Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
4) Ian, if you are forced to read Kant in English, the Pluhar translation of the 3rd Critique is the way to go. His translation of the First Critique is probably better than the Norman Kemp Smith, but that one has the value for me of being the way I learned that book so I can't get outside it well. Pluhar writes English as if it were German, so reading him is almost like reading the original.
Prof and Sharon (and Ian and others),
You might get a kick out of reading this review of a Kant translation by an Internet wine acquaintance of mine -- a complete ass, BTW, who claimed that wines didn't age and that nothing produced outside of Italy was worth drinking (clearly, an open-minded and thoughtful person).
Mark Lipton
The guy is wrong on two counts. First, in formal terms, Kant is a terrible writer. I have to take this second-hand with regard to some things that I can't know because I don't know German. But there are things that do come through in English. He frequently will do something like saying, there are 3 things about x that need explaining. He will then explain 2 and forget that he had a third. His conceptual organization for the 3rd Critique, modeled on the 1st Critique is a joke producing attempts to match up the Sublime with the Beautiful in terms of Quality, Quantity, etc. that one can't even take seriously, and at least 3 different proofs that aesthetic apprehension is phenomenlogically universal, plunked down in 3 different places. One could go on and on. He's a genius, but so far from being a literary writer, he needed a course in remedial freshman English.
Second, I don't know if it's a good translation, but "customary fate" is idiomatic English, much moreso than the English this was written in. Otherwise, an interesting review, as the joke goes.