The problems of the philosophy of language, of the explanation and understanding, of the translation andinterpretation of texts,stand at the forefront ofthe philosophical works of the great theoretician from the field of phenomenological hermeneutics Paul Ricœur. The philosopher takes the opportunity to present his viewpoint on these issues in the book On Translation, which is precisely concerned with the problems recounted above. Thevolume consists of three essays written in the 1990s: «Translation as Challenge (...) and Source of Happiness», «The Paradigm of Translation», «A Passage: Translating the Untranslatable». The authorhimself is experienced in translation, having produced a French version of the principal work of E. Husserl Ideas, Volume 1 while imprisoned in Germany during World War II. Unlike a simplereproduction of a text in a different language, for Ricœur translation is a mission topromotea cultural dialogue,a mission that demandsfrom the translator readiness to «immerse into the foreign language»and an aptitude for «linguistic sensitivity». (shrink)

Analyses The Problems Of Understanding Exegesis And Translation. Scrutinises Peculiariaties Of Grammar, Syntax, Diction, Style And Metaphor In Various Languages And Their Forms-Prose, Poetry, Drama Etc In India And Western Tradition-In English, German, French, Greek, Sanskrit And Pali Texts. Emphazises The Importance Of Classical Languages In Which Religion And Philosophical Works Have Been Written.

The translation of philosophical works is a topic that merits our attention both in respect of philosophical understanding and linguistic structure, although it is the former rather than the latter that prevails in discussions in Chinese academia. By drawing upon that branch of modern linguistics known as the lexical field theory, this paper attempts to analyze a host of related problems, including the following: readability as a basic requirement of translation, difficulties in translation caused (...) by the syntactic-typological distance of source and target languages, consistency of translated terms in general, consistency of semantically related terms in translation, consistency of translated terms regarding the syntagmatic axis and the paradigmatic axis, the use of monosyllabic, disyllabic, or polysyllabic Chinese terms in translation, translation of long or rare terms into Chinese, the middle way between ‘under-translation’ and ‘over-translation,’ identification of lexical fields for the systematic treatment of translated terms, and finally the in-depth understanding of original texts in their source languages as a prerequisite of any serious attempt of translation. (shrink)

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, (...) painting, and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The study is aimed at the "philosophy of translation" methodology outlining as an original philosophical texts translation tool from the point of view of culture as anthropological phenomena, namely, individuals’ participating in the text creation process providing the consistent following tasks solution: a) clarifying the text author’s role, which is the object of recipients’ perception; b) the human psyche inexhaustible potential realization for the primary text semantic content understanding by the translator to prevent its distortion; (...) c) defining the requirements for the translation process as a mean of bringing the reader closer to author’s understanding by language barrier elimination as an intuitive "obstacle" on its way. _Theoretical basis._ The author proceeds from the factual absence of the "philosophy of translation" concept unambiguous definition in the modern anthropological and philosophical space and seeks to take into account all the factors affecting the newly created text quality due to the all participants’ features reviled on every stage of the text translation process. Today, the "philosophy of translation" is a widely used phrase, though ignoring the characteristics of man as a single meaning creator of the concept under study. The article provisions are based on philosophical, translation, and psychological studies with an emphasis on classical and non-classical anthropology research (Gadamer, Khoma, Holovach, Chepeleva, Dizdar, Leonov, Lotman, Bakhtin, etc.). _Originality._ The author proposes a methodology for the original philosophical text adaptation and presents a generalized step-by-step scheme for its translation, which helps to solve the personality of the researcher and/or translator’s influence problem on the individual author’s meaning preservation during its reproduction in a reader’s convenient language. _Conclusions._ A look at the "philosophy of translation" from the philosophical anthropology point of view allows us not only to consider the process of translation from the individual characteristics of all the participants (author/philosopher-reader-researcher/translator-reader-philosopher/reader) but also to describe such translation methodology by concentrating on highlighting the author’s reasoning course, which rises new knowledge and encourages further philosophical reflection within the human nature instability problem. The translation of a philosophical text not only reproduces the semantic structure of the original message but also provides a number of possible dialogical reactions to it as an object of human phenomenology. The proposed concept takes into account any reader’s needs, fully preserving the author’s position. (shrink)

The third and fourth parts sketch aspects and difficulties of such a philosophy. Part III is concerned with the overcoming of the metaphysical negativity inherent in the conception of phenomena as appearances. Nietzsche's use of the Dionysian "mask" in his later thought is examined with respect to precisely such an overcoming. The affirmative relation of mask and masked and the problem of philosophical unmasking as affirmation arise as elements unique to the latest phase of Nietzsche's thought and are discussed (...) in analyses of several of the Dionysus Dithyrambs as well as texts from Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols. Part IV explores the philosophical affirmation contained within the exhibition of the mask as mask through unmasking. ;The appendices contain extended discussions of particular textual problems as well as translations of selected fragments--hitherto untranslated or only partially translated--from Nietzsche's notebooks in the last productive decade of his life. ;The following study is an attempt to arrive at an understanding of Nietzsche's thought in terms that are internal to that thought itself. The concept of "affirmation" was chosen as an appropriate one because of its central place in Nietzsche's description of his own thought in opposition to the nihilistic movement of previous philosophy. ;The first part of the dissertation is a detailed discussion of Schopenhauer's philosophy, a philosophy which culminates in the question of the "affirmation or negation of the will to life." In our exposition we are able to see not merely the connection of Schopenhauerian pessimism and philosophical nihilism, as understood by Nietzsche, but, as significantly, the way in which the philosophical tradition is positively present in this philosophy. The constructive nature of knowledge, the negative source of activity, the "identity" of art all lead to the final truth of the "nothing." The relation of Schopenhauer's apparently willful and arbitrary conceptions to the history of philosophy is emphasized throughout this first part which, despite this historical interest, attempts to arrive at an immanent understanding of this philosophy. ;The second part concerns itself with the Birth of Tragedy, but is as much an elaboration, extension and application of certain aspects of this book to other elements of Nietzsche's thought as it is an analysis of the book. The Birth of Tragedy's ambiguous connection with Schopenhauer is first discussed, particularly as concerns the central theme of "tragic affirmation" as affirmation of the totality. The ontological obscurities of the divine pair Apollo-Dionysus are discussed, and the "spirit of music" that generates tragedy, the Dionysian spirit of affirmation, is contrasted with the Platonic daimon of Eros. The problem of Dionysos mousikos as Dionysos philosophos emerges in this part. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abailard and the Problem of Universals JOHN F. BOLER ABAILARD t IS A CLEVERman, but in one respect he is just like the rest of us: Given one clear idea of which he is convinced, he tends to become intolerant, thinking the worst of everyone else. Abailard's clear idea goes something as follows. In what does universality consist? It consists, says Abailard, in the signifying of many things by (...) one sign? Abailard's predecessors had been searching for some thing which was universal. But a sign must signify many things to be universal; and furthermore, the sign itself, as a thing--a noise, gesture, or statue--is individual. ~ It may help to describe the model which crops up here and there in Abailard's examples and which, I think, dominates his analysis. Consider, then, a statue which is not meant to stand for any one particular individual: for example, the Minute Man at Concord, Massachusetts.* First of all, the statue is an individual thing. Second, just as a piece of metal, it need not stand for anything--anymore than a bird bath would, had the town council decided to build that instead. What is more, it is information from other sources which leads us to take the statue as "general" rather than as depicting some individual (like Nathan Hale). And even though the statue stands for "all" minute men, not only is the statue an individual thing but all those things for which it stands are (or were) individuals. And finally, we might also point out that the statue must be taken as signifying; it does not have "representative" qualities in quite the same way that it has properties like weight and shape. t The text of Abailard to which I have referred is: Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schrqte, herausgegeben yon Dr. Bernhard Geyer, I Die Logica "Ingredientibus,'" II Die Logica "'Nostrorum Petitioni Sociorum" which is to be found in Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Band XXI (1933). A partial translation of this text appears in R. McKeon, Selections from Medieval Philosophers (New York: Scribners, 1929), II, 208-258. Hereafter I shall refer to the latin text as "G" followed by the page number and lines; and to the translation, where possible, as "'M" with the page number. 9Abailard feels that when Aristotle says that a universal is what is fitted for being predicated of many things, it is the signifying of many things which is at stake; and he chides Aristotle for seeming to ascribe universality to things as well as to words. G ~ (M 221). The reference to Aristotle is On Interpretation, 17a (38-40). *See note 7, below. 9I have interpolated on two passages: G 22t~-~ (M 241-242), and G 522*t-=. [37] 38 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The upshot of Abailard's insight is that universality pertains to the interpretation of signs: the effort to locate universal things is misguided. Some want to say that the universal is a collection; but do collections signify their members? ~ Some want to say that the universal is a substance of which individuals are accidents; but is a substance predicated of its accidents? e And some want to say that universals are words--that is noises; but noises are also individual things. ~ In short, to signify or to show ("monstrare") pertains to words; to be signified or shown pertains to things. 8 And to transfer the properties of one to the other leads to hopeless difficulties. ~ One can understand Abailard's exultation (and exaltation) at having shown both sides of a seething controversy to be equally misguided? ~ But what then remains as the problem of universals? It is this: one would expect that every sign would have some subject which it signifies; but universals seem to lack a proper subject. And does this not mean that universals are fictions (like goat-stag or chimera)? = Having thus set out rather baldly what I take to be Abailard's "clear idea," let me now try to show more fully how he goes about establishing the problem and providing for a solution. Abailard's position on universals is set forth in his two logic books, both of which begin... (shrink)

