Finnish is one of the few existent Finno-Ugric languages, a language without articles, and with only one, genderless word for the pronouns “she” and “he”. Due to this, the problems faced by the Finnish translators of _The Second Sex_ differed in some ways from those discussed after the publication of the new English translation. This chapter describes the genesis of the second, unabridged Finnish translation, the choices made by the translators as well as the philosophical interpretations motivating those choices. In (...) addition, Beauvoir’s way of understanding the concept of becoming is analyzed. The chapter ends with a discussion of the philosophy of translation and of the reception of the second Finnish translation. (shrink)

The article focuses on Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophical dialogue dedicated to the nature of human and happiness as a bright example of a harmonious fusion of philosophical ideas and individual style. A comparative analysis based on a hermeneutic approach helped to assess the equivalency in representing the lexical, syntactical, and emotional levels of the reconstructed Ukrainian version of Skovoroda’s dialogue via English translation, and thus contribute to clarifying the reliable strategies of translating a chronologically remote text of philosophical discourse. The research (...) stresses the importance for a translator of philosophical works of Hryhorii Skovoroda to thoroughly consider the contextual meaning, inseparability of the concepts and style, and unique syntactic and emotive patterns of the source text conflating explicit and implicit semantics. In addition to deep understanding by translators of key philosophical terms, charged with contextual connotations, an equivalent translation of philosophic texts also demands sufficient knowledge of the related historical, cultural, and linguistic background to ensure a comprehensive perception of the intended senses and vectors of the mental activity by a reader. (shrink)

Finnish is one of the few existent Finno-Ugric languages, a language without articles, and with only one, genderless word for the pronouns “she” and “he”. Due to this, the problems faced by the Finnish translators of The Second Sex differed in some ways from those discussed after the publication of the new English translation. This chapter describes the genesis of the second, unabridged Finnish translation, the choices made by the translators as well as the philosophical interpretations motivating those choices. In (...) addition, Beauvoir’s way of understanding the concept of becoming is analyzed. The chapter ends with a discussion of the philosophy of translation and of the reception of the second Finnish translation. (shrink)

This is the first academic paper concerned with the description of intertranslational appropriations across non-literary works and to discuss this phenomenon from a novel conceptual perspective by suggesting the term “pseudo-retranslation”. “Drmrod”, a misspelling of Ormrod, served as the benchmark of the preliminary analysis to judge on the existence of pseudo-retranslations across the works. The corpus consists of one unreviewed article, two dissertations, five master’s theses, and seven articles. To identify the initial Turkish translation, Patient Zero, to detect the (...) pseudo-retranslations and to arrange them chronologically, “textual overlap” was operationalized as the primary parameter, while “erroneous referencing”, “typographical errors”, “publication year”, “publication media”, and “relationships between authors” to triangulate the findings concerning the primary parameter. A program, WCopyFind, was used to detect intertextual similarities and to harvest quantitative data by percentage and word count. A textual similarity of 70%, 1–26, 2004) was set as the threshold of significance. The author suggested a threshold of 30% to describe pseudo-retranslations in academic works and of 20% in Turkish academic papers. The unreviewed online article was revealed to be the first to misspell “Ormrod” as “Drmrod” and to translate Ormrod’s six metacognitive skills and the other 14 works to include its pseudo-retranslations. (shrink)

“Violence” and “nonviolence” are, increasingly, misleading translations for the Sanskrit words hiṃsā and ahiṃsā—used by Gandhi as the basis for his philosophy of satyāgraha. I argue for rereading hiṃsā as “maleficence” and ahiṃsā as “beneficence.” These two more mind-referring English words capture the primacy of intention implied by Gandhi’s core principles. Reflecting a political turn in moral accountability detectable through linguistic data, both the scope and the usage of the word “violence” have expanded dramatically, making it harder to convincingly characterize (...) people and actions as “nonviolent.” New terminology could clarify the distinction between hiṃsā and ahiṃsā, and, thereby, prevent misunderstandings of Gandhi. Training in beneficence would reflect Gandhi’s psychological path to reducing avoidable harm: ego-detachment, universal love, and seeking truth by experiment. NOTE: An extended, unpublished version, with additional arguments and evidence, is also available on PhilPapers as "The Primacy of Intention and the Duty to Truth: A Gandhi-Inspired Argument for Retranslating Hiṃsā and Ahiṃsā, with Connections to History, Ethics, and Civil Resistance". (shrink)

The words "violence" and "nonviolence" are increasingly misleading translations for the Sanskrit words hiṃsā and ahiṃsā -- which were used by Gandhi as the basis for his philosophy of satyāgraha. I argue for re-reading hiṃsā as “maleficence” and ahiṃsā as “beneficence.” These two more mind-referring English words – associated with religiously contextualized discourse of the past -- capture the primacy of intention implied by Gandhi’s core principles, better than “violence” and “nonviolence” do. Reflecting a political turn in moral accountability detectable (...) through linguistic data, both the scope and the usage of the word “violence” have expanded dramatically. The expanded scope of “violence” reflects greater consciousness of the various forms that serious harm can take, but also makes it harder to convincingly characterize people and actions as “nonviolent.” New translations could clarify the distinction between hiṃsā and ahiṃsā, and thereby prevent some misunderstandings of Gandhi. Training in beneficence would reflect Gandhi’s psychological path to reducing avoidable harm: detachment from the ego, learning to love universally, and seeking truth by experiment. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed commentary on the classic monograph by Alfred Tarski, and offers a reinterpretation and retranslation of the work using the original Polish text and the English and German translations. In the original work, Tarski presents a method for constructing definitions of truth for classical, quantificational formal languages. Furthermore, using the defined notion of truth, he demonstrates that it is possible to provide intuitively adequate definitions of the semantic notions of definability and denotation and that the (...) notion in a structure can be defined in a way that is analogous to that used to define truth. Tarski’s piece is considered to be one of the major contributions to logic, semantics, and epistemology in the 20th century. However, the author points out that some mistakes were introduced into the text when it was translated into German in 1935. As the 1956 English version of the work was translated from the German text, those discrepancies were carried over in addition to new mistakes. The author has painstakingly compared the three texts, sentence-by-sentence, highlighting the inaccurate translations, offering explanations as to how they came about, and commenting on how they have influenced the content and suggesting a correct interpretation of certain passages. Furthermore, the author thoroughly examines Tarski’s article, offering interpretations and comments on the work. (shrink)

This paper reassesses the role of sceptical thinking in the emergence of the new science of the seventeenth century, in the context of the seminal but contestable History of Scepticism by Richard Popkin. It investigates the anti-sceptical essay by Galen De optimo modo docendi, which was retranslated in the sixteenth century by Erasmus and later published as an adjunct to the works of Sextus Empiricus, in order to highlight the currency of ideas about hyperbolic doubt, and links this to the (...) long tradition of free enquiry in which doubting authority is seen as a profitable exercise closely associated with the independence of philosophy from theological domination; and it argues that this long tradition played an important role in the emergence of the new science. (shrink)

Plato's _Republic_ is one of the most well-known and widely discussed texts in the history of philosophy, but how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2500 years after it was originally composed? Alain Badiou invents a new genre in order to breathe fresh life into Plato's text and restore its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has retranslated the work from the original Greek and, by making various changes, adapted it for our times. (...) In this innovative reimagining of a classic text, Badiou has removed all references specific to ancient Greek society, from the endless exchanges about the moral courage of poets to those political considerations that were only of interest to the aristocratic elite. On the other hand, Badiou has expanded the range of cultural references: here philosophy is firing on all cylinders, and Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud and Hegel. They demonstrate the enduring nature of true philosophy, always ready to move with the times. Moreover, Badiou the dramatist has made the Socratic dialogue a true oratorial contest: in his version of the Republic, the interlocutors have more in mind than merely agreeing with the Master. They stand up to him, put him on the spot and thereby show thought in motion. Through this work of writing, scholarship and philosophy, we are able, for the first time, to read a version of Plato's text which is alive, stimulating and directly relevant to our world today. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends a way to translate Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations from a semiotic standpoint. This turn builds on Semiosic Translation. 102–130), a framework that advances the interaction of sign systems as a necessary point of departure in the translation process. From this vantage, the key term “Bild,” is analyzed, explained and retranslated into English. This term evinces high levels of complexity and variability that cannot be captured by traditional linguistic translations. In applying a semiotic (...) approach, any iteration of Bild is characterized as reflecting the author’s intentions at a given moment. This semiotic reading seeks to provide semioticians, translators, and philosophers with new conceptual tools leading to an understanding of translation as a systemic operation not confined to the realm of subjective interpretation. (shrink)

This review of peter hodgson's new english translation of hegel's "lectures on the philosophy of religion", Part iii, And of two other books on hegel, Includes a report on plans for retranslating the entire "lectures". A new edition is made feasible by the hegel archiv's ability to construct a superior critical text of each of the four lecture series (1821, 1824, 1827, 1831) from lasson plus additional recently-Discovered auditors' transcripts. Stephen dunning's book on hegel and hamann, And james yerkes' on (...) hegel's christology, Disagree emphatically on the suitability of hegel's conceptual framework for doing justice to the nature of christianity. (shrink)

