On using Earlymoderntexts.org in scholarship (with notes on translation)

There is much that could be said in criticism of this paper, but the primary reason for rejection is that the whole argument turns upon a misquotation.

The author's main claim is that the two arguments which appear on p.135 of the Penguin Classics (ed. Woolhouse) edition of the Three Dialogues (pp.185-6 of Jessop & Luce, which is the standard reference for Berkeley and it is annoying that the author does not use it) have different conclusions. The first, allegedly, concludes the falsity of ‘VII. Mind-independent sensible things have those qualities that they are perceived to have’, whereas the second the falsity of ‘VI. Sensible qualities are parts of [inhere in] mind-independent sensible things’. The author quotes the first argument at length on p.8 prior to reconstructing it, a quotation which ends ‘From all of this, shouldn’t it seem to follow that all colors are equally apparent, and that none of the ones that we see are really in any outer object?’. This text is what appears in Jonathan Bennett’s  www.earlymoderntexts.org edition of Berkeley, which does not claim to be faithful to the original and in this case is quite clearly not faithful. What Berkeley actually wrote was: ‘From all of which, should it not seem to follow, that all the colours are equally apparent, and that none of those which we perceive are really inherent in any outward object?’. Apart from the utterly outrageous sloppiness of using a paraphrastic edition aimed at undergraduates in a research article submitted to an elite scholarly journal, and the intellectual dishonesty of giving a reference to the impeccably edited Penguin Classics edition rather than the actual source of the quoted passage, this error shows the author’s argument to be simply mistaken: Berkeley takes VII, the claim about inherence, to be part of the conjunctive conclusion of the first argument.

I would be loathe to impute deliberate deception here, but it is worth noting that while both the quotations illustrating the alleged two versions of the Argument from Perceptual Relativity come from earlymoderntexts.org, the quotations from the Principles on p.1 of the manuscript do appear to come from the Penguin Classics edition, making clear the author had it or a similarly accurate text to hand and wasn’t working entirely from the Bennett paraphrastic edition."--Referee, or Anonymous.

A distinguished philosopher [Anonymous] forwarded the excerpt from the referee report s/he wrote on a recent assignment to me. I quote with permission (even encouragement). I have not read the original paper (and luckily I am not the author!) nor have I double-checked all the relevant sources, so I cannot judge how fair Anonymous is, but I would share Anon.'s irritation if I discovered that a text relied on a suppressed translation (which is known to be un-scholarly). I should mention that Anonymous is not a hyper-specialist historian of philosophy (you know who those are!), but also makes contributions to more 'contemporary' areas. In follow up exchange Anonymous suggested that there are two key issues here:

1. Someone in the profession not being able to see the dangers of using earlymoderntexts.org and what this says about (i) academic standards (why think anything less than the best scholarly edition will do*) in Philosophy as a discipline and (ii) how earlymoderntexts.org might be misleading our students about how scholarship is to be done.

 

2. Referencing a print edition when you have actually used an online source (and without checking the accuracy of the online source).

 

This behaviour would be regarded as highly unprofessional and cast doubt on someone's suitability for an academic job in other humanities disciplines, but seems to be tolerated in (anglophone?) philosophy.

I  agree with Anonymous, although I will qualify my agreement below. First, all translation is an interpretation. Translating complex philosophical texts is much, much harder than figuring out 'gavagai.' This is so, even if you have written the text yourself and are fluent in both languages. You should try translating some time; even if you are not a meaning holist, you'll discover that a lot of philosophical jargon is not stable and uniform across cultural and temporal contexts. (Surprisingly enough, this is even  true of works in the history of physics.) So, leaving aside honest mistakes, all translations involve non-trivial judgments and trade-offs with a complex interplay among style, content, jargon, sentence structure, and even argumentative structure (this list is not exhaustive).

 

In earlymoderntexts.org, Jonathan Bennett, who is one of the greatest historians of philosophy of his generation and who should be praised for his dedication to the field and pedagogy, is refreshingly forthright that in his translations the aim is to make "the original thought more accessible than it is on the original page." He uses many more 'tricks of the trade'* than any other translator known to me to achieve this and he is refreshingly and admirably transparent about how he deploys them. By his own lights, "The texts are not dumbed down...In no case have I knowingly simplified or otherwise altered the intellectual content." (He also claims that, My versions are faithful to the content of the originals, but are plainer and more straightforward in manner.) Obviously, a lot hinges on what one takes to be relevant "intellectual content."