The era of the Tang dynasty was a period of great flourishing of all aspects of Chinese culture, when changes covered the most diverse spheres of philosophy, art and literature. The article examines the role played in this cultural transformation by translations from Sanskrit into Chinese of the religious and philosophical texts of Indian Buddhism. The specificity of the Chinese approach to the translation of Indian texts is demonstrated, when, at the initial stage, many works were (...) translated in a rather free style due to the lack of precisely established correspondences between Sanskrit and Chinese philosophical terms. The authors identify two additional factors that influenced the nature of the translations. Firstly, this is the requirement of compliance with the norms of public, mainly Confucian, morality. Secondly, the adaptation of the Indian philosophical context to the Chinese cultural and worldview traditions, which led to the emergence of new schools of religious and philosophical thought that were not known in India itself, such as Tiantai, Jingtu or Chan, each of which in its own way influenced the art of the Medieval China. Special attention is paid to the activities of the legendary translator, Xuanzang, whose travel to India gave a huge impetus to the development of Chinese philosophy in subsequent centuries, as well as to the contribution to Chinese culture and art, which was made by the translation activities of the three great teachers of the Tang era Shubhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. (shrink)

The commentary of the Italian physician and philosopher Pietro d'Abano on Bartholomew of Messina's Latin translation of Pseudo-Aristotle's 'Problemata Physica', published in 1310, constitutes an important historical source. In a section of the corpus Aristotelicum that was not part of the standard curriculum at the medieval university, the commentary of Pietro d'Abano investigates the complex relationship between text, translation, and commentary. The eight articles in this volume provide valuable insights into the manner in which Pietro d'Abano deals with (...) the problems of a translated text. They emphasize the idiosyncrasy of his approach in comparison to his contemporaries and successors, the particularities of his commentary in light of the habitual exegetical practices applied in the teaching of curricular texts, as well as the influence of philosophical traditions outside the strict framework of the medieval arts faculty. (shrink)

Interview of Veronica Pugach with Taras Lyuty about the project to support philosophical translation, launched by the Cultural Institution "Mizhvukhamy".

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 119-121 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Ethics and Political Philosophy The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought Arthur Stephen McGrade, John Kilcullen, and Matthew Kempshall, editors. Ethics and Political Philosophy. Vol. 2 of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 664. Cloth, $85.00. Paper, $29.95. M. S. Kempshall. (...) The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 401. Cloth, $95.00. With the exception of the thought of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, late medieval political and ethical philosophy has been neglected. Two recent books attempt to rectify this neglect. One is the second volume of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts. A translator of this volume, Matthew Kempshall, has also recently written a thorough analysis of the common good as it is discussed in late thirteenth-century scholasticism. Many of the texts discussed in this second book are translated by Kempshall in the first book.The new volume of translations now makes it possible for the reader unfamiliar with Latin to have some exposure to the medieval reception of Aristotle's ethical and political thought. The selections are deliberately taken from lesser-known figures who are not often translated, such as Albert the Great, Godfrey of Fontaines, and Augustine of Ancona. The selections are carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of literary genres. For example, the selection from Albert is part of his commentary of Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, [End Page 119] whereas the selection from Godfrey is a Quodlibetal Question, and that from Augustine of Ancona is part of a treatise. Moreover, there are some selections that show developments within a particular genre. For example, a translation from Buridan's commentary on Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics contrasts nicely with that of Albert. The selection from Albert focuses mostly on pleasure, the relationship between the active and the contemplative lives, and the connection between ethics and politics. His discussion of pleasure is philosophically important in light of twentieth-century discussions about reasons for actions. Moreover, these issues are all discussed in at least one of the other selections. Interestingly, Buridan's commentary on the same Book focuses instead on human freedom. Buridan makes fine distinctions that are relevant to contemporary debates about free will. Selections from Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and James of Viterbo all address the topic of the relationship between self-love and the virtuous life. These passages are relevant to the question of whether there is egoism in ancient and medieval ethical thought.The volume is a companion to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy and suffers from one of its weaknesses, which is that the selections can seem arbitrary. For example, the passage from Albert takes up nearly one quarter of the volume. Furthermore, sometimes the representation of an author by only one genre is misleading. For example, although Giles of Rome wrote a Quodlibetal Question (Quod 2, q. 20) that is directly attacked in a translation from James of Viterbo, Giles is represented only by a passage from his treatise De regimine principum. Moreover, the moral psychology of the late thirteenth century is not well-covered, which is odd considering the importance of Bonnie Kent's work in this area.One additional problem is that there are few notes to aid the reader. Sometimes the translations can be confusing. For example, in one passage "the Commentator" should be identified, since the name can apply to at least three individuals (262-3). More seriously, readers with little background in medieval thought might confuse the medieval referents signified in the translation by the words "state" or "love" with contemporary referents. The translations themselves are clear and the different translators follow a consistent set of guidelines. Anyone who tries to translate some of these passages for herself will understand that some... (shrink)

The problem of translation confronts every English, or French-language reader of Geschlecht III, from its title page on, by way of Derrida’s decision not to translate the German noun Geschlecht. In this paper, I explore the stakes of Derrida’s refusal to translate, by situating it within the context of the 1984–5 seminar, ‘Philosophical Nationality and Nationalism’, from which the text of Geschlecht III was taken. I show that the question of translation is already at the heart of (...) that seminar, which concerns the place of the idiom in philosophy, and why approaching the difficulty posed by the untranslatability of a term like Geschlecht might be the very objective of Derrida’s reading of Heidegger on Trakl. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the encounter of the Mādhva philosopher Vyāsatīrtha with the works of the Navya-Naiyāyika Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya. The article is based on original translations of passages from Vyāsatīrtha’s Nyāyāmr̥ta and Tarkatāṇḍava. Philosophically, the article focuses on the issue of empty-terms/nonexistent entities, particularly in the context of the theory of inference. I begin by outlining the origin of the Mādhva and Nyāya positions about these issues in their respective analyses of perceptual illusion. I then contrast the role of (...) Gaṅgeśa’s thought in the Nyāyāmr̥ta and Tarkatāṇḍava and show how Vyāsatīrtha responds to Gaṅgeśa’s ideas in different ways in those texts. I conclude with a discussion of how Vyāsatīrtha defends the Mādhva theory of “substrate-free” qualities against Gaṅgeśa in order to show that we can think and make valid inferences about nonexistent things. (shrink)