This essay unpacks a seeming paradox: a concept used to formulate, promote, and legitimate oppressive ideologies—a concept used to formulate mistaken, because they were typological, biological theories about human diversity—is, it seems, the same concept that now promises to deliver wonderful, socially sensitized, innovative results in social and genetic epidemiology. But how could that be? How could scientists expect a concept as problematic as ordinary race to deliver useful scientific results? I propose that there is a process for retranslating Ballungen (...) race concepts in appropriate ways to make them fit and work within social scientific and bioscientific contexts. (shrink)

This study examines the Korean translations of a Japanese work Joshi no rongo [女子の論語/Women’s Analects] (Yuki, Ako [祐木亜子]. 2011. 女子の論語. Tokyo: Sunmark Publishing House), a modern interpretation of the Chinese classic The Analects, with a view to identifying how the paratexts of a translated text contributed, or hindered the reception of the work in the target culture. By drawing on Gérard Genette’s (1997 [1987]. Paratexts: Threshold of interpretation, Jane E. Lewin (trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) concept of “paratexts,” this study (...) both analyses translation shifts in the peritexts (e.g., cover, foreword, table of contents) and the epitexts (reviews) of the Korean translations. The analysis shows that the additions and rearrangements of some paratextual elements in the Korean translation further reinforced the traditional view presented in the source text, which ironically brought about heavy criticisms of the original Japanese text and resulted in the Korean retranslation of the work. The scrutiny of peritexts and epitexts in this article will enhance our understanding of the interactions between the translator, the publisher, and the public readers, which jointly contextualize the production and reception of a translated work in a given culture. (shrink)

Plato's Republic is one of the most well-known and widely discussed texts in the history of philosophy, but how might we get to the heart of this work today, 2500 years after it was originally composed? Alain Badiou invents a new genre in order to breathe fresh life into Plato's text and restore its universality. Rather than producing yet another critical commentary, he has retranslated the work from the original Greek and, by making various changes, adapted it for our times. (...) In this innovative reimagining of a classic text, Badiou has removed all references specific to ancient Greek society, from the endless exchanges about the moral courage of poets to those political considerations that were only of interest to the aristocratic elite. On the other hand, Badiou has expanded the range of cultural references: here philosophy is firing on all cylinders, and Socrates and his companions are joined by Beckett, Pessoa, Freud and Hegel. They demonstrate the enduring nature of true philosophy, always ready to move with the times. Moreover, Badiou the dramatist has made the Socratic dialogue a true oratorial contest: in his version of the Republic, the interlocutors have more in mind than merely agreeing with the Master. They stand up to him, put him on the spot and thereby show thought in motion. Through this work of writing, scholarship and philosophy, we are able, for the first time, to read a version of Plato's text which is alive, stimulating and directly relevant to our world today. (shrink)

In this essay, it is demonstrated that the inception of the English Bible tradition began with the oral–aural Bible in Old English translated from Latin incipient texts and emerged through a continuous tradition of revision and retranslation in interaction with contemporary social reality. Each subsequent translation achieved a more complex state by adapting to the emergence of incipient text knowledge (rediscovery of Hebrew and Greek texts), emergence of the (meaning-making) knowledge of the incipient languages (Latin, Hebrew and Greek), language (...) change (Old, Middle and Modern English), mode of communication (hearing-dominant and text-dominant), style (literal or word-for-word) and products (oral-aural Bible, handwritten manuscript Bible and printed Bible). Historical sources indicate that there were translations of portions of the English Bible since 700 CE as handwritten manuscript Bibles in Old and Middle English and in print in Modern English – even before the retranslation associated with Tyndale (1526) and despite ecclesiastical opposition since 1408. This version and its revisions (1530–1531, 1534) are followed by subsequent revisions (Coverdale Bible, Matthew’s Bible, Great Bible, Geneva Bible and Bishop’s Bible). The next revision was the King James Version (1611), which replaced all its predecessors, and which was never replaced for the next four centuries – not even by its revisions.Contribution: Contrary to the fragmentation caused by ordering individual English Bibles either by period (e.g. 20th century) or according to their features (e.g. literal), it is demonstrated that the history of English Bible translation emerged rather as a translation complex, and its history must be understood in this way. (shrink)

Some scholars suggest a puzzle presents itself in Ludwig Wittgenstein's final words in the mismatch between what Norman Malcolm describes as a ‘fiercely unhappy’ life and Wittgenstein's expression of that life as ‘wonderful’. Ronald L. Hall attempts to overcome the apparent puzzle by retranslating Wittgenstein's final words into an expression of an awakening to the wonder inherent in reality. Beth Savickey argues that Hall's approach is a philosophical abstraction that diminishes the significance of friendship in Wittgenstein's life and that these (...) friendships are what made Wittgenstein's life ‘wonderful’. I argue that Hall's and Savickey's accounts of wonder and friendship go wrong as attempts to explain away the apparent puzzle of Wittgenstein's final words. Drawing on remarks from Raimond Gaita, I argue that both aspects can be incorporated into a dissolution of the apparent puzzle if Wittgenstein's final words are heard in the register of an expression of gratitude from a perspective of his life as a whole sub specie aeterni. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tenth-Century Arabic Interpretation of Plato's Cosmology MAJID FAKIIRY OF PLATO'STHIRTY-SIXDIALOG~Y~Sonly the Timaeus is devoted entirely to cosmological questions. The influence of this dialogue on the development of cosmological ideas in antiquity and the Middle Ages was very great. At a time when the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science in Western Europe had almost vanished, the Timaeus was the only Greek cosmological work to circulate freely in learned (...) circles. The translation and commentary of Chalcidius (c. 350) made the Timaeus available to Latin scholars, at least up to c. 53. But interest in the Timae~s was sustained for a long time before that. The lost commentary of Posidonius of Apamea (d. 51 B.C.), the De animae procreatione in Timeo of Plutarch (d. A.D. 125), the commentary of Proclus (d. 485), extant up to 44d,1 are the most important links in this continuous chain of Platonic cosmological exegesis in antiquity. In the Arabic tradition, the Timaeus had a decisive impact on the development of cosmological ideas also. Plutarch and Proclus were familiar names in the history of Platonic and post-Platonic thought, but I am not aware that the Stoic Posidonius, whom Zeller has described as ".the most universal mind that Greece had seen since the time of Aristotle," 2 was known to the Arabs, or that any mention of his commentary on the Timaeus is to be found in the Arabic sources. General interest in Platonism was an early feature of the philosophical wave which swept the Islamic learned world in the 8th century, and Zeller may be right in saying that it was the Platonic School of Athens which gave Muslim Neoplatonism its peculiar stamp. 3 One of the earliest translators of philosophical texts into Arabic, Yah.ia (b. al-Bit.riq) who flourished in the 2rid half of the 8th century, is credited with the translation of the Timaeus, later retranslated or revised by Hunain (b. Ish~q; d. 873) and Yahia (b. 'Adi and not, as Sarton has it, b. 'Ali; d. 974).~ In addition, the following Platonic dialogues appear to have been translated into Arabic: The Sophistes, the Parmenides, the Cratylus, the Euthydemus, the Republic, the Statesman, the Laws and the Crito. The determination of the actual translator of each work poses serious difficulties. In an autobiographical tract, Hunain simply reports that either he or his disciple Is~ (b. Yahia) translated these works for his patron Muhammad (b. Cf. A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plata's Timaeu~ (Oxford, 1928),pp. 34f., and George Sarton, History o] Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1959),I, 428f. Cf. E. Zeller,OutEnesof the History oSGreek Philosophy (N.Y., 1955),p. 268. sIbid., p. 329. ' Cf. al-Fihrist (Cairo, N~D.),p. 358. [15] 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Musa), the astrologer.~ Other writers corroborate or supplement this account. Thus Ibn al-Nadim (d. 997), ascribes to Hunain the interpretation (tarsi'r) of the Republic, to him and to Ibn 'Adi the translation of the Laws, and to his son Ish.iq the translation of the Sophistes, together with the commentary of Olympiodorus2 The Crito appears to have been translated also by Yahia (b. Adi), and extensive excerpts from it and the Phaedo are often quoted in the Arabic sources in connection with the trial and execution of Socrates. Another difficulty is raised by the fact that none of the Arabic versions of these dialogues which have come down to us, either as separate works or parts of general commentaries such as the Laws, the Timaeus and the Republic, are complete, so that the inference is inescapable that, as borne out by Hunain's own testimony, it was Galen's paraphrases or compendia of these works, or at any rate those which were translated into Arabic within the School of Hunain, that are actually referred to in our sources.7 It is not, however, with the general diffusion of Platonism in the Muslim world that I am primarily concerned here, but rather with the impact of Platonic cosmological theory as illustrated in the writings of Abu Bakr Muhammad (b. Zakariya al-Razi; d., c. 932), the Rhases of Latin authors, the greatest... (shrink)

