Should I have been alarmed by the title? The authors presuppose there were such a thing we might call "translatable". What is this supposed to be? Where does it come from? How? – Do not ask, start with the title of the book, a negation.
"Untranslatables" is supposed to be a book about more or less philosophical terms and concepts used by languages other than English. As simple as that: everybody everywhere is studying everything in English, so how can we help the students of this world to understand what thinkers in other languages had said? My suggestion would be: make the students learn the language of the foreign philosopher they are interested in. But, I understand, everybody is in a terrible hurry, these days. Therefore, I try not to shudder as I read the first sentence of the editor's preface:
"One of the most urgent problems posed by the existence of Europe is that of languages." (p. XVII)
I am shuddering all the same. Who is speaking here? A politician? About a problem? An urgent one? Existence? Oh. Did it ever occur to the person who is writing here that the variety of languages, written languages, could be the beauty of old Europe, rather than a problem?
But probably this "urgent problem" speech is the rest of some funding request. This is just the nonsense project talk State agencies want to hear. The editor, luckily not really interested in "resolving an urgent problem", in the following declares her intention to make "clear on every occasion the meaning and the interest of the differences", in order to facilitate "communication between languages and cultures". Whatever that means. More or less: translate the untranslatable.
In the meantime, the very idea of something being untranslatable denies mediation.
If no translation existed, say, between German and Italian, we would see both parts of the mediation fall down as entities of their own. Plopp, plopp! Here the German, there the Italian. And indeed, in "Untranslatables" we find essays about "German" and "Italian". The authors seem to promise to give the very essence of something like "national thinking". This could, maybe, be interesting or at least funny, if only the editor would have been more careful in the choice of the authors.
The author of the article about German seemingly is interested exclusively in one of Hegel's books. Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, the real core of German thinking?
"Until the end of the eighteenth century", the author of the essay states (p.385), "there was little German philosophy in the German language". As exception he names Thomasius, but he ignores Christian Wolff. Seemingly he does not attribute importance to the author of the "German metaphysics", which included a glossary of translations from Latin philosophical terms into German – to a man who, by the way, had risked his live when, in 1721, he had explained that morality can do without religion. Neither does the author name the mystical women from the eleventh and twelfth century who went far beyond what this French professeur considers the mere "assimilation" of antique philosophy. The reader might get suspicious. What if this professeur just did not know what he is writing about?
Hegel is presented as a "peculiar philosopher", "almost the only accused of unreadability" (p.386). Of course, all the other philosophers, take Hamann, Hölderlin or late Schelling, are famous for their clear and understandable writing. It is not surprising that the person who has written such things does not arrive even at a thorough interpretation of the language of Hegel's Phenomenology. He, and rightly so, comments on the entrance of everyday, down to earth words in Hegel's language. But he simply ignores the obvious intrusion of poetic and metaphoric language into the language of the philosopher.
A modest proposal could be: if you want to be informed about German philosophical language, ask Germans. But this recipe does not guarantee success. The essay about "the Italian" has been written by an Italian, Remo Bodei, hero of two worlds.
There is a group of European philosophers who, having moved to the States, where they published more or less correct, facilitated versions of what every European student of philosophy is supposed to know, and had, in the States, great success with their writing, come back to Europe with their replicas of others' ideas, and are celebrated as great thinkers. Selling philosophers, a phenomenon! This is the case of Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, and, on far smaller scale, Remo Bodei.
According to Bodei the "Italian philosophy" is distinguished by "the fact that it does not simply search for logical truth", but rather "the effective truth of all things in all its complexity" (p.516). Italian philosophers, he states, "consider all humans not only as animals endowed with reason, but also as animals who nurture desires and formulate projects". Should we not be thankful for the Italian contribution to the world's philosophy?
Now, many of the articles of this giant book are extremely interesting. Where does the German concept of Beruf come from? From Luther, you think? Well, maybe Max Weber created the meaning we are used to give to the word as typisch deutsch (p.106). If you want to know about Kierkegaard's Pludselghed, open page 800. You will be informed about strange uses of es gibt in Thuringia at page 296, and about Russian Postupok on page 811. This book contains some incredibly stupid articles, but, as a whole, it is like a wonderful adventure park.
"We began with the many and we remain with the many: we have addressed the question of the untranslatable without aiming at unity" (p.XIX), the editor writes. This is honourable. Most of the authors are French, though. This leads to certain deviations from the way to variety. At times, the authors start their considerations from the language of arrival (French in the first edition from 2004, English in translation from 2014).
Take the article about the German Wert. Why do the authors discuss it together with Geltung? (p.1225) In German, there is no necessary link between these concepts. In French, there is: valeur and validité. It is the unifying force of the language of arrival that defines the question, and the answer, which, in addition, is somewhat heideggerian. The authors do not consider the historical origin of the term in his modern sense (somewhere between Fries and Lotze), but make arbitrary etymological digressions about the connection between wert, werdan and werden (that is, the ancient and the modern German version of the verb “to become”) which, according to them, placed “Wert in the semantic orbit of the ought-to-be” – but how? – and mix it up with Gültigkeit (validity). But where do these links come from? Ancient German and modern French help for sure, if you are looking for explanations without further research.
What they could have considered is: Kant and Hegel do not use it as we use it today (Kant only talks about Wert as worth in the Fundamentals), Nietzsche and Scheler do. So what happened? Had Lotze introduced it? He has not. Fries did. But the authors of the essay about Wert base their reasoning on Heidegger´s narration of the history of philosophy.
