The Translator and the Philosophical Thinker

 

I have been thinking a lot about different translations of the Odyssey recently, and also about the act of translating in general, whether from one language (ancient Greek) into another or from the word into moving pictures (as in the Nolan film). And in thinking about the fitting relationship between the translator and the original, I am again reminded of the relationship of someone trying to understand (interpret) reality philosophically. Right away it seems clear to me that the first virtue is humility and respect before the original – whether it be reality (Creation=reality as respected) or the original text. The idea of stewardship forces itself on me (as thought by Berry) rather than creation. The 'original sin' is projecting what has its source in ego-consciousness, including ego-uplifting ideologies, onto reality/the original. I want to try to make sense of that thought.

. . .

 The basic thought seems to be that both the philosopher and the translator begin with something that is already there. Neither creates – “constructs” the primary object, although “constructing” or “creating” a simulacrum or idol of the primary object is a human possibility and is indeed more common that the opposite. The philosopher encounters reality; the translator encounters a text. Their first task is not construction but attention.

     Simone Weil's notion of attention (the French word as she uses it) and Iris Murdoch's related idea of "unselfing" refer to something far deeper than ordinary concentration or mental effort, as the English word means. Attention is a disciplined openness to reality in which the ego temporarily relinquishes its habitual tendency to interpret everything in terms of its own desires, fears, ambitions, and preoccupations. It is not an act of mastery but of receptivity. For Weil, genuine knowledge begins when we cease trying to force reality into the shape of our expectations and instead allow it to disclose itself on its own terms. Murdoch similarly argues that moral and intellectual error often arise from the "fat relentless ego" that projects its fantasies onto the world, while virtue consists in learning to see what is actually there. Attention is therefore a form of loving regard, a patient, just, and truthful looking that acknowledges the independent reality of the other, whether another person, a work of art, a text, or the world itself. It does not eliminate interpretation but purifies it by making interpretation answerable to something beyond the self. In this sense, attention is both an epistemic and a moral virtue: it is the condition under which reality can correct us, surprise us, and gradually draw us beyond the confines of our own subjectivity. Attention, in other words, is the refusal to place the self at the center of reality. It is a movement from possession to participation, from projection to perception, from the closed circle of consciousness toward a reality that always exceeds it. For Weil and Murdoch, truth achieved by a purification of vision. We see more truly to the extent that we become less imprisoned within ourselves.

     From this arises humility. Humility is the recognition that one is not the center, source, or measure of reality. The attentive person discovers limits: the text exceeds me, the land exceeds me, the other person exceeds me, Being exceeds me. Humility is therefore the appropriate response to the recognition of otherness and transcendence.

     From humility follows stewardship. If the land, the text, or the world possesses a reality and value not derived from my desires, then my relation to it cannot be one of ownership in the absolute sense. I become a caretaker rather than a master. Stewardship is humility translated into practice. (Compare to modernism, for example, to Locke, for whom land in its natural state has relatively little value. It becomes valuable when human beings mix their labor with it, cultivate it, improve it, fence it, drain it, plant it, and make it productive. Nature provides the raw material; human effort creates most of the value. We force nature to serve our needs – an attitude that is the origin of the current ecological crises.)

      So I turn again to Wendell Berry, from whom I learned the importance of the idea of stewardship. He argues that modern industrial society treats the land as an object to be manipulated according to abstract economic calculations. The farmer ceases to know the particular field, creek, soil, and community. In Weil's terms, he ceases to attend. Once attention disappears, humility disappears as well, because the land is no longer encountered as something with its own nature and limits. It becomes merely a resource. Stewardship gives way to exploitation. For Berry, the good farmer is first of all a good observer. He knows the contours of a field, the habits of water, the character of a soil, the history of a place. This is already a form of attention. Such knowledge produces respect, because one learns that the land cannot be successfully treated as infinitely malleable. The attentive farmer therefore becomes a steward rather than a conqueror. Attention reveals the reality of the other. Humility accepts that reality. Stewardship acts in accordance with it. Or to put it differently, attention is the experience-understanding that something has a being of its own. Humility is the acknowledgment that this being does not derive from oneself. Stewardship is the practical discipline of caring for that being in a manner appropriate to its nature.