Based on socio-legal fieldwork conducted in the Central African Republic in 2025, this paper examines legal language as a site of epistemic violence and decolonial critique within contemporary human rights and justice interventions. The paper contributes to critical analyses of human rights initiatives through a socio-legal and linguistic approach. The article analyses how French operates as the dominant juridical language in justice and human rights institutions. Although French is the official language of law, judicial actors routinely rely on Sango, yet (...) no institutional framework exists for legal translation or linguistic mediation. The empirical material combines interviews with legal practitioners and a double-blind translation experiment. The translated corpus includes a fictionalized litigant testimony and excerpts from a justice perception survey. The protocol involved two independent translations from French into Sango and two independent retranslations into French. Comparative analysis shows systematic semantic and normative shifts affecting notions of injustice, legal institutions, responsibility, and categories of grievances. These shifts expose zones of legal untranslatability, where key juridical concepts lack functional equivalents in the target language. Rather than technical shortcomings, these zones reveal competing legal ontologies and the normative pressure exerted by dominant frameworks, which require local languages to adapt or import concepts under constraint. The paper argues that this process marginalizes local worldviews and generates epistemic misrecognition, illustrating how legal policies may reproduce exclusion through the very languages intended to enable justice and recognition. (shrink)

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche envisages the naturalisation of the human being, its retranslation back into nature, as a liberating experience where the human being rediscovers nature as a creative and transformative force that the human being embodies. For Nietzsche, the question of the future of the human being is contingent on whether the human being is capable of re-embodying nature. Human nature for Nietzsche is not a given of the body, something that belongs to the human being (...) per se. Instead, nature in the human being comes with the task of retranslation, replanting, re-embodying nature. This is why Nietzsche’s thinking about nature is future oriented, opening up the horizon of human transformation. In this paper, I argue that Nietzsche’s thinking about homo natura is distinctly posthuman and as such sets the stage for contemporary debates on posthumanism. (shrink)

When examining the dissemination of Thomas More’s Utopia in China, it is imperative to recognize the pivotal role played by a specific translator, Dai Liuling, who facilitated an unprecedented proliferation and readership of the work in the Chinese context. Dai’s translation of Utopia exists three distinct versions: 1956, 1982, and 1997. The 1956 version represents Dai’s initial translation, which was followed by a retranslation in 1982. Due to the popularity of the 1982 version in mainland China, it was subsequently (...) re-editioned in Taiwan in 1997, with modifications to the paratextual section. Through a meticulous analysis of these three versions, with a specific focus on the evolution of paratexts and textual translation, we can observe how Dai’s translations of Utopia were intricately influenced by the political-ideological contexts. Simultaneously, an examination of Dai’s translations can elucidate the trajectory of Utopia’s dissemination in China. (shrink)

The first codes of Louisiana (1808 and 1825) were written in French and translated into English. The revised Civil Code of 1870 was written in English only. Recent revisions, all in English, aim at promoting a civilian vocabulary, markedly distinct from the common law vocabulary. This article discusses the translation of the Louisiana Civil Code from English into French in the context of the steep decline and limited revival of French language usage in Louisiana. It features the purpose and the (...) step-by-step implementation of the translation project, identifying linguistic and legal challenges and resources relied on. The aim is to produce a truly Louisianan translation. Translators therefore resort to original French sources whenever the text has not slightly evolved or was simply reproduced. The process may then be described as retranslation, aiming at reviving the original language. Where texts have been substantially rewritten, yet still reflect civilian logic and style, the translation aims at echoing the spirit of the Code. However, in the several occasions where the drafters borrowed common law substance and style, the civilian spirit may no longer vivify the translation, as it is obscured by an overabundance of language. (shrink)

Taking its cues from reflections of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and C. S. Peirce on the map, this chapter will focus on the interesting dialectic that characterizes our object of study, that is to say maps of places of origin. The chapter argues that the drawings collected in this study are constructed around a dialogue between a situated experience, realized by moving through a familiar space, and the representation of that experience which illuminates its objects even from an unbridgeable distance. This dialogue (...) between immersion and distance – a theoretical cornerstone of our whole work–will be analyzed not only with regard to the spatial perspective chosen in the drawings, but also in the use of signing space in sign languages. When recounting the spaces they have drawn, signers have consistently changed their point of view: from a map-like description realized using their hands in order to describe spaces from above, to the adoption of a perspective from the inside in which the signers’ whole body becomes the vehicle for signification. In particular, this change of viewpoint is at times realized through the so-called Role Shift, with which the signer adopts a first-person perspective internal to the event narrated. This spatial and enunciative shift allows the signer to interpret the role of himself once again: in this way, he re-enacts an agency directly performed in the places represented in the maps, retranslating them as a subjective experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life by Guido SeddoneWill DesmondSEDDONE, Guido. Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life. Leiden: Brill, 2023. 155 pp. Cloth, $138.00Guido Seddone’s monograph explores an ensemble of issues centering on what he terms Hegelian “naturalism.” He argues that “Hegel’s philosophy represents a novel version of naturalism since it stresses the mutual dependence between nature and spirit, rather than just conceiving of spirit as a substance emerging and (...) separating from bodily natural requisites.” Seddone avoids scholarly exegeses to address instead “theoretical and systematic aspects of the Hegelian philosophy.” He focusses on “life” and “self-consciousness” as the conceptual keys to those parts of Hegel that remain compelling for relevant contemporary debates. “This book is, therefore, based on the dialogue between Hegel [End Page 361] and contemporary thinkers and strives to enhance our understanding of theoretical and practical issues and to widen the grammar of the philosophical thought.” The book’s chapters proceed from the more abstract to the more concrete—essentially from issues of logic, epistemology, and psychology to morality, society, and history.Chapter 1 (“Science of Logic: The Logical Premises of Hegel’s Naturalism”) argues that the categories of “Teleology” and “Life” in Hegel’s Science of Logic mark the critical transition in his naturalism from the sciences of physics (“Mechanism”) and chemistry (“Chemism”) to biology, as well as from external nature to inner self-consciousness and cognition. Seddone helpfully points to Hegel’s revisions of Kant’s subordination of teleological language (merely heuristic) to mechanical explanation. Most promising is the comparison of the “self-referring negativity” of Hegelian “life” to discussions by Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela of the cell—whose permeable membrane enables it to be more than its merely chemical environment.Chapter 2 (“Self-Consciousness”) takes a rather bird’s-eye approach to the Phenomenology of Spirit, offering a basic reading of Hegelian self-consciousness and Geist in relation to the Cartesian cogito and Kantian unity of apperception. Scattered remarks about animal desire and the master–slave relation could be clarified to better explore a naturalistic basis of the Hegelian conception of mind. One is struck by the dearth of specific texts from the section “Self-Consciousness”: Seddone seems content with some well-known quotations (for example, Geist as an “I that is We and We that is I”) punctuating large generalizations.Chapter 3 does not quite live up to its title (“The Hegelian Theory about the (Human) Biological Organism”) in that it focuses primarily on Hegel’s “treatise about habits” in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Here habit is construed as a second nature, and hence a further step toward self-conscious, relational mind: Habits are “universal ways of the soul, i.e. ways in which individual soul [sic] incorporates feelings by evolving general rules and practices.”The last section of chapter 4 (“Extended and Embodied Mind”) reverts to habits as moments of the feeling soul but dissociates Hegel’s notion of Verleiblichung from contemporary discussions of embodied mind. By contrast, Seddone argues for retranslating Hegelian Geist as “common mind” and juxtaposes this with the related concept of mind (in, for example, Philip Pettit) as “extended” through social entities, with the result that Hegel’s approach is praised as “the state-of-the-art of this topic.”Chapter 5 (“Natural and Self-conscious Agency”) is perhaps the clearest chapter as it presents the dialectic of the abstractly universal will in the initial sections of Philosophy of Right, links this and the Hegelian conception of free agency to his logical category of “actuality,” and proceeds to an illuminating contrast of the Hobbesian and Hegelian visions of society and state. [End Page 362]In tackling attempts to reconcile “Normativity and Freedom,” chapter 6 spends over six pages rehearsing the basics of Kantian autonomy before turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, specifically the master–slave dialectic (again) as the critical moment in the evolution of social norms. “My thesis is that self-conscious life needs recognition in order to achieve the higher form of independence created by social acknowledgement and justification, what [sic] fosters the condition for an authoritative reason that can be socially... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.4 (2004) 113-120 [Access article in PDF] Wonders, Witches, Wolves, and Wisdom Ellen Handler Spitz Honors College Professor of Visual Arts University of Maryland The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar, New York: W.W. Norton, 2002, Paperback: 394 pp., $16.95. We persist in hearkening to fairy tales. Along with ancient myths, the parables of scripture, the secular legends and sacred texts of many (...) lands, a stable canon of these magical tales still provides, even in the twenty-first century, an ongoing source of inspiration to artists, composers, choreographers, filmmakers, poets, and, above all, to the writers and illustrators and readers of children's books. They are of abiding interest as well to all of us who, in our various ways, concern ourselves with the aesthetic education of children. Why is this so? One preeminent authority in the field is Maria Tatar, John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, an author who, with wisdom, tenderness, and erudition, has traced and researched these tales. Having devoted two decades to the phenomenon, Tatar's works include The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Off with their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, and The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition.1 She has recently come out with a new book, an edited collection of twenty-six tales all illustrated, marginally annotated, and a number of them retranslated for the occasion, the result being The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, a painstakingly produced, lavishly decorated volume that would grace any library.In addition to commenting, in the volume's elegantly wide margins, on each of the included tales, Tatar has arranged to have this new compilation ornamented with small colored reproductions of both rare and famous images associated with the tales by distinguished illustrators of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — artists such as Gustave Doré, Edmund Dulac, Walter Crane, Maxfield Parrish, and Arthur Rackham. While small in size and often not quite as clear as one might ideally wish (I found myself longing for some sorcery that would blow them up to full size so as to be able to feast my eyes on their wealth of detail and imaginative splendor), these images grace the text and greatly enhance its pleasures. Their presence, in fact, is one of the factors that makes this book unique. I know of no other extant work where a comparable effort has been made to join the fairy tales with a multiplicity of their most celebrated illustrations. The effect is astonishing. Readers are either transported directly back into their own early childhoods or newly acquainted with a brilliant visual canon parallel to that of the fairy [End Page 113] tales themselves. I predict it will be a rare reader who, after seeing this book, will not be desirous of learning more about the artists whose works are reproduced here. To further that end and to begin to satisfy the desire she must have known she would create, Tatar has supplied her readers with a section of mini-biographies and bibliographies not only of the authors and collectors of the fairy tales themselves (most notably, Charles Perrault, the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen) but of the illustrators. For this felicitous marriage — of word and image, of story and picture — her endeavor deserves our gratitude.Rather than take this tasteful treasure trove as a culmination of Tatar's pre-existing work, which, in a certain sense, it is, I prefer to see it as a lure that entices readers to revisit her earlier volumes which, while of recognized scholarly import and interpretive richness, all tackle questions pertinent not only to folklorists and to historians of literature but to all of us who, in the wake of recent history, have come to wonder ever more anxiously what sort of tales we ought to be telling children and ourselves and how and why. This question, incidentally, returns us to Book II of Plato's Republic, where Socrates poses this question directly to... (shrink)