It is always pleasant to see the proper prejudices confirmed. These French authors take their leave on French language. What they know about German philosophy, rotates around Hegel and Heidegger.
In this beautiful book, more variety would have been desirable. And less professeurs as authors.
I am shuddering all the same. Who is speaking here? A politician? About a problem? An urgent one? Existence? Oh. Did it ever occur to the person who is writing here that the variety of languages, written languages, could be the beauty of old Europe, rather than a problem?
But probably this "urgent problem" speech is the rest of some funding request. This is just the nonsense project talk State agencies want to hear. The editor, luckily not really interested in "resolving an urgent problem", in the following declares her intention to make "clear on every occasion the meaning and the interest of the differences", in order to facilitate "communication between languages and cultures". Whatever that means. More or less: translate the untranslatable.
In the meantime, the very idea of something being untranslatable denies mediation.
If no translation existed, say, between German and Italian, we would see both parts of the mediation fall down as entities of their own. Plopp, plopp! Here the German, there the Italian. And indeed, in "Untranslatables" we find essays about "German" and "Italian". The authors seem to promise to give the very essence of something like "national thinking". This could, maybe, be interesting or at least funny, if only the editor would have been more careful in the choice of the authors.
The author of the article about German seemingly is interested exclusively in one of Hegel's books. Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, the real core of German thinking?
"Until the end of the eighteenth century", the author of the essay states (p.385), "there was little German philosophy in the German language". As exception he names Thomasius, but he ignores Christian Wolff. Seemingly he does not attribute importance to the author of the "German metaphysics", which included a glossary of translations from Latin philosophical terms into German – to a man who, by the way, had risked his live when, in 1721, he had explained that morality can do without religion. Neither does the author name the mystical women from the eleventh and twelfth century who went far beyond what this French professeur considers the mere "assimilation" of antique philosophy. The reader might get suspicious. What if this professeur just did not know what he is writing about?
Hegel is presented as a "peculiar philosopher", "almost the only accused of unreadability" (p.386). Of course, all the other philosophers, take Hamann, Hölderlin or late Schelling, are famous for their clear and understandable writing. It is not surprising that the person who has written such things does not arrive even at a thorough interpretation of the language of Hegel's Phenomenology. He, and rightly so, comments on the entrance of everyday, down to earth words in Hegel's language. But he simply ignores the obvious intrusion of poetic and metaphoric language into the language of the philosopher.
A modest proposal could be: if you want to be informed about German philosophical language, ask Germans. But this recipe does not guarantee success. The essay about "the Italian" has been written by an Italian, Remo Bodei, hero of two worlds.
There is a group of European philosophers who, having moved to the States, where they published more or less correct, facilitated versions of what every European student of philosophy is supposed to know, and had, in the States, great success with their writing, come back to Europe with their replicas of others' ideas, and are celebrated as great thinkers. Selling philosophers, a phenomenon! This is the case of Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, and, on far smaller scale, Remo Bodei.
According to Bodei the "Italian philosophy" is distinguished by "the fact that it does not simply search for logical truth", but rather "the effective truth of all things in all its complexity" (p.516). Italian philosophers, he states, "consider all humans not only as animals endowed with reason, but also as animals who nurture desires and formulate projects". Should we not be thankful for the Italian contribution to the world's philosophy?
Now, many of the articles of this giant book are extremely interesting. Where does the German concept of Beruf come from? From Luther, you think? Well, maybe Max Weber created the meaning we are used to give to the word as typisch deutsch (p.106). If you want to know about Kierkegaard's Pludselghed, open page 800. You will be informed about strange uses of es gibt in Thuringia at page 296, and about Russian Postupok on page 811. This book contains some incredibly stupid articles, but, as a whole, it is like a wonderful adventure park.
"We began with the many and we remain with the many: we have addressed the question of the untranslatable without aiming at unity" (p.XIX), the editor writes. This is honourable. Most of the authors are French, though. This leads to certain deviations from the way to variety. At times, the authors start their considerations from the language of arrival (French in the first edition from 2004, English in translation from 2014).
Take the article about the German Wert. Why do the authors discuss it together with Geltung? (p.1225) In German, there is no necessary link between these concepts. In French, there is: valeur and validité. It is the unifying force of the language of arrival that defines the question, and the answer, which, in addition, is somewhat heideggerian. The authors do not consider the historical origin of the term in his modern sense (somewhere between Fries and Lotze), but make arbitrary etymological digressions about the connection between wert, werdan and werden (that is, the ancient and the modern German version of the verb “to become”) which, according to them, placed “Wert in the semantic orbit of the ought-to-be” – but how? – and mix it up with Gültigkeit (validity). But where do these links come from? Ancient German and modern French help for sure, if you are looking for explanations without further research.
What they could have considered is: Kant and Hegel do not use it as we use it today (Kant only talks about Wert as worth in the Fundamentals), Nietzsche and Scheler do. So what happened? Had Lotze introduced it? He has not. Fries did. But the authors of the essay about Wert base their reasoning on Heidegger´s narration of the history of philosophy.
It is always pleasant to see the proper prejudices confirmed. These French authors take their leave on French language. What they know about German philosophy, rotates around Hegel and Heidegger.
In this beautiful book, more variety would have been desirable. And less professeurs as authors.
