The Routledge Handbook of Translation

and Philosophy 1st Edition Annie

Delaney
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-translation-and-philosophy
-1st-edition-annie-delaney/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and

Expertise Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy 1st
Edition Ellen Fridland

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
philosophy-of-skill-and-expertise-routledge-handbooks-in-
philosophy-1st-edition-ellen-fridland/

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of

Punishment Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy 1st
Edition Farah Focquaert (Editor)

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-the-
philosophy-and-science-of-punishment-routledge-handbooks-in-
philosophy-1st-edition-farah-focquaert-editor/

The Routledge handbook of translation studies and

linguistics First Published. Edition Malmkjær

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
translation-studies-and-linguistics-first-published-edition-
malmkjaer/

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Translation Studies

Roberto A. Valdeón

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
spanish-translation-studies-roberto-a-valdeon/
The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical
Philosophy 1st Edition Glennan

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
mechanisms-and-mechanical-philosophy-1st-edition-glennan/

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy 1st

Edition Heidi Maibom

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
philosophy-of-empathy-1st-edition-heidi-maibom/

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism

(Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy) 1st Edition Kevin
Aho

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
contemporary-existentialism-routledge-handbooks-in-
philosophy-1st-edition-kevin-aho/

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain Jennifer

Corns

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
philosophy-of-pain-jennifer-corns/

The Routledge Handbook Of Philosophy Of Relativism

Martin Kusch

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
philosophy-of-relativism-martin-kusch/
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Philosophy

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy presents the first

comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the complex relationship
between the field of translation studies and the study of philosophy. The book
is divided into four sections covering discussions of canonical philosophers,
central themes in translation studies from a philosophical perspective, case
studies of how philosophy has been translated and illustrations of new
developments. With twenty-nine chapters written by international specialists
in translation studies and philosophy, it represents a major survey of two
fields that have only recently begun to enter into dialogue. The Routledge
Handbook of Translation and Philosophy is a pioneering resource for
students and scholars in translation studies and philosophy alike.
Piers Rawling is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Florida State University. He
has wide-ranging interests and has published papers on a variety of topics, including
decision theory, ethics (with David McNaughton), philosophy of language and
applications of quantum theory (with Stephen Selesnick). He is co-editor (with Alfred
Mele) of The Oxford Handbook of Rationality (2004).

Philip Wilson is Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of East

Anglia, where he teaches literature and philosophy. Publications include: The Luther
Breviary (translated with John Gledhill, Wartburg 2007); Literary Translation: Re-
drawing the Boundaries (edited with Jean Boase-Beier and Antoinette Fawcett,
Palgrave Macmillan 2014); The Bright Rose: German Verse 800–1280 (translated and
edited, Arc 2015); Translation after Wittgenstein (Routledge 2015); and The Histories
of Alexander Neville (with Ingrid Walton and Clive Wilkins-Jones, Boydell
forthcoming). His research interests include the philosophy of history and translation.
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting
Studies

Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies provide

comprehensive overviews of the key topics in translation and interpreting
studies. All entries for the handbooks are specially commissioned and written
by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and carefully edited,
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies are the ideal
resource for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students.

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit

www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbooksin-Translation-and-Interpreting-
Studies/book-series/RHTI.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics

Edited by Kirsten Malmkjaer

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture

Edited by Sue-Ann Harding and Ovidi Carbonell Cortés

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics

Edited by Fruela Fernández and Jonathan Evans

The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation

Edited by Luis Pérez-González

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation

Edited by Kelly Washbourne and Ben Van Wyke

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy

Edited by Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson
The Routledge Handbook of Translation
and Philosophy

Edited by Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson

First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson;
individual chapters, the contributors

The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or

registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

Visit the Translation Studies Portal:

http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/translationstudies/
ISBN: 978-1-138-93355-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-3156-7848-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK
This Handbook is for Summer, Osea, and Mary Jane; and for Kristin.
 Contents

List of contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson

PART I
Philosophers on translation
1 Schleiermacher
Theo Hermans
2 Nietzsche
Rosemary Arrojo
3 Heidegger
Tom Greaves
4 Wittgenstein
Silvia Panizza
5 Benjamin
Jean Boase-Beier
6 Gadamer and Ricoeur
Lisa Foran
7 Quine
 Paul A. Roth
8 Davidson
Piers Rawling
9 Derrida
Deborah Goldgaber
10 Current trends in philosophy and translation
Roland Végső

PART II
Translation studies and philosophy
11 Translation theory and philosophy
Maria Tymoczko
12 Context and pragmatics
Shyam Ranganathan
13 Culture
Sergey Tyulenev
14 Equivalence
Alice Leal
15 Ethics
Joanna Drugan
16 Feminism
Valerie Henitiuk
17 Linguistics
Kirsten Malmkjœr
18 Meaning
Rachel Weissbrod

PART III
The translation of philosophy
19 The translation of philosophical texts
Duncan Large
20 Translating feminist philosophers
Carolyn Shread
21 Shelley’s Plato
Ross Wilson
22 Translating Kant and Hegel
Nicholas Walker
23 Translating Derrida
Oisín Keohane
24 Levinas
Bettina Bergo

PART IV
Emerging trends
25 Cognitive approaches to translation
Maria S¸erban
26 Machine translation
Dorothy Kenny
27 Literary translation
Leena Laiho
28 Mysticism, esotericism and translation
Philip Wilson
29 Toward a philosophy of translation
Salah Basalamah
Index
 Contributors

Rosemary Arrojo is Professor of Comparative Literature at Binghamton University,

US. She has published three books in Portuguese and several book chapters and
articles in English, mostly on the interface between translation and contemporary
thought. Her most recent book, Fictional Translators – Rethinking Translation
through Literature, was published by Routledge (2018).

