Mitteleuropa items

Hans Blumenberg. Telos issues a Call for Papers for a special issue on his work.

Here's an intriguing new book from Cambridge, Thinking the Unconscious, about the idea of the unconscious in 19th-Century German thought, with articles about Schelling, Nietzsche, Fechner, Goethe, etc.

We've heard of the great influence on North American science by Jewish immigrants from central Europe, but it's interesting also to see the impact of these immigrants on our pop culture (beyond Hollywood), from Barbie to PR to the shopping mall to ... surfing. Here's Peter Lunenfeld on Freud, Gidget and the Austro-Hungarian roots of the surfer ethos -- 'It's gnarly on the Ringstrasse, dude!'

Beyond the Ringstrasse -- Red Vienna architecture.

Here's a PEN panel-discussion in NY of Stefan Zweig from last April, which includes Michael Hofmann, Paul Holdengräber, and others. Here's some coverage of the event.

Recent pieces by and about Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah's review of Sam Harris' Moral Landscape;

Appiah's insightful conjectures about what we will be condemned for by future generations;

Bookforum's interview with Appiah about his new book, The Honor Code (in which Appiah quotes from Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year);

another interview, this time on NPR's Talk of the Nation;

and more about his book at the Big Think.

Appiah's mother, Peggy Appiah, was a British author and his father, Joe Appiah, was a Ghanaian statesman. They are said to have partly inspired the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Two of Anthony Appiah's uncles were kings of the Ashanti, and his British grandfather was Sir Stafford Cripps.

Update (Nov. 10, 2010): Here's a piece by Appiah in The Telegraph.

More KBBC posts

The Barth blog conference has some new posts, including one on Paul Tillich and one on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

New book on Milton's influence on Kant

Illustration for Paradise Lost by Gustav Doré

Kant and Milton, a new book by Sanford Budick about Milton's inlfuence on Kant.

Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate;
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy.
Yet with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for awhile, or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured breast
With stubborn patience, as with triple steel. 

– John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book II, 557-69)