This essay investigates the translatability of experience in seventeenth-century medical practica. It reconstructs the translation and the retranslation of the chapter on smallpox and measles taken from the immensely popular Praxis medica of Lazare Rivière. This text was adapted by two Jewish physicians: Jacob Zahalon, who translated it into Hebrew; and Abraham Wallich, who then modified it further. Both presented this work as their own. Reconstructing the decision making that went into their work, the essay argues that the erasure (...) of some practical and experiential content does not constitute a failure of translation but, rather, a reevaluation of the content’s applicability in a new context. The essay, dealing with Jewish learned physicians, also examines how different environments were reflected in these physicians’ writing. It therefore shows how physicians of comparable expertise resorted to dissimilar practices. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on the complex origin and publication history of the clandestine treatise Traité des trois imposteurs that put into motion the process of the radical Enlightenment. The treatise consists almost completely of a compilation of paraphrases and quotations of heterodox texts of the 17th century. A summary will be made of the most important source texts assembled in the collage. One of them is Vanini’s De Admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis from 1619 on which the analysis will (...) focus. Two editions of the treatise are particularly important in this respect and will be looked at in detail: the first publication in print from 1719 under the title L’esprit de Spinosa and the re-edition as Traité des trois imposteurs from 1768 probably made by D’Holbach. The hypothesis developed of this contribution is that through the translation and the retranslation, step by step, a shift in meaning from Renaissance pantheism and the idea of natural religion to atheism and materialism took place. This hypothesis will be assessed by a precise comparative analysis of two excerpts of Dialogue 50 of De Admirandis, the French translation in L’Esprit de Spinosa and the French retranslation in the Traité des trois imposteurs. Finally, also the Italian translation of 1798 will be compared with the previous editions/translations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.2 (2000) 299-307 [Access article in PDF] Brief Mention Translation, the Profession, and the Poets Peter Burian Amidst all the questions being raised these days about the health of classical studies in this country, one fact is undisputed: there is an enormous amount of translation going on. Much of it is good, and some of it sells extraordinarily well. Still, none of this is guaranteed (...) to make classicists happy, and for more than one reason. Some may be inclined to contrast the proliferation of translations with falling enrollments in language courses and to regard the emphasis on translation as misplaced or even as a sign of how far knowledge of Greek and Latin has declined. Others no doubt continue to feel that translation is a second-rate activity and somehow unworthy of the attention of serious scholars.The traditions of our discipline seem to have encouraged this disdain: translation is treated in our pedagogical practice as the most elementary stage of understanding a text. There is thus a somewhat shameful association of translation with trot. Translations are what we were constantly required to make and forbidden to use when we studied Latin and Greek, and they are what most of us still require our students to make and forbid them to use. But if the writing of translations is not very highly regarded within the profession, we reserve particular scorn for translations done by those who are not members of our guild. Conditioned as we are to value fidelity to the letter above all else, we may actually find ourselves professing admiration for the sort of musty and flaccid writing that seems to guarantee "accuracy" at the expense of style.Fortunately, despite such perhaps unconscious biases, translation of the classics is flourishing. For this we can thank, in the first instance, an active and able group of dedicated writers within and without the field who have made translating from Greek and Latin central to their creative lives. And we should acknowledge that--to borrow a phrase [End Page 299] from the great rogue translator Ezra Pound--"the thought of what America would be like if the classics had a wide circulation" is only thinkable about the classics in translation. Less than half a century ago, Bernard Knox still felt it necessary to begin the preface to his Oedipus at Thebes (1957) with the disarming notice that his book was intended not only for the classical scholar but also for "the 'Greekless reader,' a category which, once treated with scorn by the professors of more educated ages, now includes the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the planet." Truth to tell, of course, the overwhelming majority of humankind never knew Greek, or for that matter Latin, but the number--or at least the proportion--of those who do has certainly shrunk. Professorial scorn is no longer an option. Translation is our lifeline, and great literatures need great translations.In what follows, I simply raise a few questions about the translation of literary texts and its role in our profession and, in the process, mention (purely by way of example) a number of the recent American translations from Greek and Latin that I have found particularly useful, satisfying, and/or provocative.First, what is the right way to approach the translation of an ancient, canonical text? My answer is simply that there is no one right way. We must understand that different translations serve different purposes and need to be judged by different criteria. The first, or only readily available, translation into English of a little-known work is likely to have a different purpose from the retranslation of a text that has appeared in English many times, perhaps over many centuries; and the translators are likely to feel different obligations to the works and to their prospective readers. A "literal" version done properly remains one of the most useful contributions a classicist can make. Such recent additions to the Loeb Library as William Race's Pindar (1997) and the ongoing Aristophanes of Jeffrey Henderson (1998-) and Euripides of David Kovacs (1994... (shrink)

Aletheia: The Truth of Philosophical Translation as a Translation of Thruth.An Encounter of Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricœur and Antoine BermanThe article analyzes the specificity of philosophical translations insofar as they generate a new meaning and present themselves as originals that must be retranslated. This goes against Ricœur’s conception of translation as a creation of comparable terms. We will show that philosophical translation consists in the creation of an incomparable term, which cannot be measured in terms of equivalence, adequacy or fidelity. (...) All these terms correspond to a notion of truth understood as adequacy, therefore we operate a deconstruction of aletheia, the Greek concept for “truth”, in order to show that what we hold today to be the truth of translation has been the result of a translation. Through Heidegger’s reading of aletheia and through Berman’s account of the terms that name translation in Europe, we reinterpret the Roman philosophical translations as examples of traductio and we show, in the end, that by retranslating aletheia, the rules for the practice of translation change, allowing the latter to be guided by an ethical approach towards the otherness rather than by righteous fidelity and adequacy. (shrink)

The ancient Ephesian thinker Heraclitus, in his aphoristic writings, described the dynamic coming-to-be of things according to a number of obscure metaphors. In this essay, Hyland ponders whether there is a paradigmatic experience according to which a number of these metaphors can best be understood. Gathering together and thoughtfully retranslating a number of Greek terms including polemos (often translated as “war”), eris (“strife”), agon (“contest”), and paidia (“play”), Hyland argues that Heraclitus’s metaphors can be understood as referring to an experience (...) of athletic play. Hyland explores the significance of athletic play, with its stance of responsive openness, as a paradigm for thinking and living. (shrink)

Enchanting Nietzsche: On ‘god is dead’ and new life For a long time, Nietzsche was considered by his contemporaries primarily as a literary man. In philosophy and theology, the death of God nevertheless found resonance in the secularization debate. In this article I take a different path and will introduce a similar autopsy in the dis-re-enchantment debate. To this end, I revert mainly to the literary metaphors in Nietzsche’s work, of course without ignoring its philosophical (and theological) value. First, I (...) retranslate some echoes of Nietzsche’s word from the secularization debate into the disenchantment debate. Here I note that this retranslation requires a shift from cultural to personal history. This provides me with two new, unexpected echoes of Nietzsche’s word. It also places radical questions on the current disenchantment debate. (shrink)