In the central chapter of this short work, Dumery shows that the Husserlian reduction cannot be stopped at the level of the constituting ego with its corresponding essences, for this level of intentionality necessarily involves a community of subjects and a world of essences. This multiplicity shows that passivity and dependence are characteristic of even this level and forces us beyond to a fourth level, the transcendent One. In supporting chapters Dumery discusses the philosopher's stance vis-à-vis religion and other areas (...) of human experience, "henology" vs. "ontology" as a philosophic basis for discussing God, and negative theology. He clarifies the classic proofs for God's existence from his own phenomenological viewpoint. The book is admirably lucid and forceful. The translation is very good, though the translator's Introduction is needlessly long and confused for such a short and clear text.—W. G. E. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 301-312 [Access article in PDF] Kant on Property: The Problem of Permissive Law Brian Tierney In a pathbreaking article published in 1982 Reinhold Brandt called attention to the significance of the concept of permissive natural law in Kant's political philosophy. Brandt noted that Kant's "rightful concept of practical reason" or "permissive law of practical reason" was of fundamental importance for understanding (...) the whole theory of the Rechtslehre, and he complained that the issue had been virtually ignored in the recent secondary literature. 1 Since then others have taken up the theme, but it remains relatively neglected in the vast modern literature on Kant. In the work of Brandt and in some other recent explorations of this question a primary concern has been to relate Kant's doctrine to other aspects of his critical theory. Brandt himself, for instance, compared the "provisional" and "peremptory" rights mentioned in the Doctrine of Right with the "problematic" and "assertoric" judgments of the Critique of Pure Reason. The problem that I want to consider is rather different. In the following study I want to consider primarily the internal structure of the Doctrine of Right and specifically to ask whether Kant's appeal to permissive natural law served a constructive purpose in the theory of property that he presented in that work or whether it was perhaps subversive of the argument that he developed. 2 This will require [End Page 301] some discussion of the other usages of the idea of permissive law that we find scattered in Kant's later writings. In pursuing such an inquiry we encounter various difficulties and apparent anomalies in Kant's teaching. I want finally to suggest that we might understand those difficulties better if we were to situate Kant's work in a broader historical context than those that have previously been considered, bearing in mind that the concept of permissive natural law had been discussed by jurists and political philosophers for several centuries before Kant took up the argument. Kant on Property When approaching Kant's Doctrine of Right it may be salutary to recall a remark of Mary Gregor, the translator of the work and a sympathetic reader of it. "Kant has never been accused of underestimating his readers," Gregor wrote, "but he seldom treats them so harshly." 3 The difficulty of the work is compounded by the fact that the text as we have it is apparently in a mutilated condition, with some passages transposed from their original contexts. Any reading of such a text will be open to dispute; but it seems necessary to attempt at least an outline of Kant's doctrine and to mention some of its complexities if we are to understand the function of permissive natural law in the argument presented.Kant's purpose was to formulate a doctrine of property based on reason alone, a doctrine in which "abstraction is made from all spatial and temporal conditions." 4 The principles he deduced were intended to apply to anyone "merely because and insofar as he is free and has practical reason." 5 The whole subsequent argument revolved around these concepts of practical reason and human freedom. Kant began by presenting some basic propositions and definitions. Obligation, he wrote, was "the necessity of a free action under a categorical imperative of reason." And an action was permitted or licit when it was not contrary to obligation. This freedom of action was called a moral faculty (facultas moralis). 6 According to Kant, the only innate right inhering in all persons was a right to freedom (defined as "independence from being coerced by another's [End Page 302] choice") insofar as this freedom could coexist with the freedom of all others. 7 A corresponding universal law of Right established the rule: "[S]o act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law." 8External laws imposed by another evidently did hinder one's freedom. Kant therefore held that a person was... (shrink)

A Text Worthy of Plotinus makes available for the first time information on the collaborative work that went into the completion of the first reliable edition of Plotinus’ Enneads: Plotini Opera, editio maior, three volumes (Brussels, Paris, and Leiden, 1951-1973), followed by the editio minor, three volumes (Oxford, 1964-1983). Pride of place is given to the correspondence of the editors, Paul Henry S.J. and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, with other prominent scholars of late antiquity, amongst whom are E.R. Dodds, B.S. Page, A.H. (...) Armstrong, and J. Igal S.J. Also included in the volume are related documents consisting in personal memoirs, course handouts and extensive biographical notices of the two editors as well as of those other scholars who contributed to fostering the revival of Plotinus in the latter half of the 20th century. Taken together, letters and documents let the reader into the problems – codicological, exegetical, and philosophical – that are involved in the interpretation of medieval manuscripts and their transcription for modern readers. Additional insights are provided into the nature of collaborative work involving scholars from different countries and traditions. A Text Worthy of Plotinus will prove a crucial archive for generations of scholars. Those interested in the philosophy of Plotinus will find it a fount of information on his style, manner of exposition, and handling of sources. The volume will also appeal to readers interested in broader trends in 20th century scholarship in the fields of Classics, History of Ideas, Theology, and Religion. (shrink)

