Translations – Maverick Philosopher

Courage

Mut verloren — alles verloren!

Da wär es besser, nicht geboren!

To lose courage is to lose everything, in which case it would have been better never to have been born.

A few stabs at rhyme-preserving translation:

Of courage shorn, of everything shorn!

In that case better, never to have been born!

Courage lost — everything lost!

Then having been born's too high a cost!

Loss of courage, something fatal!

Better then, never natal!

Loss of heart — loss of all!

'Twould then have been better, not to be at all!

Negativity: The Spirit of the Left

The spirit of the Left is the spirit of negativity. Any intellectually honest person following current events can see that the tendency of leftists is mindlessly to destroy for the sake of destruction what it has taken centuries to build. Transgressive of tradition and its wisdom, these 'progressives' are both hobbled and enabled by their presentism. Hobbled, because they know nothing of the past. Enabled, because their ignorance allows them to imagine themselves to be free of the moral limitations of humanity. Punks and know-nothings for the most part, they are unwitting agents of the demonic.

In Faust, Goethe gives Mephistopheles the following lines:

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht
Ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht;
Drum besser wär’s daß nichts entstünde. So ist denn alles was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element. (V. 1338–1344)

I cannot improve upon Walter Kaufmann's translation:

I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
'Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent —
That is my proper element.

Vito Caiati (7/24) responds:

In yesterday’s post “Negativity: The Spirit of the Left,” which includes an excerpt from Goethe’s Faust and which terminates with the statement, “Punks and know-nothings for the most part, they are unwitting agents of the demonic,” you obliquely suggest a lien [Vito slips into French here: link, connection] between the ongoing leftist annihilationist campaign [against] the Western cultural, historical, and religious heritage and malevolent supernatural forces or entities. Am I right in assuming that this was your intention? Or are you employing the adjective “demonic” in a more generic, figurative sense to speak of evil?

I mean 'demonic' literally. It is not that the vandals are themselves literally demons, but that they are being used by demonic forces, the "principalities and powers" that St. Paul speaks of. Here is a short video by N. T. Wright on the meaning of the phrase. Leftism at bottom is nihilistic, and this nihilism has a metaphysical source in the rebellious spirit who "always negates" and can accept no legitimate authority. So what is playing out before our eyes is something very deep and metaphysical: Unseen Warfare. Or is that OTT, to use a going abbreviation?

Your question also raises the question whether there can be evil without agents of evil. Aquinas held that evil is a privation with no positive entitative status, a lack of good, privatio boni. A stock example is blindness in the eye: the blindness is a lack of sight. But it seems to that there is a positivity about evil that could only be accounted for by evil agents, with evil free wills, for example, the Antifa or BLM thug that blinds a police officer permanently by shining a laser in his eyes, as happened the other night.

Schopenhauer in Italian on Schadenfreude, La Gioia per il Danno Altrui

If to feel envy is to feel bad when another does well, what should we call the emotion of feeling good when another suffers misfortune? There is no word in English for this as far as I know, but in German it is called Schadenfreude. This word is used in English from time to time, and it is one every educated person should know. It means joy (Freude) at another injuries (Schaden). The great Schopenhauer, somewhere in Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, remarks that while envy (Neid) is human, Schadenfreude is diabolical.

Exactly right. There is something fiendish in feeling positive glee at another’s misery. This is not to imply that envy is not a hateful emotion to be avoided as far as possible. Invidia, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. From the Latin invidia comes ‘invidious comparison’ which just means an envious comparison.

My translation of the Italian:

To feel envy is human, but to taste joy at the injury of others is diabolical.

Friday Cat Blogging! Is This Kitty Syllogizing?

Weiche dem Größeren, aber verachte nicht den Kleineren! Yield to the greater, but scorn not the lesser!

When I first glanced at this graphic I read it as: While I concede the major (premise), I do not scorn the minor! But that would be Maiori cedo, sed non contemno minorem. Or at least I think that's right: I am no Latinist, though I sometimes play one in the blogosphere. Image credit.