In order to understand why Orlando was not published in Spain until 1977, almost forty years after the original publication in England, the Francoist regime context is analyzed in this reflection paper, as well as the editorial censorship and self-censorship procedures. It is assumed that this novel by Virginia Woolf is an example of the latter, based on the censorship criteria established by Abellán, since the text transgressed at least three of them. Moreover, the first translation of Orlando in Spain, (...) carried out by Enrique Ortenbach, is analyzed and compared to the one by Borges, not only the first translation of this novel to Spanish, but also the most popular and commercial to date, in order to determine the motivations to commission this retranslation to Ortenbach and the features of this text, in the light of the changes in the Spanish social context. To this end, the paper also draws from the concepts and practices of paratexts, retranslation, and translation criticism. It is concluded that the retranslation by Ortenbach is active, according to Pym’s proposal, and that it could have been dictated by the commercial success of the film adaptation of the novel in 1992. Also, although the translation decisions are not linked to the Spanish social changes, Ortenbach retrieves from the original the feature of Orlando’s gender distinction, through the use of the personal pronouns she/he when alluding to the character. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de montrer que le langage en traduction joue un rôle performatif parce que les termes qu’il emploie retraduisent des normes sociales et des positions institutionnelles construites dans une autre culture, avec d’autres conditions historiques. Dans le cas de la naissance des sciences de la communication en Chine, des concepts américains sur la communication sont venus par leur traduction à la rencontre des normes et positions chinoises sur le journalisme et la propagande, engendrant une reconfiguration mutuelle des (...) actants, qu’ils soient sociaux ou langagiers. Nous étudions comment le système socio-culturel de la Chine a recréé un ordre local propre sous la forme d’une discipline spécifique à ce pays, xinwen chuanboxue .This article sets out to show that language in translation plays a performative role, because the terms it uses effectively retranslate social norms and institutional positions that were built up in a different culture and in different historical circumstances. In the case of the emerging communication sciences in China, American concepts on communication, which arrived in translation, came to encounter Chinese norms and positions on journalism and propaganda, and this caused a mutual reconfiguration of the actants, both social and linguistic. We look here at how the Chinese socio-cultural system re-created its own local order in the form of a discipline which is specific to the country, “xinwen chuanboxue”. (shrink)

To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, the (...) mathematics have been checked for correctness and consistency, and the authors have provided a full commentary, pointing out the most difficult turns of the 17th-century French, the respective contributions of Niceron, Mersenne and Roberval, and explaining Niceron's greatest insights and weaknesses. (shrink)