문화 소통의 유일한 방편으로서 번역은 방법적 측면에서 절대적 위치를 가지고 있다. 문화적 소통이나 철학적 소통은 번역에서 시작되어 번역으로 끝난다고 해도 과언이 아니다. 그러므로 이질적인 집단 사이에서 번역의 역할은 매우 중요하다고 할 수밖에 없다. 그러나 그러한 중요성에도 불구하고 인문학적 대상으로서의 번역은 부차적 하위 분과로 경시되어 왔던 것도 사실이다. 그러한 경시의 여파는 제국주의 시기에 약소국의 문화와 이념적 보루를 무너뜨리는 침략의 선봉으로 작용했던 것도 사실이다. 이러한 문제는 번역 과정에서 번역자의 합리적이고 객관적인 철학이 개입되지 않았기 때문이다. 철학적 사유가 이질과 차이를 해소하는 방편이라고 본다면 번역 (...) 과정에서 철학적 판단의 개입은 정당할 수밖에 없다. 이 논문이 번역철학이라는 주제를 다루게 된 것은 차이는 차별의 근거가 될 수 없다는 전제하에서 근대 이해 진행된 번역의 현실적 문제를 지적하고 이를 비판적으로 검토하고자 한 것이다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Microscope of Experience: Christian Garve’s Translation of Cicero’s De Officiis (1783)Johan van der ZandeDuring the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Teschen of 1779, ending the phony War of Bavarian Succession, Frederick II and his court stayed in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. There, in conversation with Christian Garve, the city’s most famous son, the king strongly recommended a new German translation of Cicero’s On Moral (...) Duties (De Officiis), one of the classical texts of humanist philosophy and his favorite book. Frederick’s faithful subject dutifully obliged his sovereign. Four years later, in the subservient language of a dedication to a royal patron, Garve offered in due obedience to Frederick a result that, “perhaps flawed,” was “vindicated by the efforts directed toward the execution of the command.” 1Yet Garve’s interest in Cicero differed markedly from that of Frederick. After all, as Garve wrote in the preface to the philosophical commentary on his translation, Cicero’s book was written for “persons of the higher classes who participated in the affairs of state” and for whom “moral prescription often transformed into political instruction.” Clearly that was not the world in which Garve lived. The son of an artisan, Garve, after a brief stint as a professor of philosophy in Leipzig in the early 1770s, was forced by his illness to spend the rest of his life as a reclusive private scholar in his hometown. He admitted that Cicero sometimes “condescended to deal with those classes who occupy themselves as educators and scholars.” The producing classes, however, “this vast, indispensable, and valuable part of humankind,” could only find prescriptions [End Page 75] for the virtuous life in Cicero’s work insofar as they were human beings, not in relation to their station in life. In general terms Garve thought that Cicero had neglected to deal sufficiently with domestic duties, a reproach which he also leveled against another intellectual pedigree, Adam Ferguson. This did not mean, however, that Garve reduced the citizen’s actions to the private sphere, where they could be productive economically and concerned only with their own Bildung. On the contrary, for Garve useful citizens were those who committed themselves to sociability and to political engagement. Moral actions were not only to be judged according to their motivation (as Kant asserted) but also on their effects on society at large.This different emphasis, I suggest, was typical of the German popular philosophers, who in the time span between Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant formulated a philosophy of life and among whom Garve emerged as the foremost representative. As a group they constituted a philosophical movement in their own right and were not merely, as they are usually described, the popularizers of Wolff’s philosophy. Rather, popular philosophy was a characteristic compound of Wolffian rationalism and British empiricism. Some popular philosophers, mostly the older generation, were more inclined to the rationalist and others, among them Garve, to the empirical end of this spectrum. Little concerned with epistemological problems or with the irrational cult of life as were the life philosophies of the nineteenth century, the popular philosophers were primarily interested in the virtuous life, in a philosophical theory of moral and aesthetic action. Theirs was a “science of man,” that is, a combination of practical philosophy and literary skills with the goal of morally educating a literate but non-specialized public to be useful citizens of the absolute state. They wanted to speak with propriety on all themes of human existence rather than pursue those philosophical questions not directly related to human life. 2 I entirely agree with a recent commentator who describes Garve’s concerns as non-bourgeois, or better, pre-bourgeois and deeply rooted in humanist values. 3This approach shows in Garve’s Cicero translation and commentary. In Leipzig he had attended the lectures of the classical philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Reiz, who trained his students in precise, critical scholarship. When Garve became a professor himself, he and Reiz anonymously published a Latin edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Later, Garve wrote that his own philosophy was indebted to Reiz who had pointed out to him the close relationship between linguistic and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Microscope of Experience: Christian Garve’s Translation of Cicero’s De Officiis (1783)Johan van der ZandeDuring the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Teschen of 1779, ending the phony War of Bavarian Succession, Frederick II and his court stayed in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. There, in conversation with Christian Garve, the city’s most famous son, the king strongly recommended a new German translation of Cicero’s On Moral (...) Duties (De Officiis), one of the classical texts of humanist philosophy and his favorite book. Frederick’s faithful subject dutifully obliged his sovereign. Four years later, in the subservient language of a dedication to a royal patron, Garve offered in due obedience to Frederick a result that, “perhaps flawed,” was “vindicated by the efforts directed toward the execution of the command.” 1Yet Garve’s interest in Cicero differed markedly from that of Frederick. After all, as Garve wrote in the preface to the philosophical commentary on his translation, Cicero’s book was written for “persons of the higher classes who participated in the affairs of state” and for whom “moral prescription often transformed into political instruction.” Clearly that was not the world in which Garve lived. The son of an artisan, Garve, after a brief stint as a professor of philosophy in Leipzig in the early 1770s, was forced by his illness to spend the rest of his life as a reclusive private scholar in his hometown. He admitted that Cicero sometimes “condescended to deal with those classes who occupy themselves as educators and scholars.” The producing classes, however, “this vast, indispensable, and valuable part of humankind,” could only find prescriptions [End Page 75] for the virtuous life in Cicero’s work insofar as they were human beings, not in relation to their station in life. In general terms Garve thought that Cicero had neglected to deal sufficiently with domestic duties, a reproach which he also leveled against another intellectual pedigree, Adam Ferguson. This did not mean, however, that Garve reduced the citizen’s actions to the private sphere, where they could be productive economically and concerned only with their own Bildung. On the contrary, for Garve useful citizens were those who committed themselves to sociability and to political engagement. Moral actions were not only to be judged according to their motivation (as Kant asserted) but also on their effects on society at large.This different emphasis, I suggest, was typical of the German popular philosophers, who in the time span between Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant formulated a philosophy of life and among whom Garve emerged as the foremost representative. As a group they constituted a philosophical movement in their own right and were not merely, as they are usually described, the popularizers of Wolff’s philosophy. Rather, popular philosophy was a characteristic compound of Wolffian rationalism and British empiricism. Some popular philosophers, mostly the older generation, were more inclined to the rationalist and others, among them Garve, to the empirical end of this spectrum. Little concerned with epistemological problems or with the irrational cult of life as were the life philosophies of the nineteenth century, the popular philosophers were primarily interested in the virtuous life, in a philosophical theory of moral and aesthetic action. Theirs was a “science of man,” that is, a combination of practical philosophy and literary skills with the goal of morally educating a literate but non-specialized public to be useful citizens of the absolute state. They wanted to speak with propriety on all themes of human existence rather than pursue those philosophical questions not directly related to human life. 2 I entirely agree with a recent commentator who describes Garve’s concerns as non-bourgeois, or better, pre-bourgeois and deeply rooted in humanist values. 3This approach shows in Garve’s Cicero translation and commentary. In Leipzig he had attended the lectures of the classical philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Reiz, who trained his students in precise, critical scholarship. When Garve became a professor himself, he and Reiz anonymously published a Latin edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Later, Garve wrote that his own philosophy was indebted to Reiz who had pointed out to him the close relationship between linguistic and... (shrink)

This book contains the first English translation of Abūl-Walīd Ibn Rushd's (Averroes') so-called Epitome of Aristotle's Metaphysics. The original Arabic text was composed around 1160 as a sort of appendix to a series of compendia of Aristotle's works on natural philosophy by the famous Andalusian philosopher. The two most interesting things about this work are the fact that Averroes restructures here the Aristotelian text according to his own conception of metaphysics, as opposed to his great literal commentary which follows (...) the order of the Metaphysics section by section, and that he constantly revised this work over more than three decades. The present translation is based on a wide range of documents including, apart from the available Arabic editions, a number of medieval Arabic manuscripts not taken into consideration in these editions as well as the Renaissance translation into Latin prepared by Jacob Mantinus. It is accompanied by a commentary dealing with the major philosophical topics, Averroes' sources and problems of the transmission and constitution of the text. In addition, the most important variant readings of the manuscripts are noted in footnotes underneath the translation. (shrink)

This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz's sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum. The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz's Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite division of (...) matter entails perfect points, whether matter and space can be regarded as true wholes, whether motion is truly continuous, and the nature of body and substance. Comprising the second section is Pacidius Philalethi, Leibniz's brilliant dialogue of late 1676 on the problem of the continuity of motion. In the selections of the final section, from his Hanover writings of 1677-1686, Leibniz abandons his earlier transcreationism and atomism in favor of the theory of corporeal substance, where the reality of body and motion is founded in substantial form or force.Leibniz's texts (one in French, the rest in Latin) are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a valuable glossary detailing important terms and their translations. (shrink)

The author claims that the will to translation from foreign languages is an intrinsic tendency of development of any language. The article deals with the following problems of Ukrainian translation of the work «The Dawn of Day» by Friedrich Nietzsche: (1) Reproduction of the poetic style of Nietzsche’s writing. (2) Translation of Nietzsche’s neologisms that are not adopted in modern German language. (3) Interpretation of the influence of Nietzsche’s life experience on his thinking. -/- The author (...) analyses his own experience of translation of this work. He describes his strategy of translation which is based on the assumption that Nietzsche’s text should be translated not only as philosophical but also as a poetical one. The style of Nietzsche’s writing is deeply rooted in his life experience, and first of all in his illness. His main concepts express the fundamental aspects of existence. That is why Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s thinking can be used as methodological basis for translation of Nietzsche’s works. From this point of view we can understand and translate Nietzsche not only as a philosopher but also as a poet. -/- So the strategy of translation is based on the following principles: (a) The text should be interpreted in the context of Nietzsche’s life experience. (b) The principal words of Nietzsche should be understood not as rigorous notions but as «existentials». (c) The Ukrainian translation should reproduce not only the meaning of the original text but also the poetical style of Nietzsche’s writing. (shrink)

The “Treatise on the Relationship of the Real and the Ideal in Nature, or the Development of the First Principles of the Philosophy of Nature and the Principles of Gravity and Light” is one of the last essays on Naturphilosophie that Schelling wrote. It was a topic that had occupied his attention since 1796, and as such it marks the end of an era. It is distinguished by its unusual approach to the problem of matter, which becomes, in his discussion, (...) the problem of force or energy. Without being able to avail himself of the language of the conservation of energy or mass, it can be argued that Schelling makes a valiant attempt to express that insight, using the terminology of the bond and the entities bound by it. The text reaffirms Schelling’s strong affinities with Spinoza, anticipates Schopenhauer, and continues his quarrel with Fichte. (shrink)