 

So, for  example, in an article in which Bennett explains and defends his translation strategies, he comments -- on the following sentence from Berkeley's Principles, "And here I cannot but remark, how nearly the vague and indeterminate description of matter or corporeal substance, which the modern philosophers are run into by their own principles, resembles that antiquated and so much ridiculed notion of materia prima, to be met with in Aristotle and his followers." -- that "The sideswipe at the Aristotelians is a mere hindrance when one is trying to introduce undergraduates to Berkeley; or so I believe." Now, Bennett is just wrong that this is a sideswipe at the Aristotelians; if it is a sideswipe at all, it is directed at the materialists (who are ridiculed thereby), who think they are original but still cling at outdated philosophical commitments that they themselves associate with the discarded past (that is, Aristotle and his followers). Now, I also happen to think that to a trained eye this is not just a sideswipe, but also clarifying about Berkeley's own philosophical understanding of the dialectic. So, it is open question if Bennett has really succeeded in always "leaving intact the main arguments, doctrines, and lines of thought." As in any translation, this will have to be judged on a case by case basis. 

 

To be clear in the quoted passage from his article, which can be accessed through the website, Bennett highlights the fact that his translations are really aimed at undergraduates and to be used for teaching purposes. And, indeed, for some undergraduates (and their teachers) the deleted sentence is a mere hindrance. This is especially so if they think that what matters most is a cleaned up version of the  argument because that's what we're supposed to do, teach  arguments. But, of course, not all undergraduates (and teachers) are equally prepared and they do not operate in identical curricular sequences. More important, by exclusive focus on making Bennett-approved content transparent, we actually reduce the potential for learning that comes from struggling with difficult philosophical text. One of the key insights students can develop, is how many tacit cultural and philosophical presuppositions they bring to bear on reading any text.  While I do not think undergraduates need to learn much about how historians of philosophy do scholarship, I have found that my students are greatly enriched and appreciative when I expose them to it. In fact, some of the best teaching moments have occurred when my  students and I had to grapple with the significance of two competing, equally plausible translations.

 

It is worth mentioning that teaching context is most emphasized on earlymoderntexts.org. But in the section, "How May I Use these Texts?" Bennett also encourages -- in passing their use in publications. Of course, he insists that they are properly cited. (So on point 2, Anonymous and Bennett agree!) Now, unlike some of my peers, I do not think that knowledge of original languages, let alone philological skill, is necessary to do rigorous scholarship. I don't think this just because I want historical areas of inquiry to have low barriers of entry and to be welcoming to motivated outsiders, but I not-so-secretly believe that too much attention to philology can actually ruin comprehension of a text. (Sometimes ancient philosophers treat philology as religious gospel rather than as serious skill to be used among many others at grasping the  meaning of a text!)

Moreover, it makes sense to check Bennett's translations when preparing a journal article. His decisions are always worth reflecting one. He is a fantastic philosopher's philosopher who also has spent a near-life-time with these texts. I also think it's fine to use his text in one's argument if one recognizes potential objections to doing so. But yes, when preparing a journal article it's best to look at the best scholarly edition and, if you are not capable of forming your own judgment, to ask around what translation the real specialists are using.

 

 

 

 

*Here's Bennett's list of strategies:

• less convoluted syntax and shorter sentences - show/hide examples
• numbering of points
• indenting of passages that are helped by such a display
• replacement of obsolete words with current ones
• replacement of still-current words used in meanings that are now obsolete - show/hide examples
• I sometimes insert, between small ·dots·, material that makes the author’s meaning clearer or more explicit - show/hide example
• I use •bullets to make formal aspects of the text more easily accessible - show/hide example
• Sometimes I omit a passage that doesn’t earn its keep, signifying this by . . . . a four-point ellipsis, just to keep things moving along at a good pace - show/hide examples
• On a few occasions I relocate part of one paragraph in the following paragraph, where it is more at home. - show/hide example
• Sometimes I interpose a remark or explanation of my own in small type within [square brackets] - show/hide examples
• Sometimes I replace a passage in the original text by a briefer and/or clearer description of its main content. These replacements are in normal-sized type and within [square brackets] - show/hide example

 

I believe.

