Aristotle's politics/ethics - best translation?
youngjae lee
ethics_ into english? response via e-mail will be appreicated.
youngjae lee
Sheila
Please also respond directly to a newsgroup. If this is not acceptable;
I request a summary to be posted. I'm reading NE translated by Terence Irwin.
I'd like to hear of any particulary marvelous translations.
(occasionally this comees up on r.a.b. but I lose the lists)
--
Sheila Herndon - she...@wam.umd.edu
"the mysterious butterflies of the mind"
SCIENTISTS - Brian Dorland
>What are the best translations of aristotle's _politics_ and _nichomachean
>ethics_ into english? response via e-mail will be appreicated.
>
I'm not making this up).
Generally, the McKeon (sp?) translations are good, IMHO.
Bryan
DA...@psuvm.psu.edu
Ethics or the Politics in the volume of Aristotle(s)--_The Basic Works
of Aristotle_ edited by him. In fact, he took over the texts of the
Oxford translation, under the editorship of W.D. Ross. What McKeon did
was reduce eleven volumes to one, chopping some things up, but making
a nice, affordable one-volume work.
Hippocrates G. Apostle's translations Bryan says to avoid, but I would
first decide what level of reading you want to do. Apostle has the virtue
of being almost completely devoid of imagination, which means that he
usually decides on a word and sticks with it, in a 1:1 correspondence
(more or less). He provides an extensive glossary--worth the price of
buying one of his texts. William of Moerbeke did this 1:1 work for
Thomas Aquinas and I don't know anyone who understands Aristotle better
than Thomas.
But I would recommend that you skip all of Apostle's notes. If they
weren't so inane, they might seriously impair your understanding.
Terence Irwin's translation is awful, in my opinion. He chopped up
the text with his own little titles and numbered it as if Aristotle
really wanted to be Wittgenstein writing the Tractatus. I always
use the Greek text alongside when reading Aristotle (ultimate verdict--
there is no trustworthy translation!), and Irwin's text made this a
real pain. And the page layout is ugly.
In all, Ross's translation of the "Nichomachean Ethics" and Jowett's
of the "Politics" read as well as any in English that I've looked at.
These are both reproduced in the volume that McKeon edited, and perhaps
separately, probably from Oxford (Jowett's "Politics" was in the Modern
Library series).
For a more literal study, I'd say go with Apostle, or if you can at least
recognize Greek words, the Loeb edition (these are of uneven quality
though).
- - - - - - - - -
Dennis Beach
da...@psuvm.psu.edu
SCIENTISTS - Brian Dorland
Can you recommend a good translation of _De Anima_? I bludgeoned
my way through Apostle's trans. I think I got something out of it
despite the translator. I found myself seeking refuge in the Loeb
edition (never thought I'd say that!). Can anyone recommend
a commentary etc. on _De Anima_, or does anyone really care about
it anymore?
I found it to be Aristotle's most difficult text; and potentially one of
his most interesting. I would be interested to hear from anyone who
could point me towards a coherent reading of it.
Thanks,
Bryan
DA...@psuvm.psu.edu
as for the _Nichomachean Ethics_ and the _Politics_: Apostle's fairly
literal but opaque translation (again, skip the notes!), the Loeb bilingual
edition (W.S. Hett, trans), and the Oxford Aristotle in English (J.A.
Smith translates _De Anima_; the full text is available in both the Oxford
edition and McKeon's one volume compilation). In addition, there is the
old (1907) Oxford (Greek and English) text of R. Hicks (good introduction
that summarizes the history of interpretation through the 19th century),
and the Oxford Clarendon Aristotle, trans. D.W. Hamlyn (1968), which has
only Books II and III, and those sections of Book I Hamlyn deems significant.
All suffer from interpolation. E.g. Hett translates "aisthetikon" as
"faculty of sense"; All translate "aisthetos" as "object of sense" and
"aistheterion" as "sense organ." These formulas can subtly introduce
very non-Greek conceptions. "Sensibility," "the sensible," and "the
sensitive part" are more stripped-down versions.
These come to bear in current debates over interpretation. A.O. Rorty
and M.C. Nussbaum have edited a collection, _Essays on Aristotle_, that
represents well the current debate about "functionalism." Rorty,
H. Putnam, M. Burnyeat, and R. Sorabji are among the major players.
C. Kahn and L.A. Kosman both have good articles on other topics. All
the articles are on _De Anima_.
However, the best commentary available in English is the translation of
Aquinas: _Aristotle's De Anima in the Version of William of Moerbeke
and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas_. Thomas attacks the
interpretations of the Arabic commentators (Avicenna, Averroes), whose
treatises I do not think are available in English. Franz Brentano
summarizes them (translation reproduced in Nussbaum and Rorty), and they
seem very interesting but fantastical. [There is one cosmic mind that
thinks, and one that receives thoughts; humans are the conduits for this
traffic; at every moment, every possible thought is being received into
the cosmic material intellect through some conduit, else truth would be
diminished]. Thomas's commentary is very sensible, detailed, and non-
dogmatic. The analytically trained philosophers in Nussbaum and Rorty's
volume seem ignorant of him, so that much of what Kahn and Kosman
"discover" is already right there in Aquinas. Thomas is only commenting
on Aristotle in this volume. He puts this to more doctrinal use in
_Questions on the Soul,_ and in the _Summa_.
Frank Wilson
Yes, it is one of Aristotle's most important texts, both historically and
in terms of understanding his own thought as a whole. The translations in
the McKeon _Basic_Works_ volume and in Ackrill's _A_New_Aristotle_Reader_
are more readable than Apostle's, though Apostle was trying for a different
kind of translation than the more standardly used versions. (Long story
there which I'll skip.).
There is a partial translation, of Books II and III, by D. W. Hamlyn
which is available from Oxford, in their Clarendon Aristotle Series. This
has the virtue of being accompanied by extensive notes and commentary by
the translator, and I think it may even be available in paperback. And as
I recall Penguin put out a new edition last year or thereabouts, though I
don't recall the editor or translator and can't get at my books to check at
the moment. Nor have I had a chance to check out the accuracy of the
translation in detail, though if memory serves it was fairly readable. I
do recall that this edition had a lengthy introduction (100 pp. or so)
which endeavored to relate Aristotle's approach to the current discussions
in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science about functionalism,
mind-body identity theories, etc.
In this connection, a recent work by Jerry Fodor, entitled
_The_Modularity_of_Mind (MIT Press/Bradford Books) can be fruitfully
regarded as a modern rethinking of some of the lines of argument which
Aristotle presents in _De_Anima_. Fodor's book has been fairly influential
in recent years in cognitive science discussions.
There are a number of commentaries on the _De_Anima_ which are useful,
starting with the one by Aquinas, and coming on down to the present day
(Wedin, Nussbaum, Modrak, etc.). The comments by McKeon in his
introduction to the abridged version of the _Basic_Works_, which is
entitled _Introduction_to_Aristotle_, 2nd edition (U of Chicago Press), are
good though dense going.
Well, this should be enough to get you started. Happy reading, and
thinking.