Salah Basalamah is Associate Professor at the School of Translation and

Interpretation at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His fields of research include the
philosophy of translation, translation rights, social and political philosophy,
postcolonial, cultural and religious studies, as well as Western Islam and Muslims. He
is the author of Le droit de traduire. Une politique culturelle pour la mondialisation
[The Right to Translate. A Cultural Policy for Globalisation] for the University of
Ottawa Press (2009). He is currently working on a book about the philosophy of
translation and its implications beyond translation studies, the humanities and social
science.

Bettina Bergo, Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal, Canada, is the

author of Levinas between Ethics and Politics and co-editor of several collections: ‘I
Don’t See Color’: Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege (Penn State
Press 2015), Trauma: Reflections on Experience and Its Other (SUNY 2009), and
Levinas and Nietzsche: After the Death of a Certain God (Columbia 2008). She has
translated three works of Emmanuel Levinas; Marlène Zarader’s The Unthought Debt:
Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage (Stanford University Press 2005); Jean-Luc
Nancy’s Disenclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity (Fordham 2008); and
Didier Franck’s Nietzsche and the Shadow of God (Northwestern University Press
2012). She is the author of numerous articles on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and
the history of psychology.

Jean Boase-Beier, Emeritus Professor of Literature and Translation at the

University of East Anglia, UK, works on translation and style, and the translation of
Holocaust poetry. Her publications include A Critical Introduction to Translation
Studies (2011) and Translating the Poetry of the Holocaust (2015). She is also a
poetry translator and editor.
Joanna Drugan is Professor of Translation at the University of East Anglia, UK.
Her recent publications include the monograph Quality in Professional Translation
(Bloomsbury 2013) and, with Rebecca Tipton, a co-edited special issue of The
Translator on translation, ethics and social responsibility (2017). She is Principal
Investigator of the AHRC/ESRC joint-funded Transnational Organised Crime and
Translation project. Her main areas of research are translation quality, ethics and
technologies.

Lisa Foran lectures in European Philosophy at Newcastle University, UK. Her

recent publications include Derrida, the Subject and the Other. Surviving, Translating
and the Impossible (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and the co-edited collection
Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida: The Question of Difference (Springer 2016). Her
research draws on phenomenology and hermeneutics to investigate the role of
translation in ethical and political relations.

Deborah Goldgaber is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State

University, US. She is currently completing a book manuscript arguing that Derridean
deconstruction offers a novel form of philosophical materialism. The project, entitled
Speculative Grammatology: Derrida and the New Materialism, will appear in
Edinburgh University Press’s Speculative Realism series (2018). Her current research
programme lies at the intersection of contemporary French philosophy, deconstruction
and feminist theory. Her research has appeared in Journal of Speculative Philosophy,
the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews and Postmodern Culture.

Tom Greaves is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, UK.
His publications include Starting with Heidegger (2010) and ‘The Mine and the
Mountain Range: Responding to Heidegger’s Translation of the Sense of the Earth’ in
In Other Words: The Journal for Literary Translators (2011). His research interests
focus on Heidegger, phenomenology and environmental philosophy, and he is
Associate Editor of Environmental Values.

Valerie Henitiuk is Provost and Professor of Comparative Literature at Concordia

University of Edmonton, Canada. Her recent books include the co-edited Spark of
Light: Short Stories by Women Writers from Odisha (Athabasca University Press
2016) and A Literature of Restitution: Critical Essays on W.G. Sebald (University of
Manchester Press 2013). She has served as Editor of the Routledge journal
Translation Studies (2012–17) and, following a decade researching European
translations of Classical Japanese women’s writing, is now working on the translation
of Inuit literature, supported by a research grant from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Theo Hermans is Professor of Dutch and Comparative Literature at UCL and
Director of the UCL Centre for Translation Studies, UK. Among his books are
Translation in Systems (1999) and The Conference of the Tongues (2007). His main
research interests are the theory and history of translation.

Dorothy Kenny is Professor at Dublin City University, Ireland. Her recent

publications include the edited volume Human Issues in Translation Technology
(Routledge 2017) and contributions to the journals The Linguist (2016) and The
Interpreter and Translator Trainer (2014). She is co-editor of the journal Translation
Spaces. Her main areas of interest are translation technology, translation pedagogy
and corpus-based translation studies.

Oisín Keohane is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, UK.

Previously, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto,
Canada. His monograph Cosmo-nationalism: American, French and German
Philosophy will appear with Edinburgh University Press in 2018. He has published
several book chapters, as well as articles in journals such as Derrida Today,
Paragraph and Nations and Nationalism.

Leena Laiho is Lecturer in German at the School of Languages and Translation

Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. Her main areas of research are literary
translation and the philosophy of art. Within this specific research context her
publications on the translatability of literary works of art include contributions to The
Metalanguage of Translation: ‘A Literary Work – Translation and Original: A
Conceptual Analysis within the Philosophy of Art and Translation Studies’ (John
Benjamins 2009) and to The Handbook of Translation Studies, Vol 4: ‘Original and
Translation’ (John Benjamins 2013), both edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van
Doorslaer.

Duncan Large is Professor of European Literature and Translation at the University

of East Anglia, UK, and Academic Director of the British Centre for Literary
Translation, UK. He has authored and edited five books about Nietzsche and German
philosophy; he has also published two Nietzsche translations with Oxford World’s
Classics and one translation from the French with Continuum (Sarah Kofman’s
Nietzsche and Metaphor). He is co-editor of Untranslatability: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (Routledge 2018); with Alan D. Schrift he is also General Editor of The
Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford University Press).