Writing, the exigency of writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealist (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence) seems to devote itself solely to itself as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, deferred, (...) and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of the Book and the Work so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside discourse, outside language. – Maurice Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation , xi) The Compendium * Beginning with the idea and practice of writing, and moving to the subject or self, then to truth and the One, and arriving at the Book and the Work, Blanchot’s words reflect the trajectory of the following work of writing. True to the embeddedness of the subject in the work of writing, the term “Compendium” has been a metonym for me over the past few years as I have thought about the concept of totality alongside its expression in figures such as the One, the Whole, or the All. In the following I aim to share some of the content of this metonym, and to enrich it by making some distinctions. 1 Here the term “Compendium” will refer to a concept of totality that is ontological (pertaining to being, and the copula) and also textual (pertaining to the symbolic, and the signifier-signified relationship). The Compendium is a figure for thinking the world as a Book, in the broadest sense—an approach to reality that is by no means new, but one that is due for renewal. 2 In partial answer to the question of the Compendium we will say that the word ‘Compendium’ stands in for expressions which seek to totalize, or concepts which seek to approach the concept of ‘everything,’ particularly when these expressions are bound up in the question of the Book (both the book as a physical object and the Book as a metaphysical figure: a way of thinking about the work in and of writing). The question of the Compendium is strongly associated with the physical and metaphysical form of the Book, like the mysterious and symbolic books which are opened in the Biblical book of Revelation, the book of life and the book of death, which together constitute an important couplet. 3 Parataxis & Hypotaxis There are two helpful distinctions that will bring us closer to an answer to the question “What is a Compendium?” The first distinction is between two figures in and for writing: parataxis and hypotaxis . Typically paired in contrast to one another as literary techniques, with parataxis indicating a side-by-side placement of textual elements and hypotaxis referring to subordinate arrangements of textual elements, the two figures can be understood as having a philosophical significance in addition to their practical function as devices for writers. For us these two terms will remain between philosophical theory and writing practice, and serve as a perspective for our writing and creation of texts. Here I take texts to refer to anything from the concrete written words in a book, to the ontological text of the world that we experience. Parataxis , as a figural way of thinking about the ontological structure of texts, refers to texts which are tightly woven and interdependent – texts within which each sentence bears the weight of the entire work. Parataxis often involves repetition, great density, and fragility. One of the best examples of this sort of text is Theodor Adorno’s posthumous magnum opus , Aesthetic Theory . In addition to the text itself, the translation history of the book may also help us to better understand parataxis and its relation to hypotaxis . The final published version of Aesthetic Theory , in German, was a text that Adorno intended to revise and rewrite, but this intention was never realized because of his untimely death. Where the German text of Aesthetic Theory certainly exemplifies the concept of parataxis , the first English edition took this densely woven text and carved Adorno’s lengthy paragraphs and lengthy sentences into manageable ‘bite-sized’ pieces of English text. The first translator took further liberty and inserted headings and new paragraph breaks where there were none in the original. Aesthetic Theory was eventually retranslated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and is now available in a form that is much more faithful to the original work. 4 The pertinent idea that this translation history points to is the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis . Where parataxis describes texts which are repetitive, densely woven, and often fragile, hypotaxis describes texts which are hierarchical and in which the primary relation is linear – the latter of which is very similar to the first English translation of Aesthetic Theory . On the other hand, the original German text that Adorno wrote was very dense, often repetitive, and contained long sections of text unbroken by paragraphs or headings. This example of parataxis was then turned towards hypotaxis through the initial translation which took a text that was, in many ways, nonhierarchical and nonlinear, and artificially subjected it to a hierarchy that was not its own (and here I take the word of Fredric Jameson who comments on the two translations in a note at the beginning of his book Late Marxism ). 5 The point here is not about translation, but rather the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis precisely as they are figures for discourse, written or otherwise. The concept of parataxis looks far more postmodern and rhizomic than the concept of hypotaxis which remains very modern and arborescent. This is a more figural way of talking about the distinction. However, if we wanted to take a more precise and analytical approach we could say that on the level of form parataxis involves a relationship between sentences and paragraphs in which each part bears an equally crushing responsibility to present the whole content of the text. As well, on the level of content, parataxis requires that each concept in a work take on the full conceptual weight of the total work. Continuing the analysis, we could say that parataxis describes texts in which there is no (or very little) linear or causal move from antecedent to consequent, whether in content or form. Instead, parataxis describes texts which weave together concepts via conjugations or associations. The concept of hypotaxis , on the other hand, requires that texts submit themselves to hierarchy, one example of which is logical argumentation. The contingency of the conclusion upon premises in hypotaxis is certainly distinct from the repetition, re-presentation, and conjugation of concepts in parataxis , and I think that this is evident in the difference between the writing styles prevalent in contemporary Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. It is not the case that the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis absolutely corresponds with the writing styles of Continental and Analytic philosophy (respectively). There are thinkers who take exception to this pattern, such as Badiou’s more formal approach in the discourse of Continental philosophy to give one example. However, when Analytic philosophy takes its writing lessons from the sciences, and seeks to do philosophy via the clean linear move from antecedent to consequent, then I think that Analytic philosophy writes with hypotaxis in mind. On the other hand, when Continental (particularly German and French) philosophy takes its writing lessons from narrative or poetry then Continental philosophy writes with parataxis in mind. It is not fair to say that all those writing Continental philosophy are looking to narrative and poetry for stylistic direction, just as it is not the case that all those writing Analytic philosophy have mathematics and science as their writing format, however there are some striking ways in which the differing epistemologies of Continental and Analytic philosophy encourage writing with parataxis and hypotaxis in mind (respectively). For some, writing with parataxis or hypotaxis in mind is a conscious decision and a product of stylistic self-consciousness, and for others it is an unconscious discursive and epistemic requirement that must be met in order to be involved in a particular discourse. Before moving on to our second distinction, and then an examination of the question of the Book, it is important to point out that both totality and figurations like the One, the Whole, and the All, come out of very human desires to totalize or to actualize our being-towards-totality. The relationship between identity and totality then can be construed, with Heidegger in mind, as striving toward wholeness, completion, or fulfillment, each of which is a quality of compendia. 6 Compilation & Selection The first distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis pertains to both form and content, and to both the mechanics of writing and the ideas to which writing refers. The second distinction pertains to both as well. In the process of writing and in the process of perception as well, there is a tension between compilation and selection . To begin with, in the work of theory-writing there is compilation, and this is because writing theory requires a broad perspective and certain measure of totalization. On the other hand, writing theory requires that the writer select an idea or a combination of ideas to individuate out of a radical and infinite multiplicity of identities and combinations. The concern here is not primarily for the writing of a theory about a specific idea, like a secondary work or a reference text. But rather the concern is with the writing of grand theories: Marx and Marxism, Derrida and Deconstruction, Husserl and Phenomenology, Sartre and Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism —each of which strives along a trajectory towards being all-encompassing, whether it intends to or not. Today, we could even say that Speculative Realism has embarked on this journey, and perhaps now we could say that the discourse of Speculative Realism has reached the inevitable point after which a grand theory leaves the hands of its writer or writers and becomes a possession of the collective consciousness of the academy, or (perhaps now) the mass consciousness of the blogosphere—and this is a true pharmakon , a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. 7 When we write theory, whether the scope is that of a grand theory or a particular theory, we write in the tension between compilation (making good on the desire to be all encompassing) and selection (being required to decide and discern and to judge what is included in the work and what is deleted or appended or abridged or given over to ellipses). Generally speaking, the work of theory-writing often comes out of a desire to totalize, that is, to develop a theory of everything that is able to apprehend new experiences and ideas while still remaining whole. I grant that this is not a universal desire, and that not everyone who sits down to write a work (or book) of theory does so because of their will-to-totality, but it remains that this drive to totalize does condition a great many writers of theory (especially those who seek to develop grand theories like those mentioned previously). At the beginning of his book of interviews, Between Existentialism and Marxism , Sartre is quoted as saying, after completing the first volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason : “I no longer feel the need to make long digressions in my books, as if I were forever chasing after my own philosophy. It will now be deposited in little coffins, and I will feel completely emptied and at peace—as I felt after Being and Nothingness . A feeling of emptiness: a writer is fortunate if he can attain such a state. For when one has nothing to say, one can say everything .” 8 This is where our two initial distinctions come to bear on the being-towards-totality as it is expressed in the concrete practice of writing: the first being between parataxis and hypotaxis , and the second being between compilation and selection. Where this second distinction is concerned there is a certain paradox at play given that selection is inescapable, and compilation is unachievable. Selection is inescapable (with the figure of the Compendium in mind) because, even when the imperative to compile is followed to excruciating lengths, selection still has the last word. This is why the Compendium is a figure rather than some material thing that can actually be accomplished or actualized. No matter how far one goes along with the will-to-archive and the will-to-compile, it is only ever a question of minimizing selection and never eliminating it. This leads to the second point, which is that total compilation is unachievable. The closest thing to total compilation that we have before us is the ontological and textual fabric of the world. Even in the case of the world, compilation cannot be enacted in a total fashion because of the need to include both the sphere of the actual and the sphere of the possible or potential. This as another way in which compilation is always-already selection, and further evidence that total compilation is practically impossible. Discursive Figuration and Total Writing Rather than figuration referring to a figure of speech or an image, here the term points to a way in which to think about the work of writing, both the work put into writing, and the work that is the result of writing: the finished yet incomplete final piece. As figures or figurations, the Book and the Compendium are ways of thinking about the work of writing and the human desire for the wholeness, completion, and fulfillment that are made manifest in the completed form of the book (whether a published or printed or saved document put to rest by the author). These two figures bear more strongly upon works that seek to be all-encompassing, and works that strive towards expressions of totality such as the One, the Whole, or the All. Moving on to the topic of the subtitle, and on a more prescriptive note, I would say that there is more hope for theory-writing to be found in parataxis than hypotaxis . Part of the reason for this claim is the poststructuralist critique of hierarchies, and yet another part is the compelling line of thinking called “weak thought” (in theology by John D. Caputo, and in philosophy by Gianni Vattimo, among others). 9 The consequences of these two convictions are such that if one is to strongly assert the truth of a grand theory without leaving the realm of hierarchy-critique and weak thought, then one must write paradoxically with parataxis in mind, and in so doing write weakly and non-hierarchically. This does not mean avoiding a sort of topography or topology when writing theory, rather it means avoiding both subjugation and oppression in thought by pursuing a nonviolent sort of ontology. In order to do this, theory writing does not present itself as an exercise in logical analysis where one mechanically moves from a set of premises (via contingency) to the inevitable conclusion (via necessity). Instead, theory approaches the idea of a Compendium. Given that the figural Compendium places parataxis and compilation above hypotaxis and selection, then the question becomes: is placing one part of a binary term before another not just another way of selecting, or another expression of hypotaxis ? Counter to the urge to resign oneself to the reign of selection, with some qualification one can nonetheless write without deciding whether selection and hypotaxis should be subservient to compilation and parataxis (which is to say that writing-without-decision is somewhere between and beyond possibility and impossibility). This dilemma can be disarmed by stating that theory writing is not about primacy, and not about having-decided-beforehand, both stylistically and also where content is concerned. This is the paradox of writing: always striving along a trajectory ( telos ) towards totality via parataxis and compilation, but always being drawn back to finitude and making selections, and placing one idea before another with hypotaxis in mind. In light of this paradox, the question of the Compendium as a figure for discourse and a figural Book has resonance with Jacques Derrida’s essay on Edmund Jabès’ Book of Questions , found in his Writing and Difference . The Question of the Book “Little by little the book will finish me.” 10 Derrida quotes Jabès, and proceeds to outline the reflexive relationship between the author of the book and the book itself, each of which are subjected to the other through a sort of chiasmus, both ontological and textual (not that the two are entirely separable). The Book, for Derrida like Blanchot in the introductory quotation, “infinitely reflects itself” and “develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility”, and in light of this we can draw an association with the painful tension between the practical reality of selection and the ideal trajectory of compilation. 11 This tension in writing, between the will to total compilation and the necessity of abridgment, is an ontological tension between part and whole just as it is a textual tension between signifier and signified. The ontological tension in writing that Derrida expresses in his essay on Jabès is between everything and nothing – a contradiction which Derrida finds in Jabès’ Book of Questions and also in the divine, in God. When one writes between compilation and selection one writes towards totality, and here we can follow Derrida who states that the lapse in signification, presumably in the signifier-signified discrepancy, is a “ rupture with totality itself” and furthermore that this lapse cannot be rectified through deductive reason or even philosophical discourse. 12 This rupture with totality, found in the troubled relation between signifier and signified, can also tell us a lot about the Book and about writing. Given an understanding of writing as an ontological act that strives towards (but never accomplishes) totality, we can see the written book as the manifested and given body of that striving. Perhaps in other disciplines or even other schools of philosophy there is a cultural climate within which the article is prized above the book, but I am fairly confident, especially when referring to the grand theories of Continental thought, that there is a respect for the book as a uniquely meaningful object capable of apprehending totality. Derrida writes, Between the too warm flesh of the literal event and the cold skin of the concept runs meaning. This is how it enters into the book. Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This is why the book is never finite. It always remains suffering and vigilant. 13 Here the vitality of the literal event is compromised by the deadening weight of the concept, and the figure of the Book assists in this lapse of meaning. The Book is a totalizing object, much like the figure of the Compendium, and yet this totalization lacks its final object of completed totality both because the figural Book is necessarily incomplete, and because the physical book is always-already a product of selection. Instead of achieving its end of being a place where everything takes place, it suffers from the lapse of writing, the discrepancy between event and concept. Derrida continues his exposition on Jabès by bringing to light yet another reflexive relation, a reversal of the relationship between the Book and the world. Derrida writes that, for Jabès, “the book is not in the world, but the world is in the book.” 14 In addition to what was stated before, I take figuration to mean that the concepts employed, such as the Book or the Compendium, are not subject to the supposed rigor of analysis that is so prized by Enlightenment or Capitalist realisms. The figure of the Book and the figure of the Compendium cannot be held accountable to standards imported from scientific method, given an understanding that these standards require a concept to be replicable, consistent, falsifiable, measurable, and so on… This is an important point to make, especially in the present atmosphere within which theory must justify itself under conditions that are not its own. Instead of being held to these standards, figuration serves as a way in which to think about writing that leaves thought open to idealistic speculation, imperfect analogies, and most importantly the ever-present gain and loss that occur in the relationship between thought and being. By extension the figural way of addressing writing indulges in enough generalization to accommodate the excess/lack relationship between the ideal form of the Book or the Compendium, and the manifested and given body of a text (as it is practically completed and closed). Here we speak against the hostile atmosphere which would have theory submit itself to hierarchical rigor, rather than Blanchot’s “enigmatic rigor”, by being explicit about the discursive conditions and epistemic conditions under which theory operates. To write with parataxis in mind is, to a certain degree, to write with weakness as one’s methodology (with weak thought being in opposition to hypotaxis and hierarchy as much as weak thought can be in opposition to anything). Rather than asserting the strength of hierarchical theory, and rather than employing antagonistic argumentation with the goal of refutation different discursive and epistemic conditions for theory writing must be cultivated (and these are by no means new). First the critical and theoretical spirit reveals itself as being concerned with the task of complication—especially the complication and critique of binaries, dichotomies, dualities, polarities, paradoxes, parallaxes, hybridities, and especially antinomies. Second, theory positions itself as a sort of showing or revealing, rather than being ultimately focused on coming to full agreement or disagreement. This is where figuration can help theory-writing, both by placing emphasis on teleologies and trajectories (like parataxis and compilation), and by shifting focus away from pure primacy, power, or absolute origin. Figuration then, assists theory writing by placing the concern of theory outside of the concerns of the hard or soft sciences, and into the realm of thought or the idea. To speak of ‘the’ Compendium or ‘the’ Book, here, is to generalize not regarding the perfect form of the Compendium or Book, but to engage speculatively with an abstract idea which remains singular and yet complicated by multiplicity. The question of the Book that Derrida asks through Jabès is a question of everything and nothing, totality and nonbeing, and this question is a concern for writing and a concern for the figure of the Compendium so defined by the tension between compilation and selection, and parataxis and hypotaxis . On the note of nonbeing, we can look to the final page of Derrida’s first essay on Jabès in Writing and Difference and notice the introduction of his neologism, différance (with an ‘a’). Derrida writes: Life negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself, and writes itself as différance . Books are always books of life (the archetype would be the Book of Life kept by the God of the Jews) or of afterlife (the archetype would be the Books of the Dead kept by the Egyptians). 15 This introduction of différance into the equation of the Book, alongside ontological affirmation and negation, hearkens back to the discussion of the symbolic lapse earlier in his essay. Differing and deferring, the Book is always a Book of Life and a figure for the intersection of the vital (life) and the total in writing. In a way, the writer of the Book may be someone who lives life, and in another way the writer of the book-as-object may be someone who engages in the act of writing, both practically (by inscribing words on paper, or typing script on a computer) and ontologically or symbolically (by investing their existence and inexistence into a work worthy of the figural Book). In addition to the writer as writer, the writer also serves as an editor, and the editorial role alongside the idea of the Compendium shows the editor to be one who collects and compiles, while being restrained by eventual selection and decision. Beyond this the editor of works and texts, in both the Book and the world, is engaged in a process of inscribing notation—of annotating (on) the Compendium. Eternal commentary is a feature of the textual Compendium, just as open-ended totality describes the ontological Compendium. The writer as writer does not simply write texts, but rather engages in a profoundly ontological act of inscribing their existence into the world, and the writer as editor does not merely annotate or alter texts as they are, but rather comments upon the text of the world. In/Conclusion So as we create texts, and as we write and create theory, let us be and remain attentive to the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book. These two concurrent metonymies are essential for total writing (grand theories, etc.), and may be forgettable for those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing (which are valid in their own right). From the ontological and symbolic text of the world and phenomenological experience, to concrete texts such as books or mixed media, the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book are important for the actualization of the human will to be all-encompassing. The figure of the Compendium teaches writers of theory that the repetition, density, and fragility of parataxis offers a strong sort of weakness which does not become yet another variety of oppressive and hegemonic thought. Rather than write with hypotaxis in mind, subjugating one thought to another via cause and effect or antecedent and consequent, I would hope that theory-writing could guiltlessly indulge in the dialectical and contradictory conjugation of ideas, and take this as a legitimate methodology. Rather than being ashamed of showing resonances or giving way to abridgment or ellipses, it is my own authorial (but not authoritative) conviction that one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the fact that complete totalization is impossible, and one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the worry of violence, for the Book and the Compendium lack their completed object and are ever incomplete trajectories. NOTES * UPDATED 7/19/13: we've updated the HTML version to reflect the (correct) PDF version. Our apologies to the author—eds. 1. I would like extend thanks to Dr. Peter Schwenger of the University of Western Ontario for his comments on this paper and his hospitality as it was presented as a Theory Session at the Centre for Theory and Criticism on October 26th 2012. I would also like to thank Andrew Weiss for conversation and critique. 2. I should clarify my use of the term ‘figure’ at the outset. Given the use of the term by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Discourse, Figure (and also Gilles Deleuze in Francis Bacon ), I should state clearly that my use of the term will not correspond to the term ‘figure’ understood as the representation of an object. Instead, my use of the term ‘figure’ and its variations (‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘figuration’) will refer to the illustrative or metaphorical use of the Compendium or the Book as models or ways of thinking about writing and discourse. 3. Cf. Revelations 20:12-15. 4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London & New York: Continuum Press, 1997). 5. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990), ix-x. 6. I have written about this concept of being-towards-totality elsewhere in two pieces of writing: the first is called Notes on the Compendium (an unfinished draft) which addresses some very wide theoretical concerns, being structured as a sort of itinerary or archive, and the second is Dialectics Unbound (Punctum Books, 2013) which outlines a concept of totality without the violence of totalization. While these works are more concerned with ontological totality, here I would like to focus on the idea of the Compendium as a textual totality. 7. Cf. Louis Morelle, “Speculative Realism: After Finitude and Beyond, A vade mecum” in Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism . Issue 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012), 241-272. 8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism . Trans. John Matthews (London & New York: Verso, 1974), 9. 9. Cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). 10. Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” in Writing and Difference . Trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 65. 11. Ibid, 65. 12. Ibid, 71. 13. Ibid, 75. 14. Ibid, 76. 15. Ibid, 78. (shrink)

