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18:19 Jan 5, 2013 |
French to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Philosophy | |||||||
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| Selected response from: John Holland France Local time: 16:45 | ||||||
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Summary of answers provided | ||||
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3 +4 | a being (vs. Being) |
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3 +1 | becoming |
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1 | being (vs. to be) |
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Summary of reference entries provided | |||
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Heidegger ref fwiw |
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Discussion entries: 4 | |
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being (vs. to be) Explanation: Lovely question :-) which needs a more thorough reading of the thinkers in question; a quick guess on my part is that the distinction is between "to be", which is eternal and immutable, and "being", which is temporal/transient and active. English grammar doesn't allow for the same delineation of concepts as Greek (or French/German), so its juxtaposition of Be and Being may not have the same clarity as Greek or other languages. Example sentence(s):
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a being (vs. Being) Explanation: This is a difficult question to take up because the distinction involves very fundamental ontological problems. For translation, it's as much a conceptual or philosophical issue as it is linguistic or semantic, especially since it also involves the history of how Greek terms have been translated into French and into English. Generally speaking, "l'étant" can be understood as referring to specific entities whereas "l'être" is the "essence" or "essential nature" of existing things, or entities. Or to put is another way, ""l'étant" is "concrete" (and countable) while "l'être" is "abstract" (and uncountable in the sense that the One is uncountable). This distinction is reflected in the (non-technical) definitions of the terms when used as nouns, for example: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/étant "étant /e.tɑ̃/ masculin (Philosophie) Concept utilisé pour désigner tout ce qui se présente d'une façon déterminée, sur un mode concret, opposé à l’être qui est indéterminé, indifférencié." vs. https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/être "être /ɛtʁ/ masculin Existence, c’est-à-dire le fait d'exister, au sens abstrait." However, as the Wikipedia rightly notes (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being ): "Being is an extremely broad concept encompassing subjective and objective features of reality and existence. Anything that partakes in being is also called a "being", though often this use is limited to entities that have subjectivity (as in the expression "human being"). So broad a notion has inevitably been elusive and controversial in the history of philosophy, beginning in western philosophy with attempts among the pre-Socratics to deploy it intelligibly." How the distinction between these terms is conceptualized (if they are distinguished at all) tends to lie at the heart of a given philosopher's approach. And neo-Platonic philosophy is all about the question of Being: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonic I'd usally approach this kind of issue by looking at how other translators have dealt with the terms in question, in particular by researching the specific passages in Proclus and Schelling to which your author refers in their respective English translations. The Proclus seems to be a direct quote, and it seems that a recent English translation of the text it's from is available online here: http://books.google.com/books?id=TiOj1EZpGAoC&printsec=front... For the Schelling, however, it seems that the work your author cites has been translated into English yet, so that's a complication: http://www.egs.edu/library/friedrich-wilhelm-joseph-schellin... And yet, your author appears to be referring to Franck Fischbach's work on Schelling and the four causes. Please see: http://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&id=O4kZnHDScqMC&q=Schelli... That discussion is worth reading because it provides a much fuller context for the sentence you cited. Based on Fischbach, here is a first (i.e., very literal) try at a translation of the final sentence about Schelling you cite: He [Schelling] views the fourth cause as that which a being is, by giving to Being the very particular meaning of the constitutive act of a being and of each particular being. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 15 hrs (2013-01-06 09:48:03 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- @ fionn: I agree that "beings" in the plural is another option - I was trying to distinguish between the countable (a being, beings) and Being as the One (which if it is "countable," it's not in the same sense). I'm less sure about using "existence" here, but that's mostly a result of not having the context of the whole argument. Part of the complication is that "l'étant" is a participle of the French verb "to be," and "ousia" is a participle of the Greek verb "to be" (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousia ), but there seems to be a distinction in the paper between "l'étant" and "ousia." I'm not sure what may or may not be implied about existence there, if the author is in fact distinguishing between the two participles. I think it's quite possible that "existence" could even be preferable, depending on the overall argument, so that you again for your comment. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2013-01-06 10:31:09 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Typo: I meant to say that Schelling's Philosophische Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie oder Darstellung der reinrationalen Philosophie (or Philosophical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology or Presentation of the Purely Rational Philosophy, see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schelling/?&$NMW_TRANS$=ext#Bib ) has not been translated into English. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2013-01-06 10:56:06 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Another typo: I meant to say "thank you again" to fionn. |
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