Alice Leal is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Vienna,

Austria. Her recent publications include a monograph on translation studies in Brazil
(Frank & Timme 2014), a book chapter in Transfiction and in the Handbook of
Translation Studies (both John Benjamins 2014), as well as contributions in Versalete
(2017), New Voices in Translation Studies (2016), trans-kom (2014), Target (2013),
Translation Spaces (2013) and Across Languages and Cultures (2013). Her main
areas of research are translation theory, philosophy of language, multilingualism and
poststructuralist discourse.

Kirsten Malmkjær is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Leicester,

UK, having previously taught at the universities of Birmingham, Cambridge and
Middlesex, all in the UK. She is the editor of the Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia
(1991, third edition 2010) and (with Kevin Windle) of The Oxford Handbook of
Translation Studies (2011). She is the author of Linguistics and the Language of
Translation (Edinburgh 2005). Forthcoming publications include the Routledge
Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics (ed.) and the collection of articles,
Key Cultural Texts in Translation (John Benjamins), co-edited with Adriana Serban
and Fransiska Louwagie.

Silvia Panizza is Lecturer in Ethics at the Norwich Medical School, University of

East Anglia, UK. Previously, she taught English Literature and Translation at the
University of Genoa. She is currently co-authoring a translation and edition of Simone
Weil’s Venice Saved (Bloomsbury) and is working on a joint project on mental
capacity and non-human animals in scientific experiments. Her main areas of research
are meta-ethics and moral psychology, animal ethics and Iris Murdoch’s philosophy.

Shyam Ranganathan is a member of the Department of Philosophy, and York

Center for Asian Research, York University, Toronto, Canada. His dissertation in
philosophy (Translating Evaluative Discourse, York 2007), was on translation in
general and translating philosophy in particular. He is translator of Patañjali’s Yoga
Sūtra (Penguin 2008) from the Sanskrit, editor and contributor to the Bloomsbury
Research Handbook of Indian Ethics (Bloomsbury 2017), and the author of Ethics
and the History of Indian Philosophy (MLBD 2007, second edition 2017) and
Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (Routledge 2018). His recent
publications address the challenge of translation in light of colonialism and
imperialism.

Paul A. Roth is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy,

University of California-Santa Cruz, US. His most recent publications include
Refounding Analytical Philosophy of History: Steps Towards a Naturalist and
Irrealist Account of Narrative Explanation (forthcoming Northwestern University
Press) and ‘What Would It Be to Be a Norm?’ in Normativity and Naturalism in the
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. Mark Risjord (Routledge 2016). Roth’s work is
examined in Towards a Revival of Analytical Philosophy of History: Around Paul A.
Roth’s Vision of Historical Science, ed. K. Brzechczyn (Brill 2018).

Maria Şerban is a philosopher of science currently working as a postdoctoral fellow

of the ‘Living Machines’ Research Group at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Her recent publications include journal articles on the epistemology of
neuroscience:‘Learning from Large-scale Neural Simulations’ and ‘Constitution in
Interlevel Experiments’. She is co-editor of a volume of essays on the philosophy of
biology, to be published by Routledge in 2018: Living Machines: Philosophical
Interfaces between Biology and Engineering.

Carolyn Shread is Lecturer in French at Mount Holyoke College, US. She has
translated four books by French philosopher Catherine Malabou and is working on a
fifth, The Metamorphoses of Intelligence. She has published articles in both
translation and Haitian studies, including ‘On Becoming in Translation: Articulating
Feminisms in the Translation of Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Les Rapaces’, which
received the Florence Howe Award for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship in 2012.
She works closely with Haitian publishing house LEGS ÉDITION, as managing
editor of the Voix féminines series and the journal Legs et littérature, and is assistant
editor to Translation: A Transdisciplinary Journal.

Maria Tymoczko is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of

Massachusetts Amherst, US. With an international reputation, she is a leading theorist
and scholar in the field of translation studies. Educated as a literary scholar, a
medievalist, and a specialist in Irish studies, she holds three degrees from Harvard
University. Recent publications include articles on ‘Internationalism and Knowledge
about Translation’, ‘Translation and the Ethos of a Postcolony’, ‘Trajectories of
Research in Translation Studies: An Update’, and ‘Victory by Verse’. Forthcoming
are Translation and Neuroscience (Tartu Semiotics Library) and ‘Translation as
Organized Complexity: On the Agency of Translators’.

Sergey Tyulenev is Associate Professor in Translation Studies and the Director of

the MA in Translation Studies at the University of Durham, UK. His recent
publications include the monographs Applying Luhmann to Translation Studies
(Routledge 2011), Translation and the Westernization of Eighteenth-Century Russia
(Frank & Timme 2012) and Translation and Society (Routledge 2014). His main areas
of research are the sociology, historiography and epistemology of translation.

Roland Végső is Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English at the

University of Nebraska-Lincoln, US. His primary research interests are contemporary
continental philosophy, modernism, and translation theory. He is the author of The
Naked Communist: Cold War Modernism and the Politics of Popular Culture
(Fordham University Press 2013). He is also the translator of numerous philosophical
essays as well as two books: Rodolphe Gasché’s Georges Bataille: Phenomenology
and Phantasmatology (Stanford University Press 2012) and Peter Szendy’s All Ears:
The Aesthetics of Espionage (Fordham University Press 2016). He is the co-editor of
the book series Provocations, published by University of Nebraska Press.

Nicholas Walker has translated philosophical writings from German, Italian,

Spanish, and French. He has translated texts by Kant, Heidegger, Gadamer, Benjamin,
and Adorno. He has also published articles on Hegel, Hölderlin, Adorno, Habermas,
and Wagner.

Rachel Weissbrod is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of

Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her areas of
research include theory of translation, literary translation into Hebrew, film and TV
translation and the interrelation between translation and other forms of transfer. Her
book Not by Word Alone, Fundamental Issues in Translation (in Hebrew) was
published by The Open University of Israel in 2007. She has published in Target, The
Translator, Meta, Babel, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, Translation
Studies and more.

