Dictionary of Untranslatables

Dictionary of Untranslatables SERIES EDITOR EMILY APTER A list of titles in the series appears at the back of the book. Dictionary of Untranslatables A Philosophical Lexicon EDITED BY Barbara Cassin TRANSLATED BY Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski TRANSLATION EDITED BY Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford First published in France under the title Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles © 2004 by Éditions de Seuil / Dictionnaires Le Robert English translation copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Jacket design by Tracy Baldwin. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vocabulaire européen des philosophies. English Dictionary of untranslatables : a philosophical lexicon / Edited by Barbara Cassin ; Translated by Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski ; Translation edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. pages cm “First published in France under the title Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles (c) 2004 by Éditions de Seuil.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-691-13870-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-691-13870-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy--Encyclopedias. 2. Philosophy— Dictionaries--French. I. Cassin, Barbara, editor of compilation. II. Rendall, Steven, translator III. Apter, Emily S., editor of compilaton. IV. Title. B51.V6313 2013 103—dc23 2013008394 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Publication of this book has been aided by the French Ministry of Culture—Centre National du Livre. This work received essential support from CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). The editors thank the following for their assistance: Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer, CNPQ (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico), and the European program ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Online). For their personal and institutional support, the editors also thank Maurice Aymard and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Yves Duroux, the Ministère de la Recherche and the Collège International de Philosophie, Roberto Esposito, Avvocato Marotta and the Istituto per gli Studi Filosofici de Naples, Paolo Fabbri and the Institut Culturel Italien de Paris, Elie Faroult and the Direction Général de la Recherche à la Commission Européene, Michèle Gendreau-Massaloux and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, Yves Hersant and the Centre Europe at EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), Yves Mabin and the Direction du Livre au Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Michel Marian and the Centre National du Livre, Georges Molinié, Jean-François Courtine, and the Université Paris IV–Sorbonne. The article “Subject” was translated by David Macey and originally appeared in Radical Philosophy 138 (July/August 2006). Reprinted with permission. This book has been composed in Gentium Plus, Myriad Pro, ITC Zapf Dingbats Std, Mathematical Pi LT Std, Times New Roman Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Introduction One of the most urgent problems posed by the exis- languages, returning to ancient languages (Greek, tence of Europe is that of languages. We may envisage Latin) and referring to Hebrew and Arabic whenever it two kinds of solution. We could choose a dominant was necessary in order to understand these differences. language in which exchanges will take place from To speak of untranslatables in no way implies that the now on, a globalized Anglo-American. Or we could terms in question, or the expressions, the syntactical gamble on the retention of many languages, making or grammatical turns, are not and cannot be translated: clear on every occasion the meaning and the interest the untranslatable is rather what one keeps on (not) of the differences—the only way of really facilitating translating. But this indicates that their translation, communication between languages and cultures. The into one language or another, creates a problem, to the Dictionary of Untranslatables belongs to this second per- extent of sometimes generating a neologism or impos- spective. But it looks to the future rather than to the ing a new meaning on an old word. It is a sign of the past. It is not tied to a retrospective and reified Europe way in which, from one language to another, neither (which Europe would that be, in any case?), defined the words nor the conceptual networks can simply be by an accumulation and juxtaposition of legacies that superimposed. Does one understand the same thing by would only reinforce particularities, but to a Europe in “mind” as by Geist or esprit, is pravda “justice” or “truth,” progress, fully active, energeia rather than ergon, which and what happens when we render mimesis as “repre- explores divisions, tensions, transfers, appropriations, sentation” rather than “imitation”? Each entry thus contradictions, in order to construct better versions of starts from a nexus of untranslatability and proceeds itself. to a comparison of terminological networks, whose dis- Our point of departure is a reflection on the dif- tortion creates the history and geography of languages ficulty of translating in philosophy. We have tried to and cultures. The Dictionary of Untranslatables makes ex- think of philosophy within languages, to treat philoso- plicit in its own domain the principal symptoms of dif- phies as they are spoken, and to see what then changes ference in languages. in our ways of philosophizing. This is why we have not The selection of entries arises from a double labor created yet another encyclopedia of philosophy, treat- of exploration, both diachronic and synchronic. Dia- ing concepts, authors, currents, and systems for their chrony allows us to reflect on crossings, transfers, and own sakes, but a Dictionary of Untranslatables, which forks in the road: from Greek to Latin, from ancient Latin starts from words situated within the measurable dif- to scholastic then humanist Latin, with moments of in- ferences among languages, or at least among the prin- teraction with a Jewish and an Arab tradition; from an cipal languages in which philosophy has been written ancient language to a vernacular; from one vernacular in Europe—since Babel. From this point of view, Émile to another; from one tradition, system, or philosophi- Benveniste’s pluralist and comparatist Vocabulary of cal idiom to others; from one field of knowledge and Indo-European Institutions has been our model. In order disciplinary logic to others. In this way we reencounter to find the meaning of a word in one language, this the history of concepts, while marking out the turn- book explores the networks to which the word belongs ings, fractures, and carriers that determine a “period.” and seeks to understand how a network functions in Synchrony permits us to establish a state of play by sur- one language by relating it to the networks of other veying the present condition of national philosophical languages. landscapes. We are confronted with the irreducibility of We have not explored all the words there are, or all certain inventions and acts of forgetting: appearances languages with regard to a particular word, and still without any equivalent, intruders, doublings, empty less all the philosophies there are. We have taken as our categories, false friends, contradictions, which regis- object symptoms of difference, the “untranslatables,” ter within a language the crystallization of themes and among a certain number of contemporary European the specificity of an operation. We then wonder, on the xvii xviii INTRODUCTION basis of the modern works that are both the cause and and a militant insistence on ordinary language com- the effect of the philosophical condition of a given lan- bine to support a prevalence of English that becomes, guage, why the terms we ordinarily consider as imme- in the worst of cases, a refusal of the status of philoso- diate equivalents have neither the same meaning nor phy to Continental philosophy, which is mired in the the same field of application—what a thought can do in contingencies of history and individual languages. what a language can do. Neither . nor. The other position from which we The space of Europe was our framework from the wish to distinguish our own is the one that has led phi- beginning. The Dictionary has, in fact, a political ambi- losophy from the idea of the spirit of language, with all tion: to ensure that the languages of Europe are taken its clichés, to an “ontological nationalism” (the expres- into account, and not only from a preservationist sion is that of Jean-Pierre Lefebvre). The position finds point of view, as one seeks to save threatened species. its image in Herder, at the moment when he determines In this respect, there are two positions from which we that translation, as imitation and transplantation, is clearly distinguish our own. The first is the all-English the true vocation of the German language: “If in Italy one, or rather the all-into-English one—that official the muse converses in song, if in France she narrates English of the European Community and of scientific and reasons politely, if in Spain she imagines chival- conferences, which certainly has a practical use but is rously, in England thinks sharply and deeply, what does scarcely a language (“real” English speakers are those she do in Germany? She imitates. To imitate would thus that one has the most difficulty in understanding). be her character. To this end we have in our power English has imposed itself today as an “auxiliary in- an admirable means, our language; it can be for us what ternational language,” as Umberto Eco puts it.

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