The article discusses the strategies of translation of «machine texts» on the example of generative transformers (GPT). Currently, the study and development of machine text generation has become an important task for processing and analyzing texts in different languages. Modern technologies of artificial intelligence and neural networks allow us to create powerful tools for activities in this field, which are becoming more and more effective every year. Generative transformers are one of such tools. The study of generative (...) transformers also allows developers to create more accurate and efficient machine translation algorithms, which improves the quality of translations and improves the user experience. In this context, the features of machine texts created by generative transformers, their patterns, errors and imperfections, which require special translation strategies, deserve special interest. Today we can say that the generation of unique and relevant texts is a routine task that has been automated. Nevertheless, certain restrictions for the use of such texts still exist, in particular, their use requires the use of appropriate translation strategies. The paper proposes the author’s typology of translation strategies, where, taking into account the features of AST, it is proposed to add a substrategy of tertiary-moderation translation. (shrink)

Looking at Holocaust testimonies, which in her view always involve some form of translation, the author seeks to develop an ethics of translation in the context of Levinas’ hyperbolic ethics of responsibility. Calling on Benjamin and Derrida to make explicit the precipitous task of the translator, she argues that the translator faces an ethical call or assignation that resembles the fundamental structure of Levinasian subjectivity. The author relates the paradoxes of translation in Holocaust testimony to Levinas’ silence (...) on the problem of translation—puzzling if one considers Levinas’ focus on the ethical essence of language, his multilingualism, and the fact that he wrote his texts in a second language. She proposes that the trace of the philosopher’s displacement from his linguistic community can be discerned in his exilic conception of ethical subjectivity and in the testimonial impetus that animates his work. Thus, although Levinas’ Saying is posited as a translinguistic horizon that transcends the boundaries of a particular national language, it carries the remainder of the disavowed loss of the mother tongue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.4 (2003) 379-383 [Access article in PDF] Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology: Including Texts by Edmund Husserl. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Ed. Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo. Trans. Leonard Lawlor. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002. Pp. 192. $19.95 pbk. The most striking characteristic of this volume is the manner that it presents layers of interpretation to the reader, particularly in that the writing is not (...) intended as a postmodern fête, and has limited value as a hermeneutic enterprise. Ultimately the book's true contribution is the seventy-nine pages devoted to the translation and printing of lecture notes used by [End Page 379] Merleau-Ponty in a class he gave at College de France, shortly before his death. However, the explanation of why this is so will have to be withheld until the end of this review.The course that Merleau-Ponty gave was organized around three essays published by Edmund Husserl. These essays are included in the volume reviewed here and must be briefly dealt with, as they are the core of whatever thinking occurs within and around this book. Interesting essays all, they deal with three longstanding issues of philosophical debate. The first essay challenges the classical notion of a transcendent ideal. Husserl attempts to show, through an examination of geometry, that an ideal is first called into existence when it is called into the realm of human experience, and he does this without ever resorting to the quality of detached being that Plato attributes to ideals. Then, in his second essay, Husserl attempts to defeat modernist cosmology, arguing, against Galileo, that the earth is a fixed point in the universe. Finally, his third essay hearkens back to Heraclitus and Parmenides, examining how human experience is able to extract a sense of atemporal quiddity in a world that is constantly falling into a past. A reader might be baffled that an intellectual could make such claims, but they are made from within the framework of phenomenology, and, within this paradigm as Husserl explains it, the claims he makes do not seem ridiculous at all. "The Origins of Geometry," "The Originary Ark, The Earth, Does Not Move," and "The World of the Living Present,"— these are the three essays that Merleau-Ponty forms his lecture course around. At sixty pages within this volume, they constitute one third of the text itself. For intellectual worth, I would say that these essays are the finest contribution in the text, but that claim is discounted because much of the essay material was already available in English translation. Nevertheless, it only makes sense to have it included in this volume in order to conveniently work back and forth between Merleau-Ponty's notes and Husserl's actual essays.However, that brings us to a significant problem within the text itself. If readers are like me, they will realize that it is often difficult to draw conclusions from the notes of others. Like secretarial shorthand, notes rely on a reader's ability to read both what has been written and what has been withheld in an expressive passage. There is no code that will allow us to recover what Merleau-Ponty recovered as he looked down on his podium at these notes and then raised his head to speak to his class. All that we have are the fragments, and they do not make a coherent argument, lacking both the clarity and the painstaking thoroughness that we find in books [End Page 380] such as The Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible. Certainly one cannot fault Merleau-Ponty for this—he did not write these notes for us, but for himself. His course might have been magnificent, even transcendent, but we will not know that from these fragments.I suppose it could be argued that the ambiguity inherent in such fragments liberates the text and opens it for some sort of radical hermeneutic exegesis; however, I sigh at the very thought of such an argument. Unless we intend to transform... (shrink)

The "Culture Going Global" initiative has ushered in significant opportunities for the dissemination of Chinese culture, placing the role of translators at the forefront of this global cultural dialogue. This paper examines the construction of translators' identities through the dual lenses of philosophy and international relations, highlighting the profound ethical and philosophical implications of their work. From a philosophical standpoint, the analysis addresses issues such as the interplay between Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, the intricacies of (...) class='Hi'>translation as an interpretative act, and the implications of post-colonial theory in the translation process. Conversely, the international relations perspective sheds light on how translations influence global cultural perceptions and contribute to the shaping of world order. The identity of the translator is explored as a complex site of negotiation where challenges such as Western centrism, multicultural dynamics, cultural hegemony, and power relations converge. These challenges not only question the neutrality of translation but also emphasize the translator's role as a mediator of cultural values and a constructor of socio-political realities. Translators are posited not just as linguistic intermediaries but as pivotal figures in promoting global cultural pluralism, advancing Chinese philosophical and contemporary socialist values, and innovating translation theory and practice. The paper argues that addressing these philosophical and ethical challenges is crucial for the successful global transmission of Chinese culture and for fostering a more inclusive understanding of the role of translators in international relations. By critically engaging with these issues, translators can contribute to a broader and deeper appreciation of Chinese culture on the global stage, thus supporting the broader objectives of socialism with Chinese characteristics. (shrink)

The situation after the 13th century, however, badly needs to be clarified by additional detailed research. Bruno Nardi and Anneliese Maier have exhibited a nice understanding of the extraordinary complexities surrounding the question of what "Averroism" might be during this later period, but they stand nearly alone in this knowledge; even Gilson is content to dismiss, with a few strokes of the pen, the entire "Averroist" tradition as authority-bound, sterile, and doomed to early extinction through sheer stagnation. But the very (...) history of philosophy attests to the vitality of the tradition, whatever it may consist of, or at least to the vitality of the designation, for Cremonini in the 17th century was still preferring the commentaries of Averroes to all others, and late in the 16th century Marcantonio Zimara was commonly known as an "Averroist"--to name but two obvious cases. From before the time of Siger of Brabant through to the 17th century Averroes was read as the Commentator on Aristotle, and every generation throughout this period reveals its quota of philosophers who are, or who could easily be, dubbed "Averroists." It is here being asked: what do all these thinkers share, if anything? A common attitude toward the nature of the intellective soul? A common sympathy toward Averroes' Neo-Platonic rendering of Aristotle? A common blind reproduction of the Commentator's interpretation of the Stagirite? An unwarranted trust in the capacities of unaided reason, as manifested in a constant opposition of the conclusions of natural reason to the doctrines of the Christian Revelation? A common tendency in the direction of doubt, insincerity, heresy, and even atheism? It is here suggested that, far from taking "Averroism" as an obsolescent and disappearing species of subversive thinkers, it would be more enlightening to consider the tradition as symptomatic of the essential inability of Christian thinkers to assimilate Greek philosophy without modifications which would profoundly alter the fundamental character of that philosophy. Or, to phrase it somewhat differently, throughout the mediaeval period, when the domain of natural reason was being radically separated from the domain of faith, the rigorous rendering of Aristotle that Averroes presented maintained a steady appeal, which waned only when new translations from the Greek pointed up the Neo-Platonic predispositions of the Commentator, and revealed that the original spirit of the Stagirite was rather different than the flavor that Averroes introduces to the texts. (shrink)