Ross Wilson is Lecturer in Criticism in the Faculty of English, University of

Cambridge, UK, and a Fellow of Trinity College. He is the author most recently of
Shelley and the Apprehension of Life (2013) and of essays on the history and theory of
literary criticism and English poetry from the eighteenth century. He is currently
writing a book on the generic forms in which literary criticism has been written since
around 1750.
 Acknowledgements

The editors would like to express their gratitude to all at Routledge for their
support, especially to Louisa Semlyen for suggesting and encouraging the
project. The assistance of Hannah Rowe and Laura Sandford has been
invaluable. Many thanks also to Jean Boase-Beier, for constant advice and
support with translation studies, and to Gareth Jones, for constant advice and
support with philosophy.
 Introduction

Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson

This Handbook examines the relationships between translation studies and

philosophy. Philosophy is one of the oldest intellectual practices known to
humanity. Translation studies, by contrast, is a young discipline – a 1972
paper by James Holmes ([1972] 2004) is often viewed as its starting point –
although translation as a practice predates even philosophy. The two
disciplines are contingently linked because, as Jonathan Rée notes: ‘no
bookshelves are more heavily stocked with foreign books and translations
than those of the philosopher’ (2001: 231). However, Rée argues that the
connection goes deeper: ‘European philosophy has always been written with
several languages in mind; and it has to be read, and translated, with
multilingual eyes as well’ (2001: 235). For Lawrence Venuti, translation is
philosophy’s ‘dark secret’ (1998: 115). The present volume shows how
contemporary scholars are responding to the growing realisation that those
working in translation studies and those working in philosophy have much to
say to each other (see the study by Andrew Benjamin ([1989] 2015)). It will
therefore help to establish dialogue between the fields as a norm, as well as
being an important work of reference.
Willis Barnstone (writing in 1993) speaks of the ‘mutual self-isolation of
linguistic and philosophical studies on translation and the theory and practice
of literary translators’ (1993: 223), while Rosemary Arrojo (writing in 2010)
argues that in the history of Western philosophy ‘hardly any attention has
been paid either to the practice of translation or to the philosophical questions
it raises’ (2010: 247). Arrojo, however, concludes that the situation is
changing, a change evidenced by her own work. We note a growing number
of conferences that bring together scholars in the two fields, as well as an
increasing number of relevant publications, such as the essays in the volume
edited by Lisa Foran (2012), which ‘all point to the same claim: that
translation is inherently philosophical and that philosophy not only demands,
but also itself engages in, a type of translation’ (Foran 2012: 11). Barbara
Cassin’s Dictionary of Untranslatables (2014) is a further instance of how
translation and philosophy can be placed in the same field of enquiry. In a
review of what he calls this ‘extraordinary book’, itself a translation from the
French of 2004, Tim Crane argues that translation is ‘almost never a
straightforward conversion’, which is what makes it a ‘fertile subject for
philosophy’ (2015). The impact of Cassin’s work is likely to take some time
to be assimilated and sets the standard for a certain sort of enquiry, even
though critical voices have been raised. Crane notes among other things the
assumption in the Dictionary that French is the natural language of
philosophy (ibid.), while Venuti (2016) argues that it operates with an
underlying instrumental model of translation that makes many of its
assumptions about untranslatability questionable, given that other models of
translation are available. (See Akashi, Józwikowska, Large and Rose
(forthcoming) for an overview of the emerging debate on untranslatability.)
Two important qualifications about the Handbook must now be made, two
problems that are signalled as a call for action, for new overviews, which is
something that is to be expected, because handbooks do not only map a field
but also show where new explorations must be carried out.
First, the canonical philosophers discussed in Chapters 1–9 are all male.
Such imbalance is symptomatic of a wider problem in philosophy, as Katrina
Hutchison and Fiona Jenkins have shown (2013). Chapters 16 and 20 in the
Handbook address this issue in the context of translation studies and
philosophy. How can an unjust situation be improved?
Second, the Handbook is oriented to Western philosophy. In Part I, again,
the male philosophers addressed have written in English, French and German
only. Where are philosophers from non-Western traditions? Similarly, many
of the debates described in Parts II–IV use Western discourse. However, even
the very use of the term ‘Western’ is suspect. As Şebnem Susam-Saraeva
points out, it renders the West more homogenous than it is and implies that
not being Western is the ‘only common denominator behind otherwise vastly
different languages and cultures’ (2002: 193). Such issues are further
explored in Chapter 11, which addresses ‘Eurocentrism’, and in Chapter 12,
where Western views are contrasted with a South Asian translation tradition.
A view from translation studies
Translation studies is what Mona Baker calls an ‘interdiscipline’ (2008),
which of necessity looks outside for support. Jean Boase-Beier’s work on
creativity in translation, for example, draws on relevance theory (2006). If we
accept Venuti’s definition of translation studies as ‘the formulation of
concepts designed to illuminate and to improve the practice of translation’
(2012: 13), then philosophy is an obvious area to which to turn for support,
because it is a rigorous intellectual enquiry into the nature of reality. Thus
translation studies anthologies typically include work by philosophers
(Venuti reproduces statements by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schleiermacher and George Steiner in an
influential reader (2012)). Philosophy has given rise to a number of sub-
disciplines, such as the philosophies of history, law and science, and there is
no reason why it should not give rise to the philosophy of translation (see
Large 2014: 182). The term ‘philosophy of translation’ can be understood in
two ways: first, as an analytic activity in which philosophical tools are used
to discuss translation issues – the ideas of moral philosophers can illuminate
the debates of translation ethics, for example (see Chapter 15) – and, second,
as a substantive activity that aims to formulate an overview (see Chapter 29).
Not only translation scholars but also practising translators can use
philosophy to examine and even to drive the way that they translate.
Such enquiry by translation scholars and by translators will enable
boundaries to be redrawn between disciplines (see Boase-Beier, Fawcett and
Wilson 2014: 8). Boundaries are never stable. Maria Tymoczko has used the
work of Wittgenstein on family resemblance in order to view translation itself
as a cluster concept with no fixed definition, for example (2007: 83–90).
Figures such as Benjamin and Derrida draw attention from both university
departments of philosophy and university departments of literature, while the
work of many non-philosophers shows philosophical aspects – the sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu is a case in point. One effect of this Handbook will be to
destabilise boundaries further.