     This is also why the biblical notion of stewardship is deeper than mere land management. A manager can still think in terms of control and efficiency. A steward serves something entrusted to him. The steward recognizes that the vineyard, the flock, or the land ultimately belongs to another. The concept therefore already contains humility. Seen this way, Weil, Murdoch, Berry, and the biblical tradition are all pushing against the same modern temptation: the transformation of the world into an extension of the will. The fundamental alternative is not between action and passivity but between care and control. Attention is the mode of perception proper to care; stewardship is the mode of action proper to care; and humility is the disposition that makes both possible.

       In my translator analogy, the pattern is the same. Attention means listening carefully (reading carefully) to the original text, just as one would listen attentively to one’s children or friends as a precondition for understanding them. Humility consists in recognizing that the text has meanings that exceed one's preconceptions. And stewardship involves producing a translation that serves the original rather than using the original to serve oneself. The same structure can be extended to philosophy, to the land, to other persons, and ultimately to Being itself. The underlying movement is always from projection and mastery toward receptivity and faithful participation. 

. . . 

  The primary virtue of both philosophical thinker and the translator then is humility before what is given. The philosopher does not create reality but seeks to understand it. The translator does not create the original text but seeks to render it faithfully in another language. In both cases, the task is one of stewardship rather than ownership. The translator is entrusted with a text; the philosopher is entrusted with the world.

      The characteristic temptation of both philosopher and translator (and farmer) is to substitute what originates in the self for what originates in the object. Instead of listening, one projects. Instead of receiving, one imposes. Reality is made to conform to a theory, and the text is made to conform to an ideology. What appears as interpretation becomes a disguised form of self-expression, whereas truth is the conformity of intellect to reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei), involves conserving rather than mastery.

    Of course, translation and philosophy are creative acts, in a sense, but they are forms of disciplined creativity. Their freedom is bounded by fidelity. The translator creates a new text in service of an original text; the philosopher develops concepts in service of reality. Error begins when service gives way to mastery and the interpreter starts treating the text or the world as raw material for the expression of the self. The translator and philosopher are active participants, but their activity is answerable to something that precedes them.

     In this respect, Tolkien's idea of "sub-creation" comes to mind. And indeed, the inevitability and productivity of interpretation, how it fits in with humility and stewardship. If reality is creation and the text is an already existing work, then the philosopher and translator are neither passive copyists nor sovereign creators. They are sub-creators. Their activity is genuine and productive, but it remains dependent upon and accountable to something prior. Tolkien writes in “On Fairy-Stories” that human beings make because they are made in the image of a Maker. Human creativity is therefore not rival to creation but participates in it. Applied to translation and philosophy, this means that humility does not require the suppression of creativity. Rather, creativity flourishes most fully when it acknowledges its dependence on what precedes it. The translator creates a new text, but in response to an original text. The philosopher develops concepts and interpretations, but in response to reality. Both are acts of sub-creation rather than self-creation.

    This also helps with the question of interpretation. There is no "view from nowhere." We never encounter reality or a text without language, tradition, interests, and historical situatedness. Interpretation is therefore inevitable, made inevitable by the radically finite, conditioned mind engaging with that which transcends it. But this does not mean that all interpretations are equally valid or that the object disappears. Indeed, interpretation is not a barrier between the mind and reality but the medium through which reality becomes intelligible. The question is not whether we interpret but whether our interpretations remain answerable to what is being interpreted. Which is where humility enters. Humility is not the fantasy of becoming a perfectly transparent medium. It is the willingness to allow the object to correct us.

     This line of thought, not original to me, implies a correction of our critical vocabulary. The contrasts are not between interpretation and literal reproduction, between creativity and fidelity, but between the distorted and the faithful, the self-enclosed and the responsive interpretation, self-expression masquerading as interpretation verses sub-creative interpretation. Mastery verses stewardship. A translator who mechanically reproduces words without interpretation has failed just as surely as a translator who rewrites Homer into a vehicle for contemporary political commitments. Likewise, a philosopher who merely repeats inherited formulas has failed just as surely as one who remakes reality in the image of a favorite theory.

