Tradurre Weber pensando a Platone

Quando leggiamo testi classici un poco raffazzonati come Politik als Beruf (Weber stesso ha dichiarato il suo malcontento a proposito del suo discorso) ogni piccola traccia potrebbe esserci d'aiuto per meglio delineare un possibile insieme di pensieri e pensierini o almeno la direzione in cui si muovono.

"La politica si fa con la testa, non con altre parti del corpo o dell'anima" scrive Weber secondo la traduzione italiana precisa di Tuccari (p.109). Che cosa suggerisce questa frase? Che Weber penserebbe l'anima come divisibile? Dove attingerebbe il sociologo tedesco? Per comprendere questo, dovremmo probabilmente tornare nell'Antichità. Dove di preciso?

Nell'originale, Weber parla di "jene starke Bändigung der Seele" che caratterizzerebbe il politico. "Bändigen" significa: addomesticare. L'insolita immagine dell'anima come animale da domare potrebbe essere un indizio. 

L'espressione risale alla traduzione più diffusa nell'area germanofona di Platone, ovvero quella di Schleiermacher, di Gorgias 505b, dove infattu, se consultiamo l'originale,  il greco sembra equiparare l'anima a un cavallo selvatico.

È un idea diffusa che i tedeschi abbiano presente la loro tradizione filosofica, se non da Leibniz o Wolff in poi, almeno a partire da Kant. Ma bisogna tenere in considerazione che in Germania, dai tempi della riforma di Humboldt, non si insegna Filosofia nei licei. 

Humboldt seguiva l'opinione di Kant, secondo il quale la Filosofia non dovrebbe essere affrontata dai giovani che rischierebbero di finire "altklug" ("saputelli", di una sapienza attinta dai vecchi).

Quindi l'idea che, ad esempio, Nietzsche avrebbe avuto presenti gli insegnamenti di Kant o di Hegel potrebbe rivelarsi erronea. La metaforica stradale alla Löwith: "Da - a", facilmente porta lontano dalla comprensione della storia del pensiero.

Tuttavia, esiste un filosofo che tutti gli studenti del vecchio liceo tedesco, ovvero di quello umanistico, conoscevano: Platone. Alcuni testi dell'ateniese rientravano nell'insegnamento di lingua e letteratura greca. Non ci dobbiamo stupire se Werner Heisenberg, il grande fisico, non parli di Kant quando imbocca ragionamenti filosofici poiché semplicemente non ne sa nulla. Cita Platone. Lo stesso vale per Weber che continua per tutta la vita a leggere alcune opere del filosofo greco, ovvero il Gorgia e "la Repubblica" e a raccomandarne la lettura. 

Trovare tracce di questi studi liberi nei discorsi di Weber è tutt'altro che sorprendente. Purtroppo la tradizione italiana annulla la metafora: rende l'espressione "jene starke Bändigung der Seele" con "quel saldo controllo dell'anima" (p.109) e perde il riferimento al testo antico. 

Questo è il motivo per cui, nel testo di Weber,  nel passaggio intero in cui appare il riferimento, l'influsso di Platone risulta meno evidente, benché si faccia comunque notare.  Partiamo dal numero di parti dell'anima importanti per l'uomo politico: sono tre. 

Citando la traduzione di Tuccari: "Si può dire che tre qualità sono sopratutto decisive per l'uomo politico: passione, senso di responsabilità, lungimiranza." (p.108) Bene. Riconosciamo l'eros, il nous e  poi una specie di doppione?

Il terzo elemento, "lungimiranza" tradurrebbe il tedesco "Augenmaß". La versione italiana la troviamo spiegata dalla Treccani: "attitudine a vedere lontano nel tempo". Sembrerebbe una dote di carattere cognitivo, ovvero una capacità corrispondente a ciò che giustificherebbe la posizione del pater familias in Aristotele. 

 L'Augenmaß tedesco ha tutt'altra portata. Il Duden dà come significato oltre alla "capacità di agire in modo appropriato" come sinonimo "Besonnenheit".

"Besonnenheit" si traduce con "prudenza" o anche "calma e pazienza", perdendo in ogni caso la radice verbale "sich besinnen": riflettere, pensare, il cui risultato sarebbe la "Besonnenheit", ovvero prudenza basata su riflessione. 

Feuerbach's Sentences – Translations compared by the Machine (Python Spacy)

Background

I taught German for philosophers in Italian universities for more than ten years. My students were acquainted with the History of Philosophy (they had done four hours weekly for three years at High School, because it has been considered a principal topic ever since the reform

done by philosopher Gentile in the Twenties) but knew only little German.

I often limited the reading material to just one sentence. This exercise gives little of what Markettari call contents, but quite an idea of how philosophers are thinking, i.e., their philosophical style.