A view from philosophy

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in a letter to C.K. Ogden about Ogden’s rendering of
the 1921 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, remarked of translation in general:
‘It is a difficult business!’ (1973: 19). Wittgenstein’s realisation is typical of
what makes a philosopher reflect on translation: it is a phenomenon in need
of explanation.
Most of the canonical thinkers who have written on translation come from
the continental tradition (which privileges existential enquiry). In this
volume, there are chapters in Part I on Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul
Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida. But there have also been important
contributions from the Anglo-American, or analytic, tradition (which
privileges conceptual clarification), notably from Willard Van Orman Quine
and Donald Davidson, who are addressed in Chapters 7 and 8 respectively.
(Wittgenstein, the subject of Chapter 4, escapes the continental/analytic
distinction.) One lesson of this Handbook is that valuable insights about
translation can be gained from both traditions. We can move on from what
Anthony Pym describes as ‘not just a lack of dialogue but serious
misunderstandings’ (2007: 42) to more fruitful collaboration.
Investigating translation can not only tell us things that are of interest
about what happens when we replace a word or a sentence in language A by a
word or a sentence in language B, but can help us to theorise how people
think. If I hold that meaning lies behind something, for example, then this
may not only make me translate in a certain way but also show that I see
essences underlying the use of language, which may carry over into how I
view the things around me. If, on the other hand, I see meaning as publicly
available – as determined by, and manifest in, the use of language – then I
will translate differently and may have a different view of reality. Heidegger
(see Chapter 3) goes as far as to assert (1996: 63):

Tell me what you think of translation, and I will tell you who you are.

The stakes cannot get any higher.

An overview of the Handbook

Pym asserts that there are three ways in which philosophy and translation are
linked (2007: 4):

1. Philosophers of various kinds have used translation as a case study or

metaphor for issues of more general application.
2. Translation theorists and practitioners have referred to philosophical
discourses for support and authority for their ideas.
3. Philosophers, scholars and translators have commented on the translation
of philosophical discourses.

The Handbook has been divided into four parts. Parts I–III follow Pym’s
categorisation. Part I investigates how certain canonical philosophers have
addressed translation, both as metaphor (as Pym describes) but also in its own
right. In Part II, some key themes in translation studies are given
philosophical clarification. Part III offers two overviews of translating
philosophy, followed by four case studies. Finally, Part IV suggests five
emerging research trends. The volume thus gives an overview of the state of
research into translation studies and philosophy and also indicates ways in
which students and researchers can continue to bring the two disciplines
together. Each chapter indicates which other chapters in the Handbook can
provide further illumination and includes a list of commented further reading.