Not uncommon for Russian translations of British philosophical classics is the problem of not conveying the notions of imagination and fancy properly. The purpose of this paper is to serve as a reminder of the fact that concepts of fancy and imagination began to grow apart as early as the first part of 18 th century, and it is necessary to treat them accordingly for the translation to be correct. Very soon, the notion of imagination and the distinction (...) between imagination and fancy began to be involved in the contemplation of political reality. Today it is the notion of political imagination that attracts researchers the most, providing a tool for explaining continuity and discontinuities in political process as well as left utopianism and conservative nostalgia. The awareness of the distinction between imagination and fancy could foster research activity in such fields as the history of ideas and intellectual history as well as studies in ideology and power. The distinction is examined on the basis of texts usually considered to be written by authors of conservative strand. It is an interesting fact, indeed, that it was conservatives who made the main contribution to the development of this distinction in English-language philosophy. Among them are Coleridge, who resolutely draw the line between fancy and imagination, and Burke with his appeal to the moral imagination. The kindred typology of imagination was proposed in 20 th century by such thinkers as Irving Babbitt, T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk. The importance of Kirk lies partly in that fact that he began the discussion of the conservative attitude to imagination and tried to frame it as a coherent narrative. (shrink)

Technology has advanced significantly over the past decades. Significant changes have occurred in the field of translation with the development of programs such as Google.translate and Yandex.translator. The presented applications are already being actively implemented in translation agencies to optimize translation activities, where written translations of documents, articles, annotations, etc. must be provided to customers as quick as possible. While working with popular science text, online programs help translators gain time, but this requires to edit the text. (...) The artistic style requires more concentration and dedication, because. the means of expression presented in it require taking into account the context and nuances of the use of certain units of language. Machine translation has the potential to become an indispensable assistant in the hands of a translator. This article discusses machine translation of expressive means, namely metaphors. The study is illustrated with examples and a comparative analysis of the translation of metaphorical units is carried out, the classification of metaphors is identified and an analysis is carried out with which means of expression the translator is able to cope with. The difficulties of translating metaphors are analyzed. (shrink)

Certain philosophical problems occur in biblical interpretations where concepts that belong to the scriptural world – full of references to demonic forces and miraculous events including raisings from the dead – have to be translated into meaningful concepts in our twenty-first-century western world. A crucial issue that arises is that any interpretation of a text can, at best, be probable and can never be absolutely final and certain. This in turn has implications for the act of faith that (...) any believer makes. Church traditions, the teachings of the Church on matters of faith and morals, and papal dictates are also subject to interpretation and are equally problematic. Attempts by Kant and others to avoid these difficulties by arguing that biblical texts are not descriptive but quasi-performative are also considered and rejected. (shrink)

Unlike the most common in the modern studies – the psychological, ethical, socio-cultural – approaches to the problem of suffering, in this paper the philosophical problematics of ontological dimension of the suffering in the Buddhist philosophy is raised. Many modern scholars are inclined to think that a more adequate translation for the Sanskrit term duḥkha is “unsatisfactoriness”. However, from the material presented in the article follows that this rendering does not feet the sense of the notion of duḥkha (...) when it is examined in the ontological plane, and thus the traditional translation “suffering” in this sense remains more adequate. It is also shown that the etymology of the Sanskrit term duḥkha as a «improperly installed» axle of the wheel of a cart has strong connotations with the metaphor of the wheel and the symbol of swastika in the Buddhist cultural tradition (wheel of being, three turnings of the Wheel of Dharma etc.). In this paper the main causes of suffering (self, body, ignorance, desire and other afflictions) exposed in Buddhist texts and scholarship are revised, and on the example of the Cūḷasuññata-sutta it is demonstrated that the real final cause of suffering in the Early Buddhism is our body and not our “self” and ignorance. While in the Mahayana Buddhism based on the philosophy of emptiness and the principle of nonduality, the dichotomy of soul and body is removed, the attainment of nirvana becomes possible in this body and the real cause and source of suffering becomes the ignorance. On the other hand, the paper argues that just the ontological view on the problem of suffering (under the angle of the principle of nonduality) provides us with understanding of the fact that the suffering can be overcome despite its indestructible ontological status. (shrink)

The article contains the historico-philosophical analysis of the lexical and conceptual aspects of the concept of “fortuna” in the texts of Antoniy Radyvylovs’kyj (further A.R.). This problem has not been studied by historians of philosophy yet. The analysis is carried out in the context of Ukrainian moral thought of the Baroque period (1610 - 1680-s). -/- The author proposes the historico-philosophical interpretation of A.R.’s use of the lexeme fortuna and its doublets on the basis of Vilen Gorsky’s (...) methodology. For the first time it has been proven that: (1) the lexeme fortuna was usually translated by Ukrainian intellectuals of the Baroque period as “happiness”; (2) but the fortuna was interpreted by A.R. as the instrument in God’s hands and, therefore, may have either a positive or a negative meaning, depending on the divine providence and the moral virtues of a Christian; (3) the special aspects of how A.R. used the lexical item fortuna and its doublets are: a) the preacher used a Latin lexeme fortuna which is not typical for his entourage; b) depending on the situations, these lexical items may be interchangeable or get specific connotations; (4) in the texts of A.R. the content of the lexeme “fortuna” had not been a full-fledged philosophical concept yet, however it constituted an element of the worldview and beliefs about human destiny, luck, abilities, and happiness; but at the same time A.R.’s views on the fortune are directly based on the texts of ancient and modern Stoics: in particular, Seneca, Boethius, and Lipsius. (shrink)

Archytas of Tarentum is one of the three most important philosophers in the Pythagorean tradition, a prominent mathematician, who gave the first solution to the famous problem of doubling the cube, an important music theorist, and the leader of a powerful Greek city-state. He is famous for sending a trireme to rescue Plato from the clutches of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II, in 361 BC. This 2005 study was the first extensive enquiry into Archytas' work in any language. It (...) contains original texts, English translations and a commentary for all the fragments of his writings and for all testimonia concerning his life and work. In addition there are introductory essays on Archytas' life and writings, his philosophy, and the question of authenticity. Carl A. Huffman presents an interpretation of Archytas' significance both for the Pythagorean tradition and also for fourth-century Greek thought, including the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

The author of the article aims to find out the reasons for the modern rehabilitation of the history of philosophy, as well as to describe the factors that contributed to the negative attitude towards it in the past. The analysis of the factors and presuppositions of the criticism of the importance of the history of philosophy is based on the position of N. Malbranche, who understood historical and philosophical discourse as a useless reading of philosophical texts. The (...) study of the history of philosophy is the opposite of critical comprehension of the content. For Malbranche, there are also problems of the impossibility of mastering all the doctrines of the past, the lack of value in knowing about the reasoning of an individual philosopher, and the criterion for selecting interpretations of philosophical doctrine. The author concludes that the only thing that the history of philosophy can be as a reflection only in the "now" is its constant self-legitimation, because this is the only way to maintain its involvement in philosophy. (shrink)

The paper surveys the problem of language and translation in Antoine Berman’s pioneering achievements. This French philosopher of translation was deeply influenced not only by Schleiermacher, who affirmed the unity of thought and expression, but also by Benjamin, who drew attention to the formalism of language. In Berman’s view the essence of language lies in signifiers and letters. He criticized the Platonic view of language and translation which endows non-sensual, mental, and universal elements, with a higher ontological (...) status. Thus Berman proposed a modern theory of translation without Platonism. Meanings can be realized through and within letters not only in the source language, but also in the target language. In this sense, Berman’s philosophy of translation clearly reflects “the achievements of modern semiotics” . The paper criticizes the conception of translation as trapped within the logic of identity, which ignores the differences between, and the multiplicity of, languages as a result of a deep-rooted drive to obtain a universal meaning. The paper shows that Berman’s philosophy reflects and accepts this multiplicity allowing thereby the logic of difference/otherness to flourish in translation. (shrink)