Ludwig Feuerbach, Master of participle constructions

Participle constructions in German are developed recursively on the left, while Italian works on the right side. This means in German we can make use of a kind of parenthesis formed by the article and the noun and introduce very long constructions. In Italian you do not have

this possibility. In English you can do it, but usually you do not.

Feuerbach is famous for his mountainous sentences. He uses lots of participle constructions, typical for technical and administrative writing.

Hegel, Fichte even Kant had written in a different way. It could be interesting to see how the language structure in written texts changes during the nineteenth century. Especially academic texts are getting quite tiresome the last decades of the century,

A sentence and its translation

In one of those very long sentence in the Introduction to “The essence of Christianity” we find the following passage:

The book offers, Feuerbach says, the "Prinzip einer neuen, von der bisherigen Philosophie wesentlich unterschiednen, dem wahren, wirklichen, ganzen Wesen des Menschen entsprechenden, aber freilich gerade eben deswegen allen durch eine über-, d. h. widermenschliche, widernatürliche Religion und Spekulation verdorbenen und verkrüppelten Menschen widersprechenden Philosophie".

The students had fun searching for the noun „einer neuen“ does belong to. Needless to say, it is the last word, „Philosophie”.

With Python Spacy, we can analyze the dependencies in this sentence and design a dependancy tree.

The English translation by George Eliot gives:

"This philosophy is essentially distinguished from the systems hitherto prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real, complete nature of man; but for that very reason it is antagonistic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman, i.e., anti-human, anti-natural religion and

speculation". Sounds easier somehow. With diSplay: 

Instead of the nine levels found in the original, here we find only five. The structure is simpler. Maybe we could see the translation of a kind of Easy Reader. Nothing bad, as I myself have written lots of these books. But if we want to understand what is happening to philosophical thought during the nineteenth century, there might be missing something if we worked with translations. The structure, the way of thinking. 

Technically

Just a very small program for grammar parsing and tree displaying.

import spacy

from spacy import displacy

nlp = spacy.load("en_core_web_sm")

doc = nlp("This philosophy is essentially distinguished from ….")

for token in doc:

print(token.text, token.lemma_, token.pos_, token.tag_, token.dep_,

token.shape_, token.is_alpha, token.is_stop)

options = {"compact": True}

displacy.serve(doc, style ="dep", options=options, port = 5001)

The list for Feuerbach starts:

This this DET DT det Xxxx True True

philosophy philosophy NOUN NN nsubjpass xxxx True False

is be AUX VBZ auxpass xx True True

essentially essentially ADV RB advmod xxxx True False

distinguished distinguish VERB VBN ROOT xxxx True False

from from ADP IN prep xxxx True True

the the DET DT det xxx True True

systems system NOUN NNS compound xxxx True False

hitherto hitherto NOUN NNS pobj xxxx True False

prevalent prevalent ADJ JJ amod xxxx True False

, , PUNCT , punct , False False

in in ADP IN mark xx True True

that that SCONJ IN mark xxxx True True

it it PRON PRP nsubj xx True True

corresponds correspond VERB VBZ advcl xxxx True False

to to ADP IN prep xx True True

the the DET DT det xxx True True

real real ADJ JJ amod xxxx True False

, , PUNCT , punct , False False

complete complete ADJ JJ amod xxxx True False

nature nature NOUN NN pobj xxxx True False

of of ADP IN prep xx True True

man man NOUN NN pobj xxx True False

for toke")n in doc:

print(token.text, token.lemma_, token.pos_, token.tag_, token.dep_,

token.shape_, token.is_alpha, token.is_stop 

Tracce di Platone. Max Weber: "La politica come professione"

 

Weber non ha citato né Kant né Montesquieu.  L'unica testo di teoria politica a cui si riferisce è La repubblica di Platone, accanto al Gorgia ...

Past Participles with Fichte, Faust

and a look at Hegel. 
Chapter 9, has been a long time now...
Deutsch für Philosophen

(something like an Easy Reader of the first chapter of the  Wissenschaftslehre 1794)

With Safari some links do not work, sorry!

Fichte: Special words

Universities offer courses in "specialized languages" for physicists, for natural sciences, for Law and for what they call Humanities (German "Geisteswissenschaften"!). The latter is supposed to include philosophical language. For sure, terms like "transcendental" have to be explained to the layman. But those courses are addressed to "specialists", for example to philosophers who have to move between languages in order to study, say, German Idealism. 

Our philosopher could save a lot of time, money and fatigue reading translations. Taking Fichte, he or she would encounter sentences like: "If A is posited, then A is posited." Specialised language, indeed. The contents, yes, is weird, but to posit! In German, this reads: "Wenn A gesetzt ist, dann ist A gesetzt." Everyday language, not "posited". To "setzen" something could be translated as "to make it seat/ to put it/ to set". 

