About Complacency

About Complacency

183 pages

Softcover

Genre: Philosophy, Essay, Nonfiction

Today, the complacent are attacked as society‘s sleepwalkers and often blamed for sloppy misjudgments and insufficient action. But wouldn‘t a successful attack on complacency be a lost cause? By definition, one must never become complacent in the fight against complacency. For the complacent, life has become a level field on which to proceed without fear of stumbling or falling - a flattened realm in which everything is clearly and intelligibly arranged along the horizon. It is gratifying to arrive at a definitive, unambiguous meaning without stumbling over a passage. However, every word contains dynamic vectors, including those that emerge from other languages, epochs, and cultures and merge into others, moving from one semantic field to another.

German title: Über die Selbstgefälligkeit
ISBN: 978-3-7518-0503-2
Publisher: Matthes & Seitz Berlin
Publication date: 2021
Series: Fröhliche Wissenschaft Vol. 175

Sample translation

Complete German text available

John T. Hamilton, born in the Bronx in 1963, is a professor of German and comparative literature at Harvard University. His extensive work focuses on classics from antiquity to the present.