Heute Rot, Morgen Tot

Archaic variant: Heute roth, morgen todt.

Poetically translated by your humble correspondent:

Today ruddy, tomorrow rotting.

Or is it better like this?

Ruddy today, rotting tomorrow.

Literally:

Red today, dead tomorrow.

Better red than dead? Or better dead than red?

The Task of Philosophy: To Conceptualize the Absolute

Wolfgang Cramer, Gottesbeweise und Ihre Kritik, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1967, p. 19:

So lange noch gewusst wird, was Philosophie ist, solange Philosophie noch ist, wird sie die Aufgabe, einen gesicherten Begriff vom Absoluten zu entwickeln, nicht zur Ruhe kommen lassen.

The task of developing a secure concept of the Absolute will never come to rest as long as philosophy is and is appreciated for what it is. (tr. BV)

Courage

One can always get through one day to the next — except for one day. And one will get through that one too.

Thus an aphorism of mine.

In the vicinity of the same sentiment, here are a couple of lines from a verse found in Goethe's literary remains:

Mut verloren — alles verloren!
Da wär es besser, nicht geboren!

To lose courage is to lose everything, in which case it would have been better never to have been born. A few stabs at rhyme-preserving translation:

Of courage shorn, of everything shorn!
In that case better, never to have been born!

Courage lost — everything lost!
Then having been born's too high a cost!

Loss of courage, something fatal!
Better then, never natal!

Loss of heart — loss of all!
'Twould then have been better, not to be at all!

Inheritance and Appropriation

The high school I attended required each student to take two years of Latin. Years later the requirement was dropped. When a fundraiser contacted me for a donation, I said, "You eliminated Latin, why should I give you a donation?" He replied that the removal of Latin made room for Chinese.

What I should have said at that point was something like the following. "While the study of Asian languages and cultures and worldviews is wonderfully enriching, it must not come at the expense of the appropriation and transmission of our own culture which is Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman."

And then I could have clinched my point by quoting a couple of famous lines from Goethe's Faust, Part I, Night, lines 684-685:

Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!

What from your fathers you received as heir,

Acquire if you would possess it. (tr. W. Kaufmann)

The idea is that what one has been lucky enough to inherit, one must actively appropriate, i.e., make one's own by hard work, if one is really to possess it. The German infinitive erwerben has not merely the meaning of 'earn' or 'acquire' but also the meaning of aneignen, appropriate, make one's own.

Unfortunately the schools and universities of today have become leftist seminaries more devoted to the eradication of the high culture of the West than its transmission and dissemination. These leftist seed beds have become hot houses of political correctness.

What can you do? You might think of pulling your children out of the public schools and home-schooling them or else sending them to places like Great Hearts Academies.

An Aphorism of Mine Translated into Slovak

Dear Mr. Vallicella,

My name is Cyril Šebo, I am an English teacher in Slovakia and also a blogger on our national Slovak blogspot

http://cyrilsebo.blog.sme.sk/clanok.asp?cl=309289

Today is The International Day of Translators and in my blog I dared to use one of your thougts from your blog, to show how difficult it can get to translate some thoughful ideas into another language.

Your statement I have borrowed was, "Silence is a grating clangor to the unwhole man."

I also suggested a translation and encouraged the readers to provide their critical analysis and possible (better) translation variants.

The blog post has received a very good following so far, people especially speculated about the poetic figure of "grating clangor" and the philosophical aspect of the "unwhole man."

Somebody also suggested a reversed translation of one of the Slovak versions into English: "Silence is a scratch and clangor in the ear of a man lacking inner integrity."

If your time allows, can you please let us know, whether this is close to your original idea, or is it absolutely ridiculous?