    Tolkien's idea allows us to say that the highest form of creativity is not self-assertion but participation. The translator and philosopher do not create ex nihilo. They participate in a reality or a text that exceeds them, bringing forth meanings that were genuinely there but not yet fully realized in this particular language, culture, or historical moment. The interpreter is neither a mirror nor a master; he or she ought to be faithful participant in an ongoing act of disclosure.

 . . . 

   I suppose the crucial move, the one that will be questioned, is the analogy BEING:TEXT.  Most people – not all – would readily grant that a text can exceed a reader and that a translator ought to approach it with humility. The more controversial claim is that Being itself stands in an analogous relation to the knower: i.e., that reality is not merely a collection of neutral facts as in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (“the world is what is the case”) but something that can be read, interpreted, disclosed, and misunderstood.

    Of course, the analogy is common in the tradition to which I feel I belong. Augustine perhaps came up with the image of the Book of Nature. Aquinas's postulated that creatures are intelligible because they participate in divine reason. Galileo thought the universe is written in the language of mathematics and Newton thought he was thinking God’s thoughts after him. Berry writes as though the reality of a place makes demands upon our attention analogous to those placed by a text. But many modern thinkers would object, believing that a text has an author and therefore an intended meaning. Reality is not a text because reality has no author and therefore no meaning to be discovered. A text is already an interpretation; reality is merely what is there. In other words, the analogy works naturally within a broadly theistic, classical, or hermeneutic framework, but less naturally within a naturalistic one.

    Of course, to speak of an analogy here means that I am not saying that reality is literally a book. What the analogy says is that both texts and reality confront us as something that exceeds our interpretations and places constraints upon them. The force of the analogy lies not in authorship but in otherness. A translator discovers that the text resists certain readings. Likewise, the philosopher discovers that reality resists certain descriptions. In both cases, understanding is a dialogue between interpreter and interpreted rather than an act of unilateral construction. Being is text-like because it possesses intelligibility that precedes and exceeds our interpretations. And our relation to Being resembles our relation to a text insofar as both require interpretation, humility, and openness to correction.

     The analogy is almost forced on me and other by experience in a similar sense that the concept of God can be forced on one. [In his later work, and perhaps even more in the recollections of those who knew him, Wittgenstein believed that certain concepts are not presented as conclusions of proofs but as ways of seeing that become difficult to avoid once one attends to experience properly. It is not a matter of proving x but that x is what makes sense of experience]. It makes sense of experience, reflected on phenomenologically. I am not arguing that reality is like a text; therefore, we should interpret it as one. I am arguing that careful reflection on our experience of understanding, misunderstanding, discovery, surprise, correction, and disclosure leads us to a text-like conception of reality. We observe that there is a difference between looking at something and merely projecting onto it. Again and again we discover that reality exceeds our categories, resists our projections, surprises our expectations, and rewards patient attention with deeper disclosure. The language of interpretation, reading, and understanding therefore appears not as a metaphor imposed upon reality but as an attempt to describe faithfully our encounter with it. That structure is equally recognizable in moral life, in science, in philosophy, in art, and in translation. What first suggests the analogy is resistance.

     Once that distinction is granted, reality has already acquired at least one of the crucial features of a text: it can answer back. It can prove us wrong. A text resists me; it is not infinitely malleable. Analogously, reality resists me; it is not infinitely malleable. Another person resists me; they are not simply an extension of my consciousness. This resistance is precisely what ego-consciousness finds inconvenient and what attention learns to welcome as it can reveal more than we initially saw.

     And that is the hinge of my whole argument: the possibility of attention presupposes that there is something there to attend to which is not simply a projection of the self. If that claim fails, then both philosophy and translation collapse into competing acts of self-expression, i.e., subjectivism, solipsism.