The Charmides is among Plato's most intriguing and perplexing dialogues. The range of subjects touched or treated is extremely wide: matters logical, epistemological, moral, ethical, political, and religious. In many cases, these are discussed in a highly inconclusive and aporetic way, especially when it comes to the subject of knowledge. Finally, the dialogue is also difficult on almost every level of its expression; mock-reasonings, misunderstandings, ironies, paradoxes, and perplexities abound. As a result, the run of its many arguments, both on (...) the short and the long range, and its overall structure are not easy to discern. If a text of such a character is to be made completely accessible, a full-scale commentary is required; it is much to be regretted, therefore, that there is no commentary in which the difficulties of the Greek, the argument, and the place of the philosophical problems in the development of Plato's thought are comprehensively and coherently explained. This monograph does not aspire to that status, but makes an essential contribution towards achieving that aim (in addition to the many other works in the field, Lamb's scrupulous translation of 1927 and Bloch's penetrating study of 1973 in particular) by presenting a detailed examination of forty-two passages of which the interpretation is disputed; many more minor problems are dealt with along the way. In all matters of interpretation, special attention has been paid to defining the exact place of the passage within the run of the, often intricate, argument. The result of this attention can also be observed in an analytical 'Summary of the contents of the Charmides'. (shrink)

This article aims to contextualize and problematize Alexandre Kojève’s Note on Hegel and Heidegger, written in 1936 and unpublished during his lifetime, which is being introduced into Russian-language scholarship. A translation of the Note is published in the same issue with the permission of the copyright holders. This paper provides a general introduction to Kojève’s philosophy, illustrates possible reading strategies for Kojève and the place of the translated Note in his corpus of the philosopher’s texts, and describes the (...) philosophical and historical circumstances of the text, namely that it was composed as an extension of a review on Tragische Existenz. Zur Philosophie Martin Heidegger by Alfred Delp written and published by Kojève that same year in Recherches philosophique. The article reconstructs the lines of reference that are essential to understanding Alexandre Kojève and provides a critique of certain statements. Finally, on the basis of an analysis of Kojève’s language, it offers a broader thesis on the epistemological problems of Kojève’s philosophy, the discovery of which led him to make a series of debatable statements in the philosophy of history (on the necessity for the philosopher to participate in the realization of the end of history), in anthropology (on the difference between people in their capacity to be philosophers or sages depending on a philosophical and religious attitude that is not entirely dependent on them), and in his decision to leave academia and turn to the ideological and diplomatic provision of economic integration of European states during the Cold War. (shrink)

This dissertation presents a new viewpoint regarding the problem of understanding the nature of religious belief, based on examining apparent contradictions in Confucian religious texts and their implications on the life of the believer. The approach is demonstrated primarily by focusing on a pioneering Neo-Confucian text from the 11th century AD, the Tongshu by Zhou Dunyi. The approach is also used in new readings of a few classical Confucian and Neo-Confucian texts. It is suggested that the main concepts (...) appear in the texts as paradoxical since they belong to a form of life that demands daily confrontations of the practitioner with practical dilemmas. It is essential for the religious form of life that only through living by it, one can see that the text is not simply contradictory; rather, it talks in riddles of a special kind: riddles which are introduced--and answered--by the religious form of life. ;In order to show the significance of the paradoxical language of Tongshu, the thesis is developed in two directions: historical-religious and philosophical-methodological. The first chapter presents a new translation of the text and its commentary. The second chapter suggests an understanding of major ideas in the text, that is of propriety, sincerity, and sagehood, by means of reference to other works of the era. The third chapter presents the method and terminology used in the thesis which are based on later Wittgenstein's ideas on understanding, particularly regarding understanding religious belief and practice. The fourth chapter concludes the thesis by presenting a new understanding of the above ideas as riddles that are responded to in practice. ;The contributions of the proposed dissertation are three-fold: First, from the Confucian perspective, the dissertation contains a new translation of the Tongshu, and a first translation of its commentary, as well as a new method to deal with texts. From the philosophical perspective, the thesis offers an application of later Wittgenstein to a field not commonly discussed in this context. From the perspective of the study of religion, it may serve as both a method and an implication of the question "what is religion about?". (shrink)

Edited with New Translation by Richard McKirahan With a New Preface by Malcolm Schofield This book is a revised and expanded version of A.H. Coxon's full critical edition of the extant remains of Parmenides of Elea—the fifth-century B.C. philosopher by many considered "one of the greatest and most astonishing thinkers of all times." Coxon's presentation of the complete ancient evidence for Parmenides and his comprehensive examination of the fragments, unsurpassed to this day, have proven invaluable to our understanding of (...) the Eleatic since the book's first publication in 1986. This edition, edited by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield, is released on the 100th anniversary of Coxon's birth. This new edition for the first time includes English translations of the testimonia and of any Ancient Greek throughout the book, as well as an English/Greek glossary by Richard McKirahan, and revisions by the late author himself. The text consists of Coxon's collations of the relevant folios of manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus, Proclus and Simplicius and includes all extant fragments, a commentary, the testimonia, a complete list of sources, linguistic parallels from both earlier and later authors, and the fullest critical apparatus that has appeared since Diels’ _Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta _. The collection of testimonia includes the philosophical discussions of Parmenides by Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, most of which had been omitted by Diels. The introduction discusses the history of the text, the language and form of the poem, Parmenides’ use and understanding of the verb ‘to be’, his place in the history of earlier and later philosophy and the biographical tradition. In the commentary Coxon deals in detail with both the language and the subject matter of the poem and pays full attention to Parmenides’ account of the physical world. The appendix relates later Eleatic arguments to those of Parmenides. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 128.1 (2007) 133-137MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byLiba Taub University of Cambridge [email protected] A. Huffman. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xvi + 665 pp. Cloth, $175.Diogenes Laertius described Archytas of Tarentum as "the one who rescued Plato by means of a letter, when he was about to be killed by Dionysius," adding that "he was also admired (...) among the multitude for every virtue" (Lives of the Philosophers 8.79, trans. Huffman, 256). Archytas is known to historians of ancient philosophy for his connection to Plato, although the precise nature of the relationship is, as Huffman explains, not entirely clear. Archytas' work on mathematics and harmonics and his thought experiment regarding the limits of the universe have attracted the attention of scholars particularly interested in history and philosophy of science. But prior to this volume, there has been no book-length study of Archytas of Tarentum (as Huffman notes, O. F. Gruppe's Über die Fragmente des Archytas und der ältern Pythagoreer [Berlin, 1840] was not concerned with understanding Archytas' thought but with arguing that no authentic fragments survive). Huffman's work will serve as the definitive study of Archytas.Overall, Huffman presents a very carefully considered account of Archytas' life, his work, and his influence. The study is meticulous in its detail, and Huffman writes engagingly and with humor. Furthermore, the merit of the volume is not confined to its usefulness for understanding Archytas and the history of Pythagorean thought. The subtitle of the volume—Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician King—only hints at the wealth of topics dealt with in the book. Through his detailed commentary, Huffman has produced a study that will be valuable for historians of philosophy, science, mathematics, and music who are more generally interested in problems such as the geometrical duplication of the cube and the division of the tetrachords in harmonics. Huffman's commentary engages closely and critically with the literature, providing an up-to-date review of relevant scholarship as well as fresh interpretations of some of the material. His thorough treatment of numerous issues and problems will be a valued resource for readers and encourage further discussion and study.Huffman's study of Archytas is divided into three parts: the first consists of several introductory essays concerned with "Life, writings, and reception," "The philosophy of Archytas," and "The authenticity question." The second part is devoted to the genuine fragments, and the third to the genuine testimonia; both of these provide the texts, translations, and very detailed and enormously useful commentary. One appendix deals with spurious writings and testimonia; another focuses on Archytas' name.As Huffman explains, the texts usually regarded as spurious far outnumber those that are thought to be genuine: only about one-hundred lines of text attributed to Archytas and printed in Diels-Kranz (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th ed. [Dublin and Zürich, 1952], henceforth DK) are usually regarded as genuine, while over twelve-hundred lines of almost certainly spurious texts are [End Page 133] collected in H. Thesleff, The Pythagorean Texts of the Hellenistic Period (Åbo, 1965). Huffman, who clearly describes his criteria of judgment (97–100, and in the relevant portions of the commentary), accepts basically the same canon of four fragments as DK, although, as he explains, for somewhat different reasons, and he supplements the testimonia with some overlooked by DK. Tackling the problems posed by the "hodgepodge" of Attic, Doric, Lesbian, and Epic forms preserved in the manuscripts, Huffman has adopted the general approach of DK, only printing the Doric forms when they are found in manuscripts or strongly suggested by manuscript readings (xiv).Archytas was renowned in antiquity for a number of reasons. He was credited, controversially, with having intervened on Plato's behalf in order to rescue him from Dionysius II of Syracuse. He was also elected stratēgos numerous (arguably seven) times in Tarentum. And he was credited with having offered solutions to problems in geometry and harmonics, as... (shrink)

Problem moralności w świetle języków słowiańskich.Artykuł jest próbą odpowiedzi na stawiane często pytanie: czy istnieje różnica między pojęciami Moral i Sitte. Na ogół odpowiada się, że pojęcia te są przez Kanta używane synonimicznie, oddanie różnicy miedzy nimi – jeśli miałaby być podkreślona – sprawia trudności tłumaczom dzieł Kanta. Ważnych intuicji dotyczących sposobu oddawania niuansów kantowskiej terminologii w języku polskim dostarczają pisma Krzysztofa Celestyn Mrongowiusza, ucznia Kanta i autora zbiorów notatek z wykładów Kanta o moralności, tłumacza i pisarza.

