[C] [Wittrs] Re: Re: Re: Wittgenstein, Translations & "Queer"
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:46:18 -0800
On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 8:45 PM, CJ <castalia@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Sean, J,
>
> when too much philosophizing can be just plain too much
<< snip >>
Hey Sean, good work catching this. Walter Kaufmann did some bold
moves when translating Goethe, Nietzsche and Buber, as you probably
know. Part of the work is matching with contemporary meanings, for
the benefit of readers today, which does involve making lots of
aesthetic judgments, why it's good to have more than one translation
available. Not every philosophical literature is so lucky.
Kaufmann took time in his lectures to address issues of translation,
to speak about them extensively. With Nietzsche's 'Gay Science', he
took the time to talk about this trajectory around 'gay, i.e. at the
time Nietzsche wrote it, he wasn't specifically meaning what some
might presume he meant, if looking through today's lenses. Buber's "I
and Thou" became "I and You" precisely because there's been a reversal
in English to where "thou" is considered the more formal and
distancing whereas "you" has that mutuality, that sense of relating to
a peer. With Nietzsche, he needed to reconsider the "superman" meme,
which only leads to comic book imagery (not such a bad outcome, given
'Thus Spake Zarathustra' has a Narnia-like flavor -- lots of talking
animals etc.). He came up with 'overman' and made it clear this had
nothing to do with Aryans or any of that nonsense (Nietzsche was
Austrian, like LW, wasn't proto-Nazi in any way -- would be Kaufmann's
brief on the guy).
Anyway, the long and short of it is it's very apropos to have this
discussions alongside whatever translations are going on. There's no
requirement to let things "pass silently" as it were, even
(especially) where a thinker as subtle as Wittgenstein is concerned.
I regard your starting this thread as a real public service (simply
for getting the ball rolling) and have cited your post appreciatively
in my journal, providing some of my own local context (naturally).
http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2010/01/another-debate.html (last paragraph)
Keep up the great work.
Kirby
--
>>> from mars import math
http://www.wikieducator.org/Digital_Math
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