File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Oct.95, message 52


Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 22:40:25 -0400
From: mcelwain-AT-world.std.com (Charles E McElwain)
Subject: Against Contra Kaufmann...



   Date: Tue Oct  3 22:20:43 1995
   From: Tom Blancato <tblancato-AT-envirolink.org>
   Sender: owner-nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu

   Not translation of latin and what not. But here is an example:
   Nietzsche writes something to this effect: that the thing about
   mystical explanations is not that they are deep; they are not even
   shallow (something like that). Then there's a footnote, and Walter
   says, "That is, they are no explanation at all." Now, as a pianist I
   am fond of old editions of Chopin and Beethoven full of the
   "editorializing" in the margins, and can even enjoy and learn from
   them, but with Kaufman, it's stuff like that that just bugs me too
   much. But this is an effect of Nietzsche, I am sure; not a
   hermeneutics of suspicion, but having to do with the textuality and
   his own various levels of irony and what not. At that point, one must
   either imagine Kaufman a boob or a genius.  I'm stuck in the former.

I must try to defend Kaufmann here, as someone who grew up with his
Nietzsche translations, and his other philosophical writings, in the
'60's and early '70's.  Please remember the time that he began making
his translations: in the post-WWII period, when Nietzsche was still
often accused (and simply dismissed) as a proto-Nazi, when the only
English translations were Victorian abominations by Oscar Levy and
Thomas Common, when the dominant style of philosophizing in America
was a mostly empty imitation of a mostly empty British analytic
tradition (there were some other exceptions, who don't need to be
noted here), with no cognizance taken of Continental philosophy
(except for some renegade and peripheral phenomenologists), and no
respect given to any mode of philosophyizing that took as problematic
living in this world and this culture.

It would be too much to say that Kaufmann himself was responsible for
the return to respectability of philosophy in the Continental
traditions, and of philosophy addressing problems of existence, as
well as Nietzsche studies themselves; but it would be simply wrong to
underestimate his responsibility for this.

When he began his translations, even the originals of Nietzsche's
writings were in sad shape, the modern critical edition still being in
initial progress.  Today, with a philosophically substantive
translation already at hand (specifically, Kaufmann's), the
translators of the completed critical edition of Nietzsche's originals
can take to their task as simple translators, not also as philosophers
in their own right, trying both to rehabilitate a dismissed
philosopher, and with their own philosophic agenda at hand (namely,
Kaufmann's attempt to bring back discussion of such matters in a
society split between analytic avoidance of seriousness and religious
glossing of analysis).  And I hope that the translators of the new
complete edition do just that - produce a scholarly translation that
includes very little of themselves as  philosophers.

True, a creative philosopher may not be preferable to a mere scholar
in an exposition of a philosophic work, just as often the best
translations of poetry are not those done by a major poet in their own
right.  But there is often a value reading such philosopher's
analyses, such poet's translations, in finding one's own way through
the questions of a philosopher, and the questions of life.

Like reading Nietzsche, reading Kaufmann's translations of Nietzsche -
not for scholarly reasons, but for existential reasons -, as well as
reading Kaufmann's other writings on religion and philosophy, was an
education, just as hearing him speak, on Nietzsche or philosophy, was 
truly an education, unlike that offered by most philosophy professors
of the time.

And like some posts on the net, footnotes may simply just be not read.
;-)

Charles

PS: An aside to Tom, a co-reader of another list - We can agree to
differ here, as we'd rather be remembering Chuck Long today, and
playing some appropriate piano music - a sentiment that probably both
Nietzsche and Kaufmann would agree with.

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| Charles E. McElwain				mcelwain-AT-world.std.com        |
| 33 Vernon Street, Somerville, MA, 02145	(617) 628-5542                |
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