The claim of this work is that philosophy is a kind of autobiographical practice. To investigate and defend this claim I look to three notable occasions in the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson in which the philosophical is, I argue, a translation of the autobiographical. ;There are three parts of this work, each of which aims to illuminate the autobiographical nature of philosophical tasks and problems. For special consideration, I investigate Emerson's experience of the (...) death of others, the anxiety of inheritance, and the loss of vision. In the first part, I look at the way in which the corpse is related to the corpus , and the manner in which performances have propositional content. In the second part, I concern myself with paradoxes involved in Emerson's version of exemplarity. In the third part, I focus on how Emerson's persistent use of ocular metaphor signals a way of understanding subjectivity, namely as something that is constituted visually, and how this use is indicative of Emerson's view that perception is fatal. I consider the implications of a selfhood that is regarded to be metaphorically as fragile and limited as the human eye. ;I point out some of the significant ways in which human bodily constitution impacts moral, aesthetic, and metaphysical life. I may enjoy the experiences that attend thinking, but alas the conditions of embodiment announce themselves, and there is no amount of cognitive negotiation that can save me from having to cope with the necessities of mortality and inheritance, and with the limitations of perception. I cannot overcome my status as a body---that is, as a text---and so I cannot undo the necessity that my life is an incarnation of my philosophy, and that my philosophy is a surrogate instance of my life. No matter how distant my philosophical projects seem to be from my life, they are wholly constituted as autobiographical exercises. (shrink)

This important work is a wonderful attempt at making the perennial problems of philosophers come alive with meaning for those who are just beginning their journey into the turbulent depths of philosophical reasoning. The attraction of philosophy is its thoughtful yet intensely critical exploration of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, and ideas that shape our understanding and influence our lives. Successful efforts to make such concerns intelligible, let alone captivating or compelling for the uninitiated reader, are extremely rare. Yet (...) Dr. Mackenzie has accomplished this feat through his extraordinary ability to untangle the complexities of ancient and contemporary problems while demonstrating the beauty of philosophical exploration. So often one hears that philosophy is too complicated for beginners to grasp, that contemporary readers are ill-prepared for the rigorous demands that analyses and syntheses of theoretical ideas require. Irrespective of such claims, it is to Dr. Mackenzie's credit that The Problems of Philosophers brings home to receptive minds, both young and old, some of the basic metaphysical questions that have captivated, puzzled, and perplexed intellectuals for centuries. In each case Dr. Mackenzie unravels difficult problems in an engaging style that sustains both the reader's interest and enthusiasm for each new topic encountered. As the text moves from the Pre-Socratics and Plato to critical thinking, informal fallacies, and on to Descartes, readers will emerge with sharpened skills and a keener understanding of method. Later these techniques are directed to special problems: the existence and nature of God, freedom, mind and body, and moral knowledge. Whether the discussion centers on Thales, Zeno, Protagoras, Lucretius, Socrates, Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Bentham, Mill, or Kant, interested readers will come away with a new-found confidence in their own ability to engage in philosophical discourse, and a deeper appreciation not only for critical analysis but also for carefully crafted, well-developed arguments. (shrink)

An attempt to investigate philosophical texts (in this case, Hegelian ones) from the point of view of a single (in this case, Marxist-Leninist) ideology leads to a change in their meaning. Concepts or are interpreted in the exact opposite sense, which revives the old problem from Aristotle, the relationship between the name and the thing. When names are imposed on things that are opposite to those that originally exist, the correspondence between the name and the thing is violated, (...) leading to the destruction of the thing or the whole world, if they are consciously renamed, then the key things of the world are not recognized. If a person is self-consciousness, as Hegel defines it, then such a person loses both consciousness and the mind closely connected with it, he moves away from the mind (goes crazy) and receives the definition of an unreasonable (insane, demens) mortal living being, thereby losing and the name "man". About this in the VI century. Boethius wrote, Berdyaev defined it as a disease of being, and Nietzsche as degenerativeness. J. Agamben defined the current state that emerged after the pandemic as a rivalry between three religions: Christianity, capitalism and science. The upper hand in this rivalry is won by a science deprived of a theoretical status, which put forward as one of its modes medicine, understood as a religion and used by the authorities as a system of coercive rules. He calls this state the beginning of a world civil war. In turn, such a state is really capable of depriving the participants and supporters of such a war of self-consciousness desired by Hegel and, accordingly, the status of participation in the human race predicted by Boethius. (shrink)

The third volume of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts will allow scholars and students access in English, to major texts that form the debate over mind and knowledge at the center of medieval philosophy. Beginning with thirteenth-century attempts to classify the soul's powers and to explain the mind's place within the soul, the volume proceeds systematically to consider the scope of human knowledge and the role of divine illumination, intentionality and mental representation, and attempts to (...) identify the object of human knowledge in terms of concepts and propositions. The authors included are Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, William Alnwick, Peter Aureol, William Ockham, William Crathorn, Robert Holcot, Adam Wodeham as well as two anonymous Parisian masters of arts. This volume will be an important resource for scholars and students of medieval philosophy, history, theology and literature. (shrink)

This article has a twofold scope: I want to suggest that the term “philosophical archaeology” is a methodologically significant concept which is relevant when working historically with the humanities—texts primarily. As a means for this the two most interesting philosophical archaeologists will play a key role: Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. Furthermore, I want to discuss why philosophical archaeology is needed when working critically with what Jan Assmann so famously has defined as cultural memory scholarship. For (...) this purpose Carlo Ginzburg’s concept of, especially, the principle of reality will be discussed lastly where also the difference—or, perhaps, the alleged difference-between law and history, proof and fact will be debated. (shrink)

The Hegel Lectures Series Series Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and (...) manuscripts. Lectures from specific years are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources. Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion represent the final and in some ways the decisive element of his entire philosophical system. His conception and execution of the lectures differed significantly on each of the occasions he delivered them, in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831. The older editions introduced insoluble problems by conflating these materials into an editorially constructed text. The present volumes establish a critical edition by separating the series of lectures and presenting them as independent units on the basis of a complete re-editing of the sources by Walter Jaeschke. The English translation has been prepared by a team consisting of Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson, and J. Michael Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris. Now widely recognized as the definitive English edition, it is being reissued by Oxford in the Hegel Lectures Series. The three volumes include editorial introductions, critical annotations on the text, textual variants, and tables, bibliography, and glossary. 'The Consummate Religion' is Hegel's name for Christianity, which he also designates 'the Revelatory Religion'. Here he offers a speculative interpretation of major Christian doctrines: the Trinity, creation, humanity, estrangement and evil, Christ, the Spirit, the spiritual community, church and world. These interpretations have had a powerful and controversial impact on modern theology. (shrink)

Proclus' Elements of Theology is a concise summa of the Neoplatonic system in its fully developed form; and for the student of late Greek thought second in importance only to the Enneads of Plotinus. Professor Dodds has provided a critical text based on a personal examination of some forty manuscripts, together with an English translation and a philosophical and linguistic commentary. First published in 1933, this second edition includes an Appendix of Addenda et Corrigenda and is widely regarded (...) and respected as the definitive edition of the text today. (shrink)