The Resurrection Of Stefan Zweig
“In the decades between the two world wars, no writer was more widely translated or read than the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, and in the years after, few writers fell more precipitously into obscurity, at least in the English-speaking world. But now Zweig, prolific storyteller and embodiment of a vanished Mitteleuropa, seems to be back, and in a big way” – new editions of his books, movie adaptations, new biographies, even a novel about him ...
Have you always wanted to be acknowledged in the preface of a philosophy book, but haven’t had the time or opportunity or insightfulness to do anything worthy of being so acknowledged? Or perhaps you have been thinking, “what have books done for me, lately?” The book of escapes: “I’ll never get out of this world alive”
[There are a number of prerequisites writers are usually told to acquire for their books or novels to grab people’s attention in a crowded marketplace – an eye-catching title, a good opening line. But perhaps another is something they have slightly less leeway with. I’m thinking of their name. I MR I CH77
If you can only be good at one thing, be good at lying. … Because if you’re good at lying, you’re good at everything.
Jerry Dworkin (who put together Philosophy: a Commonplace Book) shares some of his latest discoveries of “humorous quotes, epigrams, aphorisms, parodies, etc. that have some connection to philosophy” over at 3 Quarks Daily [ If bad writers borrow and good writers steal, ereaders make for excellent accessories to the crime. Users can rifle the world’s biggest vault and store the loot in a safety deposit box that never gets full ]
Look for the next book in this series, on philosophy of religion, the author of which is offering a three-minute prayer to the deity of your choosing if you read a draft of a chapter. The authors of a new volume on exploitation say that they will make you an offer you can’t refuse to get you to read their whole manuscript. Finally, the writer of a forthcoming book on the philosophy of lying says that everyone who buys her book will receive a check in the mail for $1 million...
The reality is that we are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal. A morally serious inquiry into the requisite meaning of free will needs to face some basic facts….We have gotten nothing from our 40-year blame fest except the guilty pleasure of reproaching others for acts that, but for the grace of God, or luck, or social or biological forces, we might well have committed ourselves. Our schools are broken, a new generation of kids has been lost, our prisons are crammed with petty offenders whose lives we have ruined in the name of a war on drugs that has been a total failure. And judging from the current mood of the country, the guilty pleasure of blaming others has not proved all that pleasurable.
That’s Barbara Fried in her essay “Beyond Blame” in The Boston Review. The essay is accompanied by responses from Christine M. Korsgaard, Erin Kelly, Adriaan Lanni, Mike Konczal,Paul Bloom, Gideon Rosen, Brian Leiter, George Sher, and T. M. Scanlon, with a reply by Fried.
Introduction of Philosophy Tag, with Dana Howard (Ohio State) tagging Daniel Silvermint (Connecticut) for his piece, “Resistance and Well-Being.” That made Silvermint it. Let’s see who he tags:
“Oppression can make us angry, and perhaps even ought to. When defending anger, many will claim that it has instrumental value: for example, helping victims maintain their self-respect and motivating social change. In “Anger, Virtue, and Oppression” (Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal, ed. Lisa Tessman, Springer 2009, pp. 165-183), Macalester Bell (Michigan) goes further. She argues that acting from appropriate anger is a form of excellence in being against injustice. It’s virtuous not because it helps us flourish, but because anger does the best job of fitting the wrong and expressing the victim’s integrity, respect for the object of her anger, and commitment to the moral standards in question. One reason I like this chapter is its attention both to the different kinds of anger and to the specific circumstances in which they should arise.”Macalester Bell, you’re it.
(See the first Philosophy Tag post for how it works.)