I’ve been reading quite a lot recently since I have had plenty of spare time. I have pretty much finished On The Road (the second time actually: for some reason I had first read it in Finnish translation instead of the original version); now that I have actually been to NY and SF myself I enjoyed the book much more.
Philosophy too: On Duties and On Friendship by Cicero, and Perpetual Peace by Kant. I picked up Cicero mostly because of his influence on Renaissance thinkers (Machiavelli, of course). I would like to know some Latin to be able to read the original, because the Finnish translator has butchered the text. But I don’t know Latin yet. Still, at least I can see the obvious parallels between Duties and The Prince.
Perpetual Peace is a curious book. It does not seem to form a systematic whole, at least in a philosophical sense. I wanted to read it because it seems to be an important predecessor to modern cosmopolitan political theory, but Kant is not really a cosmopolitan himself. He makes some prescient insights though. What I found most interesting in the work is his discussion on the conflict between morality and politics. He draws largely on his own ethical theory to solve (or explain away) the conflict, but does not really go into specifics. This is problematic, because the conflict is best illustrated with actual examples, like Machiavelli does. Anyway, I should try to think of a good way to defend Kant here.
Did I complain about the Kant translation yet? Horrible. I never realized that you could use “vaarinotto” as a noun.
I finally watched Kontroll, a film I bought on DVD in Budapest. I really like the movie. The story is original, the atmosphere fantastic and the actors and everyone else seem to be doing a good job. It’s a kind of postmodern fairytale with a rough edge.