Part I: Philosophers on translation

The first nine chapters, ordered chronologically, take the form of academic
studies of the writings of the philosopher in question with respect to
translation. The final chapter examines some contemporary trends in how the
two fields of philosophy and translation studies speak to each other.
Theo Hermans discusses the views on translation of the German
philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), whose
famous 1813 lecture ‘On the Different Methods of Translating’ applies the
principles of hermeneutics to interlingual translation. Hermans argues that
Schleiermacher’s views on translation are an integral part of his thinking on
communication, language and understanding, and examines these views in
their immediate context, in relation to Schleiermacher’s other work and in
relation to the translation of Plato that marks the beginning of
Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic thought. Schleiermacher’s lecture, which is
frequently anthologised by translation scholars and read by translation
students, has at its core not the choice between the translator either bringing
the author to the reader or taking the reader to the author, as is often stated,
but the formidable difficulty faced by the hermeneutic translator who, having
glimpsed the otherness of the foreign writer, has only the translating language
to articulate the understanding gained. Translation cannot overcome
difference, but as a project it can take us closer to the metaphysical ideal of
absolute shared knowledge.
Even though Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) left only fragments about
translation, the impact of his thought on the development of some of the most
important and productive trends that have emerged within the discipline of
translation studies in the last few decades has been enormous, although,
unfortunately, hardly acknowledged. Rosemary Arrojo shows how some of
the main topics currently explored in translation studies – such as the
recognition of the translator’s inescapable visibility and agency, the
transformational character of translation, the role of translation in processes
of colonisation and evangelisation and the relationship between translation
and gender issues – are deeply indebted to the work of Nietzsche, particularly
as conveyed by his interpreters. If we consider, for example, that mainstream
conceptions of the ‘original’ and its idealised relationship with translation are
still very much reminiscent of Plato’s theory of Forms and its devaluation of
representations, it becomes evident how fundamental Nietzsche’s
conceptions of language, interpretation and the will to power have been for
the ways in which we now think of the task of translators and the ethics that
should guide their work.
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is an example of a canonical philosopher
who addressed translation in detail. Tom Greaves describes how early
discussions tended to focus on the difficulty, even the purported
impossibility, of translating Heidegger’s philosophical idiom and shows that
recent discussion has focused increasingly on Heidegger’s own translation
practice – that is, the integral part that translation played in his understanding
of philosophy and thought itself, together with the thematic discussions of
translation in his writings. Greaves discusses three aspects of Heidegger and
translation, the first of which is the radical rethinking of hermeneutics that the
young Heidegger developed as the central feature of his development of
phenomenology into a hermeneutic ontology. The second is the role that
‘fundamental words’ play in Heidegger’s thinking and translation; Greaves
explores possible justifications and potential limitations of this focus on
fundamental words in Heidegger’s developing thinking about language.
Third, Greaves provides a brief overview of the history of English-language
discussions of Heidegger’s views on translation and how they have
developed as more of his work has been published and understanding of his
philosophy has changed.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) is widely regarded as one of the most
important philosophers of language. He did not write extensively on
translation, but Silvia Panizza shows how his insights and methods, which
take pragmatic aspects of language to be of paramount importance, can be
applied to both theory and practice. Four key concepts from Wittgenstein’s
1953 Philosophical Investigations are discussed: language-games, forms of
life, aspect-seeing and the surveyable representation. Language-games, for
example, are the different contexts in which we use language, with particular
aims and rules which give words their specific meaning. Instead of
postulating a corresponding entity for each word, which the translator needs
to find, a Wittgensteinian approach to translation suggests that we first need
to understand which language-games texts are playing and within what kinds
of forms of life they fit. The task of translation is to recreate similar contexts
and effects rather than identifying an absolute referent. The chapter concludes
with suggestions about how to evaluate different translations by appealing to
Wittgenstein’s conception of language.
‘The Task of the Translator’, by Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), is another
text that is frequently anthologised and on many university reading lists. Jean
Boase-Beier argues that though it does contain Benjamin’s most complete
statement of his views on translation, it is hard to understand in isolation.
While certain pronouncements – that texts possess a quality of
‘translatability’, for example – are well known and relatively straightforward,
others can appear merely idiosyncratic. The danger of taking from the essay
only those ideas that are easy to understand is that the essay’s extraordinary
density is lost, and it can seem to be saying little of importance. If, however,
we see this essay as a statement made at a particular point in Benjamin’s
intellectual development and read it in relation to his other works, especially
those on language, philosophy and history, we not only see that there is no
redundancy in the essay but also find it illuminated by his thoughts on those
other topics. Boase-Beier’s contextualisation of Benjamin enables us better to
assess the relevance of his thought for both translation theory and practice.
Lisa Foran discusses the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) and
of Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005). For both thinkers, understanding is a condition
of human existence, and they describe it as a form of translation involving a
transformative relation between people, which produces meaning and which
is never finished. Foran considers Gadamer’s philosophical heritage, paying
particular attention to the influence of Heidegger and the latter’s accounts of
thrownness and situated understanding, going on to describe how for
Gadamer these and other concepts impact both on the aim of translation and
how a practising translator can proceed. She then turns to Ricoeur and his
shared phenomenological heritage with Gadamer. For Ricoeur, translation is
a much broader concept that concerns not only an operation between
languages but also offers itself as a paradigm for intersubjective relations.
Translation necessarily gives rise to a number of ethical and political
questions which are difficult to address. While both thinkers share a number
of positions and concepts, the chapter’s central claim is that Ricoeur’s
expanded account of translation is more attuned to those difficulties than
Gadamer’s.
Paul A. Roth considers the work of Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–
2000), one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers in the
Anglo-American tradition. On Roth’s account, Quine shows earlier
subscribers to this tradition to be committed to a problematic notion of
meaning – problematic because it presupposes a notion of propositional
content that is independent of contingent linguistic form. On this ‘traditional’
view, the translation of an utterance succeeds when it re-expresses (or
‘recaptures’) the pre-existing meaning of that utterance. Roth examines
Quine’s reasons for rejecting this view, with a focus on Quine’s thesis of the
‘indeterminacy of translation’ and the philosophical assumptions that Quine
sees this as calling into question. In the process, Roth closely examines just
how Quine’s thought experiment of radical translation – the case where one
confronts a language previously unknown or untranslated – engenders
compelling arguments for the indeterminacy of translation. Roth concludes
with a comparison of Quine to Donald Davidson and sees both as rejecting
the ‘recapture’ view of translation, with its assumption that a fixed and
determinate meaning exists prior to translation, in favour of the view, forced
upon us by the indeterminacy of translation, that meaning, in important
respects, results from translation and cannot be independent of it.
Donald Davidson (1917–2003) made important contributions in several
major areas of philosophy and is notable for his systematic approach. Piers
Rawling begins by placing Davidson in the context of Quine and
Wittgenstein and sees them all as united in rejecting the ‘conventional’
account of language. In addition, a key principle emerges: the manifestation
principle. This states that there can be nothing more to the meaning of a
speaker’s words than can be gleaned from observation, where this
observation is necessarily guided by certain maxims of interpretation,
collectively known as the ‘principle of charity’. But the principle of charity
does not force unique interpretations. Indeed, interpretation, on Davidson’s
view, is inevitably indeterminate: there are myriad interpretations of a given
speaker that all account for the data equally well, and no one of them is
uniquely ‘correct’. Other topics covered include ‘radical interpretation’,
Davidson’s application of Tarski’s definition of truth, his argument to the
effect that thought requires ‘triangulation’, his denial that there is any such
thing as a ‘conceptual scheme’, his ‘anomalous monism’, holism about
meaning and thought, and his claim that there is no thought without talk.
Deborah Goldgaber considers the work of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004),
who is frequently studied by those outside philosophy departments, as noted
above, and whose work powerfully critiques a certain philosophical view of
language – logocentrism – and the ideal of translation it implies. According
to this ideal, the function of language is to express meaning, while translation
should find equivalents. Derrida’s critique consists in showing that meaning
is necessarily language-like; therefore it cannot anchor language, nor assure
the possibility of successful linguistic equivalence between languages.
According to Derrida, logocentric accounts of language assume what they
ought to contest: the absolute difference between signifier and the signified.
In fact, the signified element is not ‘outside’ the text, depending on language
users to give and restore extra-textual meaning – it is inscribed on the
‘inside’. Deconstructively speaking, translation is not a derivative linguistic
practice with respect to establishing meaning but essential and primary. Texts
are defined by their capacity to ‘translate’ heterogeneous texts. Derrida thus
helps us to see the productive role of translation and the power of
translational practices to enrich and shape language.
In the final chapter of Part I, Roland Végső examines what first might
appear to be a central contradiction: while contemporary philosophy has
turned against the heritage of the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ of the twentieth
century and thus questions the absolute centrality of language, the category of
translation has nevertheless remained a central concern for it as an
ontological problem. He goes on to examine work by Alain Badiou, Michel
Callon, Bruno Latour, Levi Bryant and Barbara Cassin, and he argues that
today translation occupies in philosophical discourse the position of a limit in
relation to ontology. In the case of Badiou, for example, ontology limits the
function of translation, since mathematics as ontology tends towards the
elimination of translation; for Cassin, translation limits the scope of classic
ontology, as it is responsible for introducing a new kind of multiplicity to
ontology; for Latour and Bryant, ontology is translation, and thus translation
ceases to be an essentially linguistic problem, as it is tied to the more general
problem of relationality.