The persistent struggle waged by the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries for peaceful coexistence among states with differing social systems has greatly increased the authority of this humanitarian policy in the eyes of the peoples of the world. Belligerent appeals for an outright rejection of peaceful coexistence are heard less and less frequently, even among the ideologists of imperialism. They are compelled to adapt themselves to the situation and to camouflage themselves with the masks of the peacemaker. Bourgeois (...) professors of social science say they are for peace and peaceful coexistence. However, these concepts are sometimes given such a distorted interpretation that all real content evaporates. "Peaceful coexistence and the cold war," we read, for example, in the words of the British professor, Hugh Seton-Watson, "are literally the same thing." [All quotations from non-Russian sources are retranslated from the Russian.] Thus, a single sentence suffices, by an act of sophistry, to transform peaceful coexistence into a state of international tension and intensive war preparations. The ideologists of imperialism deny, in essence, the possibility of cooperation between the socialist and capitalist countries in the process of peaceful coexistence. (shrink)

This essay introduces the work of the “first generation” Korean feminist photographer Youngsook Park (b. 1941). Highlighting the spirited and critical “wildness” of her feminist aesthetic agenda, with a topical focus on her iconic Michinnyeon Project (1996–2005, “The Mad Women Project,” retranslated here as “The Crazy B*tch Project”), this dossier also contextualizes her more current projects such as Michinnyeon · Balhwa-hada (Blooming/Uttering) (2016) and Could Not Have Left Them Behind (2017) along with her broader lifetime achievements thus far.

In this article Moberly considers in detail the question of how well the translation of Bonhoeffer's Ethics for the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works series represents his thought. While recognizing the difficulties the translators faced, and some successes achieved, Moberly highlights a number of ways in which the translation is flawed through linguistic weaknesses, questionable editorial decisions, and through translations which obscure or distort Bonhoeffer's thought theologically or philosophically. These issues render the translation unreliable for scholarly work, leading the author to question (...) whether for a critical edition there is sufficient warrant to retranslate Bonhoeffer's Ethics. (shrink)

This article examins the hypothesis published in 2013 by Marek Jankowiak, according to which Pope John IV in his so-called Apologia Honorii (CPL 1729) and Maximos Homologetes independently “invented” a dyotheletic Christology for the first time. For that purpose, this letter by John IV is analysed with regard to its sources, its text and the context of its composition. It is shown that the letter, which is preserved only in a Latin retranslation from Greek by Anastasius Bibliothecarius made in (...) 874/75, originally referred only the monothelistic statement of Pope Honorius to the human nature of Christ. The dyotheletic statements, which can also be found in the text, are the result of later updating. This updating begins already in the 7th century in the circle of Maximos’ followers. Here, as well as in the context of the oldest tradition at Anastasius Biliothecarius in the so-called Photian Schism, the conflict-oriented interest in an unlimited authority of the papacy stands in the background. The “invention” of the theologoumenon of a double will in Christ should be assigned exclusively to Maximos Homologetes. (shrink)

