This book traces the translation history of twentieth-century German philosophy into English, with significant layovers in Paris, and proposes an innovative approach to long-standing difficulties in its translation. German philosophy’s reputation for profundity is often understood to lie in German’s polysemous vocabulary, which is notoriously difficult to translate even into its close relative, English. Hawkins shows the merit in a strategy of “differential translation,” which involves translating conceptually dense German terms with multiple different terms in the target text, rather than the conventional standard of selecting one term in English for consistent translation. German Philosophy in English Translation explores how debates around this strategy have polarized both the French-language and English-language translation landscapes. Well-known translators and commissioners such as Jean Beaufret, Adam Phillips, and Joan Stambaugh come out boldly in favor, and others such as Jean Laplanche and Terry Pinkard polemically against it. Drawing on Hans Blumenberg’s work on metaphor, German Philosophy in English Translation questions prevalent norms around the translation of terminology that obscure the metaphoric dimension of German philosophical vocabulary. This book is a crucial reference for translators and researchers interested in the German language, and particularly for scholars in translation studies, philosophy, and intellectual history.

Transhumanism is widely misunderstood, in part because the media have exaggerated current technologies and branded the movement as dangerous, leading many to believe that hybrid humans may soon walk among us and that immortality, achieved by means of mind-uploading, is imminent. In this essential and clarifying volume, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner debunks widespread myths about transhumanism and tackles the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement. On Transhumanism is a vital primer on the subject, written by a world-renowned expert. In this book, Sorgner presents an overview of the movement's history, capably summarizing the twelve pillars of transhumanist discourse and explaining the great diversity of transhumanist responses to each individual topic. He highlights the urgent ethical challenges related to the latest technological developments, inventions, and innovations and compares the unique cultural standing of transhumanism to other cultural movements, placing it within the broader context of the Enlightenment, modernity, postmodernity, and the philosophical writings of Nietzsche. Engagingly written and translated and featuring an introduction for North American readers, this comprehensive overview of the cultural and philosophical movement of transhumanism will be required reading for students of posthumanist philosophy and for general audiences interested in learning about the transhumanist movement.

This is the first translation into English, with annotations and a critical introduction, of Hans Blumenberg's "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman." Blumenberg's book describes the reception history of an anecdote, found in Plato's Theatetus dialogue, wherein the early astronomer and proto-philosopher Thales of Miletus observes the stars while walking one night, until, failing to see a well in front of him, he tumbles down--perhaps to his death. A Thracian servant-girl laughs at how he tried to see what was above him without noticing what was right in front of his nose. This story and its variants recur in texts by Diogenes Laertius, then by Church Fathers Tertullian and Eusebius, Medieval and Renaissance-era preachers, Enlightenment figures Voltaire, Montaigne, Bacon, and Kant, and later by Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Blumenberg's own colleagues. Whether the philosopher citing this anecdote sympathizes with Thales' priorities or chastises his negligence, Blumenberg shows how the story stands in for the unknowable history leading up to the intellectual attitude now known as "theory." This improbable story fills the gap to greater satisfaction than a philosophical claim would, precisely because it is malleable. The story can express various philosophers' subjective attitudes about which passions are worth falling for and which mistakes are absurd enough to laugh at. By retelling the anecdote, philosophers reveal their distinctive values regarding absorption in curiosity, philosophy's past, and the demand that theorists abide by sanctioned methods and procedures. "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory" implicitly relies on Blumenberg's theory of metaphor. He locates the metaphors most beloved among generations of philosophers, and then, by observing their historically changing meanings, he shows how these have become indispensable to philosophy "as metaphors," that is, as representations whose meanings remain undefined.

Transhumanism is widely misunderstood, in part because the media have exaggerated current technologies and branded the movement as dangerous, leading many to believe that hybrid humans may soon walk among us and that immortality, achieved by means of mind-uploading, is imminent. In this essential and clarifying volume, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner debunks widespread myths about transhumanism and tackles the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement. On Transhumanism is a vital primer on the subject, written by a world-renowned expert. In this book, Sorgner presents an overview of the movement's history, capably summarizing the twelve pillars of transhumanist discourse and explaining the great diversity of transhumanist responses to each individual topic. He highlights the urgent ethical challenges related to the latest technological developments, inventions, and innovations and compares the unique cultural standing of transhumanism to other cultural movements, placing it within the broader context of the Enlightenment, modernity, postmodernity, and the philosophical writings of Nietzsche. Engagingly written and translated and featuring an introduction for North American readers, this comprehensive overview of the cultural and philosophical movement of transhumanism will be required reading for students of posthumanist philosophy and for general audiences interested in learning about the transhumanist movement.

This is the first translation into English, with annotations and a critical introduction, of Hans Blumenberg's "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman." Blumenberg's book describes the reception history of an anecdote, found in Plato's Theatetus dialogue, wherein the early astronomer and proto-philosopher Thales of Miletus observes the stars while walking one night, until, failing to see a well in front of him, he tumbles down--perhaps to his death. A Thracian servant-girl laughs at how he tried to see what was above him without noticing what was right in front of his nose. This story and its variants recur in texts by Diogenes Laertius, then by Church Fathers Tertullian and Eusebius, Medieval and Renaissance-era preachers, Enlightenment figures Voltaire, Montaigne, Bacon, and Kant, and later by Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Blumenberg's own colleagues. Whether the philosopher citing this anecdote sympathizes with Thales' priorities or chastises his negligence, Blumenberg shows how the story stands in for the unknowable history leading up to the intellectual attitude now known as "theory." This improbable story fills the gap to greater satisfaction than a philosophical claim would, precisely because it is malleable. The story can express various philosophers' subjective attitudes about which passions are worth falling for and which mistakes are absurd enough to laugh at. By retelling the anecdote, philosophers reveal their distinctive values regarding absorption in curiosity, philosophy's past, and the demand that theorists abide by sanctioned methods and procedures. "The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory" implicitly relies on Blumenberg's theory of metaphor. He locates the metaphors most beloved among generations of philosophers, and then, by observing their historically changing meanings, he shows how these have become indispensable to philosophy "as metaphors," that is, as representations whose meanings remain undefined.