Audio of Rawls Lectures Released
The audio of lectures given by John Rawls to students in his course “Philosophy 171: Modern Political Philosophy” are being made available on YouTube by the Harvard Philosophy Department. The lectures were delivered at Harvard in the spring semester of 1984. There were eleven lectures. The first three are already up—one, two, and three. What was the first day of class with Rawls like? Listen:
“…Now I forgot to add, under the texts, TJ there, but I believe they have it in the store…”
(via Simon May)
Thank you so much for posting this announcement. As the relatively new librarian for the department, I have been keen on making these as widely available as possible since they had previously only been available to users of our library. You might be interested to know that in a little over 24 hours the first of these lectures had received more than 5,000 views. Not Beyoncé numbers, to be sure, but quite respectable.
Hi Eric, Many thanks to you for your efforts and to Mardy Rawls for permitting their public posting. I wonder, might it be possible to make the Spring 1984 syllabus available as well?
Hi Paul, You are very welcome. I will have to track down a copy of the 1984 syllabus. I suspect that it is among Rawls’ papers at Harvard University Archives, but Mardy might have a copy as well. I will be sure to add it to the description section as soon as it is available.
Also, if anyone has suggestions for tags to add to the videos, please feel free to pass them along. I want people to be able to find these videos easily and by a variety of search terms.
This is great! Is it possible to post the lectures as mp3s or other audio files so I can listen to them on my iPod?
this is really great – I read the post at 3 pm today, I dropped what I was doing and listened…what a great afternoon, thank you.
Hi Rob, Obviously this won’t be possible via Youtube, but I will certainly put the mp3 files up on our department website and also take suggestions about where else to host them. Look for them on the website next week.
Amazing contribution, thank you very much. It would be awesome if you could get the syllabus (as Paul said). Please let us know if you find it.
pls notify me of comments/updates here
There is a very brie syllabus for the Spring 1983 Political and Social Philosophy class taught by Rawls included at the very end of his _Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy_, edited by Samuel Freeman. I have not listened to these lectures yet, but I assume they are pretty close. (I think that the syllabus printed there was one that Freeman, who had TA’d the course for Rawls, had kept himself, though I’m not 100% sure of that.)
Hi folks! Just a brief update to let you know that eleven of Rawls’ lectures are on our Youtube channel now. The remaining eleven lectures from this course are in the process of being digitized and will be available some time in August.
August will also see the release of 22 more Rawls lectures from his version of Philosophy 171 given a year earlier (1983).
Finally, for a bit of fun, we want to mark the occasion when the first of Rawls’ lectures tops 10,000 views by giving away a Rawls mug (see here: http://www.cafepress.com/mf/18249492/grasscounting_mugs?productId=116874723) to the first person who contacts me with a screenshot of the view count reading 10,000 views. Just send the screenshot to my email address along with your name, and I will send the winner the mug.
Hello readers of Daily Nous! I just wanted to let you know that we have received the digitized audio files of the remaining taped lectures by John Rawls and are uploadig them to our Youtube channel.
The complete set of Rawls Philosophy 171 lectures from 1984–twenty-three lectures in all–will be up by the end of the day.
Following this, we will begin uploading Rawls lectures from 1983.
Hi Eric, were these 1983 lectures every uploaded? Thanks!