NDPR brengt review van de nieuwste Engelse Ethica-vertaling

In het blog van 29 juni 2018 signaleerde ik de “Nieuwe Engelse Ethica-vertaling, gebaseerd op de komende nieuwe kritische editie:”

Spinoza, Ethics. Proved in Geometrical Order. Edited by Matthew J. Kisner; translated by Michael Silverthorne and Matthew J. Kisner. Cambridge Universiy Press [Series: Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy], 2018

Welnu, vandaag verschijnt bij de NDPR de bespreking ervan door Steve Barbone. Barbone vergelijkt de nieuwe vertaling op een aantal belangrijke punten met die van Samuel Shirley en Edwin Curley. De slotalinea luidt:

In sum, Silverthorne and Kisner's new translation is to be appreciated for the work done to help bring English readers closer to Spinoza's text by using different English terms for Spinoza's Latin ones. This choice betrays their decision to favor text over convention insofar as we lose, literally, key aspects of Spinoza's philosophy (e.g., "the three kinds of knowledge"). On the other hand, readers must decide for themselves whether they prefer being betrayed by translations that provide them with phrases and wordings with which they are already familiar even though these beloved phrases may not be quite so literal renderings, or whether they prefer being betrayed by a more textual rendition that forgoes these well-known wordings. At any rate, it becomes a matter of which betrayal we are willing to live with, and it is Spinoza himself who informs us that every interpretation already betrays something of the one who makes it: "It follows . . . that the ideas that we have of external bodies indicate the constitution of our own body more than the nature of the external bodies" (61).