We normally lay ("legen") a foundation stone. In spite of all the brick and construction metaphors Fichte uses, here, at the beginning of his "Foundations of the Science of Knowledge", he avoids "legen". Why? 

We "seat" "einen Stein", not a stone, but a piece, when we are playing draughts/checkers. Fichte, as logicians do, is employing a game metaphor. If you make certain moves, there will be consequences for the following ones. 

Every natural language develops its own philosophy. We have German or Italian or American Philosophies, as embarrassing as this is. The differences lie in the words: styles, definitions and usages. In German, philosophical language grows out of everyday talk. By translating philosophical texts, their words may transform into specialized language, which is stuff for highly ranked Faculties, but not Philosophy. 

When Hegel erkläres - what Philosophers do

Philosophers deal with truth. Linguistically, we may aspect what Searle calls representative speech acts from them. They assert, they affirm, they conclude, they explain. When Hegel opens his enchanting preface to the Phenomenology with "Eine Erklärung, wie sie einer Schrift in einer Vorrede nach der Gewohnheit vorausgeschickt wird", the English translator (Pinkard) writes: "to begin, as writers usually do in a preface, by explaining", or (A.V. Miller): "It is customary to preface a work with an explanation" .

What kind of explanation? "über den Zweck, den der Verfasser sich in ihr vorgesetzt": "of the author's aim" ("sich vorsetzen" means: put in front of himself, like a glass), and about tendencies and relations to other thinkers. Indeed, the preface could contain an explanation. Certainly not a causal derivation of the theoretical work. Maybe a conceptually clear exposition of the author's point of view? But that would be the text in itself, not the preface. Explanation? If we take a look at the German word "Erklärung", we immediately see that it derives from "klar", Latin "clarus, a" (therefore Cicero, in his admirable Italian translation, chooses "chiarimento", wrongly).

The English correspondent would be "to declare". In fact, the German "erklären" can also be used in this sense: "to declare war": "Krieg erklären".

Hegel writes: "Erklärung über den Zweck", not "des Zwecks". "A declaration of the author's aim", that is what he is talking about.  

Later on, Hegel asserts: "Die Forderung von dergleichen Erklärungen sowie die Befriedigungen derselben gelten leicht dafür, das Wesentliche zu betreiben": "The demand for such explanations, as also the attempts to satisfy this demand, very easily pass for the essential business philosophy has to undertake". Again, these are "Erklärungen" of "aims and results", which in a preface necessarily are not developed through the movement of thought, as Hegel critically remarks: these are declarations. 

In his preface, Hegel is talking about the problem of declaring aims and results. Philosophers explain, that is sure, but they declare as well. What is the difference? An explanation remains true and clear independently of the author. A declaration instead does only make sense if we see the subject behind: somebody declares something, and indeed we continue treating philosophical thought as linked to historical persons, whatever the constant reference to something like "Hegel" or "Kant" may mean.

German for Philosophers: Chapter 17: Prefaces, introductions

German for philosophers, Chapter 17:

Anfänge / Beginnings

"The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart
Desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned
Way of the goddess"

Someone is showing up, he starts speaking, and after a short time the listeners understand: this is a philosopher. How is this happening? Why do they listen? 


The philosopher is, so the definitions we usually get, talking about very general questions: about being, the good, about present, future and past as such ... but why? Will he be telling something the others do not know? Because he has followed, as Parmenides states, "the ways of the goddess"? 

We remember Pythagoras behind his drape mumbling the truth.  Why does it seem plausible that he is sitting behind, we are sitting in front of the cloth, and only he knows the truth? There is, as the Italian philosopher Carlo Sini has illustrated, a threshold between the supposed-to-be philosopher and us, the listeners. How does he create this distance between him and us?

The philosopher has to trigger in his listeners what Coleridge called the suspension of disbelief.

This can partially be done by position: a university teacher, a messenger of institutionalized knowledge, the one who passed many exams and selections, is supposed to be the one who knows. But philosophical knowledge is of a special kind. One might even question the right of university  professors to talk about truth... 

It has to be explained where the philosophical text comes from. That is what, after the titles on the cover,  prefaces do. Philosophically, though, these texts are supposed to treat the particular, the circumstances, everything irrelevant to the philosophical text in itself. What Genette described as paratexts, are impossible and necessary additions to the work of a philosopher. A brief look at writings of Wolff, Kant, Hegel, Fichte and Husserl seems to be interesting at that regard, at least to me.

Thesis: The difference between a novel and a philosophical work is that the latter needs a preface.