The revisions to the manuscript of Sloterdijk Now, following comments from two referees and the series editor, have now been made. The book is back to the press. This has been a pretty quick turnaround – it was only submitted on 1 February (report here, along with links to brief discussions of all the chapters). It will appear in November this year. Thanks to the contributors for their chapters and revising them quickly. The publisher’s site is still not very informative, but there are more details in their recent catalogues, such as the Philosophy one which takes this book’s cover for its own.
Before making the final revisions I was able to read the newly available English translation of Die Sonne und der Tod, Neither Sun nor Death. It’s a collection of interviews with Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, and a good read. It ranges pretty widely and is a good introduction to his work and its key themes, as they were in 2001 when the interviews were conducted. The backcover notes that the Spheres trilogy is indeed forthcoming with Semiotext(e). Neither Sun nor Death discusses the first two volumes of that in some detail, and has some discussion of the (then forthcoming) third volume.
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Any idea why the English title differs from the original? Seems a bit strange, but maybe there is a reason for it.
The phrase, in English, is ‘neither sun nor death can be looked at steadily’. It’s from Le Rouchfoucauld’s Maxims. The French original is “Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement”. I wonder if the German version is constructed differently – ‘two things cannot be looked at steadily – the sun and death’?
According a 1798 German translation (link below), the maxim reads:
’26. Den Tod, wie die Sonne, kann man nicht mit festen Blicken ansehen.’
This formulation would then explain the structure of the German title.
http://books.google.com/books?id=w84GAAAAcAAJ&dq=inauthor:la+inauthor:rochefoucauld&lr=lang_de&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Hello Stuart and Dean,
The phrase is actually cited in French by Sloterdijk in the German original version of the book. I suspect that the reason for the different formulation in the title “Die Sonne und der Tod” is possibly not a formal one, but has to do with the way Sloterdijk uses the saying. It is used in the context of a discussion of his infamous “Regeln für den Menschenpark”, and in particular of his interpretation of Heidegger in that text. Sloterdijk believes that Heidegger proposes something like an eleventh commandment, ‘Bedenke den Blitz!’. We should reflect more thoroughly on what we are, on the openness (‘Lichtung’) that we are, difficult as this may be. Furthermore, Sloterdijk adds to this the idea that we should always consider the ‘Blitz der Katastrophe’, by which I think he means we ought to be mindful of the (anthropological and technological) history of the human species, our unheard-of scientific and technological power over birth, life, and death. Of course, this is exactly the theme of a lot of Sloterdijk’s texts. In that sense – although this may all be a little far-fetched – I believe the German version of the title covers Sloterdijks plea to tackle these matters head-on, demanding as this task is, better than the translations do.
On a different note, I’d like to say that I think it is great that Sloterdijk is starting to get translated and talked about in the anglo-saxon world too (for which you are doing excellent work, Stuart!). I am from Belgium myself, and in Flanders and the Netherlands Sloterdijk has been translated and read incredibly widely by an incredibly diverse readership – his “Spheres”, that has long been out in Dutch, was even a philosophical best-seller. He is giving a talk in Antwerp on the 15th of May, which I am looking forward to a lot.
Jasper