Comments

[ole Koksvik]

" More important, by exclusive focus on making Bennett-approved content transparent, we actually reduce the potential for learning that comes from struggling with difficult philosophical text."
I don't see this. Inasmuch as the translator is successful in maintaining the MAIN lines of thoughts and arguments, something which I think your example off a deletion incidentally does absolutely nothing to undermine, there's no reduced potential from learning, since the texts are no less philosophically difficult as a result. I see that when considering two possible translations of an original, unique opportunities arise, e.g. one can consider which is more consistent with the rest of the text. But of course it's always true that we can enhance learning on various ways. When working with early modern philosophers, however, I think it's by far the most important that students grasp the main philosophical content, and the texts are very well suited to that.

[Ole Koksvik]

(None of which undermines your main point, of course.)

[Michael Kremer]

One thing that disturbs me in Bennett is the retranslation of texts written in English into more contemporary English. This is disturbing in part because some of the writers he is retranslating in this way are great stylists of the English language. We don't do this to Shakespeare when we teach his works to English-speaking undergraduates; instead we supply some apparatus to help the students understand the texts.

Even in writers dead not so long ago, we can find usages that contemporary students might be puzzled by -- for instance, Ryle in The Concept of Mind speaks of someone's "hilarity," meaning their "cheerfulness". Maybe we should rejigger those texts too in order to make the arguments clearer to our students?

I suppose my objection is this: one thing English-speaking university students can get out of reading early modern texts written in English, in more or less their original form (I make allowances for modernized spelling, I guess) is an appreciation for their own language, its history and its richness, and even the way in which it has been adapted to philosophical use. That is a loss.

[Daniel Nagase]

I just wanted to second Kremer's comment. English is my second language, and I distinctly remember the impact Hume's prose had on my developing a certain fluency within this language. In fact, as an EFL teacher, I constantly rely on early modern or modern texts in order to introduce my students to advanced classes. It strikes me as a bit bizarre to lose this stylistic model for a rather diffuse ideal of clarity.

[Eric Schliesser]

Ole, you are begging the question in the way you assume to know what "the main philosophical content" is (and also "in maintaining the MAIN lines of thoughts and arguments,"). In the example the omitted passage offers valuable information on how Berkeley saw the conceptual possibility space of key metaphysical doctrines. If you simply ignore that or take it for granted, you are actually missing crucial bits of content (and fail to see the constraints on the arguments).
Maybe you, too, need some more history of philosophy in your life?

[Sylvia]

In general, I would give the author the benefit of the doubt: maybe s/he did not have access to the book (small university, developing country)? Also observe that the first pages of a book are often included in online previews, so an accurate citation of this part does not demonstrate that the author has had access to the full book.
Of course, if the whole argument depends on the details of a passage, the author should do more effort to consult the original text (e.g., ask a colleague at a different university to scan the relevant pages); so I do agree with point 2.

[P.D. Magnus]

Sylvia: Because the Three Dialogues is old and in English, complete editions of the original are available on-line.

I confess that I have cited one of Bennett's editions in a published paper. I did so in a footnote, because he resolved an ambiguity in the text in precisely the way I was advocating in the body of my paper. So I was using it as a evidence of how he interpreted the passage, rather than as a source about the original passage itself.

On the general point of whether Bennett's editions are good for undergraduates, I agree that it is usually best to have students struggle with the originals. But it can be an odd juxtaposition for them when they read translated texts (rendered by translators in contemporary English) alongside English language originals which have old-style capitalization and spelling. Reading Descartes and then Locke, my students sometimes report a sense that Locke is just more archaic. So there is some case to be made for using a cleaned up edition.

[Samuel Rickless]

Does "cleaning up" mean removing italics? Hmmm. I once thought of writing a paper about Locke's use of italics to refer to verbal propositions (as opposed to mental propositions) in the Essay, with ramifications for the proper interpretation of his theory of truth and knowledge. I might still write it up....

[Beau Madison Mount]

So 'perceive', 'outward' and 'inherent' are "obsolete words"? Oy.

I tend to think that, where there is a clear edition of reference, journals should simply demand that the final version of an author's piece cite to it, in the absence of special reasons to the contrary. (Where the edition is easily available, we should demand the same of our students.)

(I definitely wouldn't require this in the initial submitted version, because not everyone has access to good libraries. But if you have access to a copy of Jessop and Luce, there's really no excuse for not using it.)