Thank you very much,

Cyril Šebo

Dear Mr. Šebo,

I am glad you enjoyed my aphorism and found it stimulating. I wrote it on 3 January 1972 while a young man living in a garret in Salzburg, Austria. When I opened the skylight in the bathroom I got a view of the Salzburg Festung, 'fastness' being a nice old poetic English word for Festung.

As for your reverse translation, I would say that it conveys the idea that I was trying to express, but does so in a way that violates one of the rules for a good aphorism. The good aphorist aims at economy of expression. A good aphorism is terse. "Scratch and" is superfluous, as is "to the ear." Clangor is a loud ringing sound; sounds are perceived through the ears; so there is no need to add "to the ear." 'Clangor' has the added virtue of sounding like what it means. The 'resonance' of the word is diminished by the addition of "scratch and." "Unwhole man" is a more poetic and economical way of saying "man lacking inner integrity." But that is what I meant.

At the time I wrote the aphorism I may have been reading Max Picard who wrote a book entitled The World of Silence. Here is something about Picard.

Reininger Contra Buddhism

Robert Reininger, Philosophie des Erlebens, p. 227:

   Gegen Buddhismus: Trishna nicht ertoeten (ausloeschen), sondern durch
   Ueberhoehung in den Dienst des Vernunftwillens stellen — sonst fehlt
   diesem die lebendige Kraft, die nur der Daseinsbejahung eignet (A 751,
   1932).

   Against Buddhism: Trishna is not to be killed or extinguished, but
   elevated and placed in the service of the rational will. Without this
   sublimation, the rational will lacks the vital force appropriate to the
   affirmation of existence. (tr. BV)

Trishna is Sanskrit for desire, thirst. Central to Buddhism is the notion that the suffering and general unsatisfactoriness of life is rooted in desire, and that salvation is to be had by the extirpation of desire. Reininger's point is one with which I wholly agree. The goal ought not be the extinction of desire, but its sublimation. Desire as such is not the problem; the problem is misdirected desire. Properly channeled and sublimated, desire provides the motive force for the rational will.

See my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.)

Herder on the Dream of Life

Ein Traum, ein Traum ist unser Leben
Auf Erden hier.
Wie Schatten auf den Wolken schweben
Und schwinden wir.

Und messen unsre trägen Tritte
Nach Raum und Zeit;
Und sind (und wissen's nicht) in Mitte
Der Ewigkeit . . .

Johann Gottfried Herder

My loose translation:

A dream, a dream is our life
Here upon the earth.
In a sea of shadows we drift and disappear
Like whitecaps on the surf.

Our sluggish steps we measure
By space and temporality;
Moving in the midst (though we know it not)
Of eternity . . .

Nietzsche’s Definition of ‘Nihilist’

Der Wille zur Macht #585 (Kroener Ausgabe):

Ein Nihilist ist der Mensch, welcher von der Welt, wie sie ist, urteilt, sie sollte nicht sein, und von der Welt, wie sie sein sollte, urteilt, sie existiert nicht.

A nihilist is one who judges of the world as it is, that it ought not be, and of the world as it ought to be, that it does not exist.

My translation is as beautiful as the German original. Don't you agree?

Advice for Those in Despair

Theodor Haecker, Tag- und Nachtbuecher 1939-1945 (Haymon Verlag, 1989), p. 115, entry of 4 October 1940:

Ich habe einmal einem Verzweifelnden den Rat gegeben, zu tun, was ich selber in aehnlichen Zustaenden getan habe, in kurzen Fristen zu leben. Komm, sagte ich mir damals, eine Viertelstunde wirst du es ja noch aushalten koennen!

I once advised a person in despair to do what I myself have done in similar circumstances, namely, to live in short periods. I told myself at the time: surely you can hold out for another quarter of an hour! (tr. BV)

Long before I read this Haecker passage, I had a similar thought which I expressed in the following aphorism:

Can you get through the next hour? The present can always be borne – if sliced thinly enough – and it is only the present that must be borne.