Part II: Translation studies and philosophy

Philosophy can offer support to theorising about translation, and theorising
about translation can contribute to philosophy. The approach in Part II is
topic-based, addressing some of the major themes that have arisen in
translation studies and offering a philosophical perspective.
Maria Tymoczko addresses the relationship between translation theory
and philosophy, in a chapter that offers an overview of what is at stake in the
whole project of this Handbook, by tracing the relationship between
translation theory and the developments in Anglo-American philosophy
which contributed to the shaping of the discipline of translation studies as it
emerged in the twentieth century, issuing in the current state of the field. In
certain respects, it can be argued that the two disciplines co-evolved, with
philosophers of language frequently invoking translation in their arguments
on the one hand and translation studies scholars and theorists using insights
from philosophical arguments on the other. Because both disciplines focus on
language (the defining trait of human cognition) in its pragmatic cultural
contexts, there is significant convergence in the arguments of both fields.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
power, had it not been for the unpleasant fact, known to all the Court,
that the Emperor’s consort, A-lu-te, was enceinte and therefore
might confer an heir on the deceased sovereign. In the event of a
son being born, it was clear that both A-lu-te and Tzŭ An would ipso
facto acquire authority theoretically higher than her own, since her
title of Empress Mother had lapsed by the death of T’ung-Chih, and
her original position was only that of a secondary consort. As the
mother of the Emperor, she had by right occupied a predominant
position during his minority, but this was now ended. It was to her
motherhood that she had owed the first claims to power; now she
had nothing but her own boundless ambition, courage and
intelligence to take the place of lawful claims and natural ties. With
the death of her son the Emperor, and the near prospect of A-lu-te’s
confinement, it was clear that her own position would require
desperate remedies, if her power was to remain undiminished.
Among the senior members of the Imperial Clan, many of whom
were jealous of the influence of the Yehonala branch, there was a
strong movement in favour of placing on the Throne a grandson of
the eldest son of the venerated Emperor Tao-Kuang, namely, the
infant Prince P’u Lun, whose claims were excellent, in so far as he
was of a generation lower than the deceased T’ung-Chih, but
complicated by the fact that his father had been adopted into the
direct line from another branch. The Princes and nobles who
favoured this choice pointed out that the infant P’u Lun was almost
the only nominee who would satisfy the laws of succession and allow
of the proper sacrifices being performed to the spirit of the deceased
T’ung-Chih.[28]
Tzŭ Hsi, however, was too determined to retain her position and
power to allow any weight to attach to sentimental, religious, or other
considerations. If, in order to secure her objects, a violation of the
ancestral and House-laws were necessary, she was not the woman
to hesitate, and she trusted to her own intelligence and the servility
of her tools in the Censorate to put matters right, or, at least, to
overcome all opposition. At this period she was on bad terms with
her colleague and Co-Regent, whom she had never forgiven for her
share in the decapitation of her Chief Eunuch, An Te-hai; she hated
and mistrusted Prince Kung, and there is hardly a doubt that she had
resolved to get rid of the young Empress A-lu-te before the birth of
her child. The only member of the Imperial family with whom she
was at this time on intimate terms was her brother-in-law, Prince
Ch’un, the seventh son of the Emperor Tao-Kuang. This Prince, an
able man, though dissolute in his habits, had married her favourite
sister, the younger Yehonala, and it will, therefore, be readily
understood that the reasons which actuated her in deciding to place
this Prince’s infant son upon the Throne were of the very strongest.
During his minority she would continue to rule the Empire, and,
should he live to come of age, her sister, the Emperor’s mother,
might be expected to exert her influence to keep him in the path of
dutiful obedience. Tzŭ Hsi’s objection to the son of Prince Kung was
partly due to the fact that she had never forgiven his father for his
share in the death of the eunuch, An Te-hai, and other offences, and
partly because the young Prince was now in his seventeenth year,
and would, therefore, almost immediately have assumed the
Government in his own person. Tzŭ Hsi was aware that, in that
event, it would be in accordance with tradition and the methods
adopted by the stronger party in the Forbidden City for ridding itself
of inconvenient rivals and conflicting authorities, that either she
should be relegated to complete obscurity here below, or forcibly
assisted on the road to Heaven. It was thus absolutely necessary for
her to put a stop to this appointment, and, as usual, she acted with
prompt thoroughness, which speedily triumphed over the
disorganised efforts of her opponents. By adroit intrigues, exercised
chiefly through her favourite eunuch, she headed off any attempt at
co-operation between the supporters of Prince P’u Lun and those of
Prince Kung, while, with the aid of Jung Lu and the appearance on
the scene of a considerable force of Li Hung-chang’s Anhui troops,
she prepared the way for the success of her own plans; her
preparations made, she summoned a Council of the Clansmen and
high officials, to elect and appoint the new Emperor.
 Interior of the Yang Hsin Tien. (Palace of “Mind Nurture.”)