This paper sets out to analyse the hermeneutical process of highlighting at work in Seamus Heaney’s preface to his 1999 retranslation of Beowulf. My analysis takes into account the generic identity of the preface by considering it as a textual subgenre where the translator becomes a metatranslator in order to voice herself out of invisibility, engaging thereby in a (self-reflexive) hermeneutical analysis and ‘justification’ by commenting on the selection of the text to be translated and her own translation choices. (...) The analysis is carried out with the help of two concepts elaborated by Gadamer: situatedness and self-understanding. These concepts will help show how the Northern Irish poet fuses different horizons in the process of his retranslation. In this essay, I also take into account the specificity of retranslation as a particular instance of hermeneutical activity. To do so, I focus on how Heaney introduces his own rendering of Beowulf, and on how he explains the translational choices and processes he opted for in order to render this canonical text into contemporary language. I argue that the closely related notions of situatedness and self-understanding can help bring to the fore how Heaney establishes an intrinsic link between his own retranslation choices on the one hand and, on the other, his cultural identity and poetics. Taking into consideration the hermeneutical dimension of this preface, it will be argued, gives us valuable insight into the retranslation project of Seamus Heaney. It will show that he does not seek to impose on Beowulf a transcendental truth or to fix it in a definite retranslation and interpretation. Instead, situatedness and self-understanding help shed light on how he engages creatively with the epic Anglo-Saxon poem: at issue is both how his retranslation is situated and grounded in his own subjectivity, and indeed with respect to his existential questions, as well as in a wider socio-cultural context. (shrink)

In this book, which has been called a synthesis of his whole message, Frithjof Schuon invites us to explore aspects of humankind’s relationship with the Divine, including our sense of the sacred, the conditions of our existence, the symbolism of the human body, and the question of accepting or refusing God’s message. In doing so, Schuon paves the way for a true spiritual engagement. This revised edition has been fully retranslated and contains valuable editor’s notes and a glossary, plus a (...) fascinating appendix of previously unpublished writings. (shrink)

Frithjof Schuon s work is a unique guide for souls seeking clarity in complex times.In this revised edition, fully retranslated from the original French, the book s signature essay, "To Have a Center," focuses on restoring ourselves to our full birthright as beings "made in God s image." Additional essays explore such themes as genius, intelligence.

The Nature of Spirit - Once Again: Nietzsche’s Theory of the Homo Natura. The essay explores the relation between Geist and nature. The thought is, that Geist shows itself in the way in which Geist denies and rejects itself as nature. The way in which Geist denies and rejects itself as nature is the way in which Geist shows its dependency and origin from nature. In two steps I show that Nietzsche’s formula of retranslating the human being back into nature (...) can be understood in two opposed ways. One way to understand it would be that there is a pre-human fundament in nature. I call this pre-human fundament the animal as the presupposition of the human. In this reading the pre-human is the pre-social nature of the human. Another way to understand it would be that the human is an effect of the social nature of the human. In this reading the human is a difference within the human kind. I call this the new human being. In this reading there is no such thing than a pre-human condition for the human, the human being is social all the way down. My claim is that we have to go back from the second transformative reading to the first archaeological reading in order to understand both directions in its dependency. The pre-social nature of the animal within the human on the one side and the social nature of the human as a new form of what a different human being could be on the other side. (shrink)

Teachers of Thomas Aquinas's ethical and political thought will welcome Paul Sigmund's St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics. Sigmund's book includes an incisive introduction treating of St. Thomas's life, sources and influence, eighty densely packed pages of newly retranslated selections from Thomas's works, background texts from Aristotle, Augustine, and Pseudo-Dionysius, and over one hundred pages excerpted from the works of those whom St. Thomas has influenced and those who have interpreted his ethics and politics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and KuhnDavid GormanThe American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and Kuhn, by Giovanna Borradori; translated by Rosanna Crocitto; xii & 177pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, $32.00 cloth, $12.95 paper.The idea for this book, first published in Italian in 1991, was good—to assemble a collection of interviews with (...) the key figures in American philosophy. And the list of philosophers whom Giovanna Borradori chose as representing the best in contemporary American thought was very good—as becomes especially clear when in her introduction she mentions the ones who, for whatever reason, got away: Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Nelson Goodman, Saul Kripke, John Rawls, and John Searle (p. 5). Add these names to those of the philosophers whom she was able to interview for this volume, and you have an impressively complete roster of the thinkers who have made the postwar era in the United States arguably one of the great periods of philosophy.Unfortunately, the execution of the book does not fulfill the promise of its conception. And perhaps nothing could have; the fact remains, however, that Borradori proves herself singularly ill-equipped, in terms both of background knowledge and of intellectual orientation, to bring out very much of importance in these important philosophers’ ideas, either in the interviews that she conducts with them or in the prefatory material that she supplies to bind the collection together.The essence of Borradori’s problem is that she approaches these professional academic philosophers with the incongruous assumption that they are [End Page 388] people with interesting general ideas about history, society, art, religion, or whatever—she assumes in short that these professors are intellectuals. But that is scarcely a term that describes your typical American philosopher. Nor do I mean this condescendingly: on the contrary, just what is significant and valuable about contemporary philosophers in the analytic mold (as almost all of Borradori’s interviewees are) is the narrowness of their focus on problems and methods of logic and the natural sciences, the two Archimedean levers by which analytic philosophy has come far closer than anyone could have predicted to moving the conceptual universe decisively.Of course, not everyone views matters this way, and Richard Rorty in particular has made a spectacular career out of disputing this image—largely a self-congratulatory one, as he takes it—of the analytic tradition. Whether his dissent is justified or not, his role in the collection constitutes another of its problems, because he is not just one of the group of thinkers whom Borradori is interviewing: beyond this, it is Rorty’s ideas which supply Borradori with an intellectual program (in default of one of her own), which necessarily distorts her presentation of the other philosophers’ thoughts, and her line of questioning in these interviews. So, for example, all the interviewees are subjected to questions about American Pragmatism generally and John Dewey in particular, not because these things are of any inherent significance to most of them (as several of them point out, politely), but because Rorty thinks that they should be, and because Borradori follows his line unquestioningly. Thus most of the conversations recorded here are at cross-purposes to start with.Borradori provides brief introductions for each interview, betraying little familiarity with the work of the philosophers, particularly when the work involved is at all technical, or more than about ten years old. Except to summarize these summaries her general introduction for the volume does no more than to indulge in the kind of military and cartographic metaphors made tiresomely familiar by such recent European thinkers as Foucault. Little seems to have been lost in the retranslation of this volume from the Italian, except that the historian of science George Sarton has somehow become “Georges Sardon” (p. 31).David GormanNorthern Illinois UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Everyman’s Library commemorates its fiftieth anniversary very aptly with this issue as its thousandth volume of a classic text of some 2,300 years of age, which through varying fortunes has been a major influence in European culture. As a transcendental science Metaphysics makes no concession to the semi-curious; Aristotle’s inaugurating textbook is understandably concentrated and obscure. A literal version of this formidable text would have no appeal to the general reader, innocent largely of the Greek idiom and of philosophical jargon, (...) while a personal paraphrase could not carry the authentic voice of a past master. Mr. Warrington simply takes the existing Oxford version, retranslating it into easier, more fluent English and rearranging its fourteen books into a free, logical order. In this he is guided by their matter and by the critico-historical views of Jaeger and Ross, outlined in a short Introduction by Sir David himself. He has added chapter titles, numbered sections, prefixing their main groups with a short summary of contents and has courageously kept clear the main line of Aristotle’s argument by relegating all parentheses to footnotes, to which he adds his own identification of historical references. Radical re-arrangement justifies itself by success—here a forbidding classic is presented with the immediate, systematic clarity of a modern text. (shrink)

Cet article analyse la problématique de traduction du texte d’Ibn Rushd, Commentaire de la République de Platon, dans sa langue d’origine, l’arabe. S’inscrivant aux confluents du politique et du philosophique, cet ouvrage est un véritable traité politique. Le manuscrit, disparu probablement lors de la disgrâce qu’a connue Ibn Rush, nous est parvenu grâce à la traduction hébraïque de Samuel Ben Juda. Ahmed Chahlane et Mohamed A. al-Jabri se sont efforcés de restituer – à partir de l’hébreu – le manuscrit dans (...) sa langue d’origine. Après avoir précisé le contexte dans lequel est paru l’ouvrage d’Ibn Rushd et ses conséquences politiques pour l’auteur, l’article analyse la problématique de traduction en l’absence de l’original et tout particulièrement l’entreprise de restitution menée par Chahlane et al-Jabri. L’accent y est mis sur leur méthodologie de restitution et sur les annotations faites par Chahlane sur les traductions hébraïque et anglaises dont les approximations et les erreurs sont nombreuses. L’article démontre comment Chahlane et al-Jabri ont saisi le texte dans sa perspective originale et lui ont rendu sa structure originale en mettant à contribution l’œuvre d’Ibn Rushd et le corpus philosophique arabo-musulman. (shrink)

The relationship between languages and philosophy is so strong that French philosopher Barbara Cassin speaks of 'philosophising in languages'. This paper aims to show how translation can be a means to help disseminate philosophical ideas. It might even be called a political tool, when circulating feminist philosophical thoughts is concerned. The article uses the latest English translation of Simone de Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe to address the pitfalls philosophy presents translators with. It also aims to defend the Interpretive Theory of (...) Translation as a translation strategy particularly relevant to philosophy. The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that the translation of feminist philosophy is largely underanalysed in the field of Translation Studies. Therefore, the article intend to bridge the gap between those disciplines, in order to enhance the reception of feminist philosophy. (shrink)