undergraduate Mentoring and Achievement which provides mentoring and instructional services to traditionally underrepresented students in their first year at UMass. In 2005 Wolff published Autobiography of an Ex-White Man, a meditation on the experience of joining an Afro-American Studies Department and what it taught him about America. In 1990, Wolff founded University Scholarships for South African Students, a charitable organization that offers financial aid to poor Black students studying at South Africa's historically Black universities and technikons.