The Emperor T’ung-Chih used this Palace as his residence during the whole of his
reign.

Photo, Ogawa, Tokio.

This solemn conclave took place in the Palace of “Mind Nurture,”

on the western side of the Forbidden City, about a quarter of a mile
distant from the palace in which the Emperor T’ung-Chih had
expired. In addition to the Empresses Regent, those present
numbered twenty-five in all, including several Princes and Imperial
Clansmen, the members of the Grand Council, and several of the
highest metropolitan officials; but of all these, only five were
Chinese. Prince Tsai Chih, the father of Prince P’u Lun, was there,
as well as Prince Kung, both representing the proposed legitimate
claims to the Throne. The approaches to the Palace were thronged
with eunuchs, and Tzŭ Hsi had taken care, with the assistance of
Jung Lu, that all the strategical points in the Forbidden City should
be held by troops on whose loyalty she could completely depend.
Amongst them were many of Jung Lu’s own Banner Corps, as well
as detachments chiefly composed of members and adherents of the
Yehonala clan. By Tzŭ Hsi’s express orders, the newly-widowed
Empress A-lu-te was excluded from the Council meeting, and
remained dutifully weeping by the bedside of her departed lord, who
had already been arrayed in the ceremonial Dragon robes.
In the Council Chamber Tzŭ Hsi and her colleague sat opposite to
each other on Thrones; all the officials present were on their knees.
Taking precedence as usual, and assuming as of right the rôle of
chief speaker, Tzŭ Hsi began by remarking that no time must be lost
in selecting the new Emperor; it was not fitting that the Throne
should remain vacant on the assumption that an heir would be born
to His late Majesty. Prince Kung ventured to disagree with this
opinion, expressing the view that, as A-lu-te’s child would shortly be
born, there should be no difficulty in keeping back the news of the
Emperor’s death for a little while; the child, if a boy, could then rightly
and fittingly be placed on the Throne, while in the event of the
posthumous child being a daughter, there would still be time enough
to make selection of the Emperor’s successor. The Princes and
Clansmen appeared to side with this view, but Tzŭ Hsi brushed it
aside, observing that there were still rebellions unsuppressed in the
south, and that if it were known that the Throne was empty, the
Dynasty might very well be overthrown. “When the nest is destroyed,
how many eggs will remain unbroken?” she asked. The Grand
Councillors and several senior statesmen, including the three
Chinese representatives from the south, expressed agreement with
this view, for they realised that, given conditions of unrest, the
recently active Taiping rebels might very easily renew the anti-
Dynastic movement.
The Empress Dowager of the East then gave it as her opinion that
Prince Kung’s son should be chosen heir to the Throne; Prince
Kung, in accordance with the customary etiquette, kowtowed and
professed unwillingness that such honour should fall to his family,
and suggested that the youthful Prince P’u Lun should be elected.
P’u Lun’s father in turn pleaded the unworthiness of his offspring, not
because he really felt any qualms on the subject, but because
custom necessitated this self-denying attitude. “That has nothing to
do with the case,” said Tzŭ Hsi to the last speaker, “but as you are
only the adopted son of Yi Wei” (the eldest son of the Emperor Tao-
Kuang) “what precedent can any of you show for placing on the
Throne the heir of an adopted son?” Prince Kung, called upon to
reply, hesitated, and suggested as a suitable precedent the case of a
Ming Emperor of the fifteenth century canonised as Ying-Tsung.
“That is a bad precedent,” replied the Empress, who had every
precedent of history at her finger ends. “The Emperor Ying-Tsung
was not really the son of his predecessor, but was palmed off on the
Emperor by one of the Imperial concubines. His reign was a period
of disaster; he was for a time in captivity under the Mongols and
afterwards lived in retirement at Peking for eight years while the
Throne was occupied by his brother.” Turning next to her colleague
she said, “As for me, I propose as heir to the Throne, Tsai Tien, the
son of Yi Huan (Prince Ch’un), and advise you all that we lose no
time.” On hearing these words Prince Kung turned to his brother and
angrily remarked: “Is the right of primogeniture[29] to be completely
ignored?” “Let the matter then be decided by taking a vote,” said Tzŭ
Hsi, and her colleague offered no objections. The result of the vote
was that seven of the Princes, led by Prince Ch’un, voted for Prince
P’u Lun, and three for the son of Prince Kung; the remainder of the
Council voted solidly for Tzŭ Hsi’s nominee. The voting was done
openly and the result was entirely due to the strong will and
dominating personality of the woman whom all had for years
recognised as the real ruler of China. When the voting was
concluded, Tzŭ An, who was always more anxious for an amicable
settlement than for prolonged discussion, intimated her willingness to
leave all further arrangements in the hands of her colleague. It was
now past nine o’clock, a furious dust-storm was raging and the night
was bitterly cold, but Tzŭ Hsi, who never wasted time at moments of
crisis, ordered a strong detachment of Household troops to be sent
to the residence of Prince Ch’un in the Western City, and with it the
Imperial yellow sedan chair with eight bearers, to bring the boy
Emperor to the Palace. At the same time, to keep Prince Kung busy
and out of harm’s way, she gave him charge of the body of the dead
Emperor, while she had the Palace surrounded and strongly guarded
by Jung Lu’s troops. It was in her careful attention to details of this
kind that lay her marked superiority to the vacillating and
unbusinesslike methods of those who opposed her, and it is this
Napoleonic characteristic of the woman which explains much of the
success that her own people frequently attributed to luck. Before
midnight the little Emperor had been duly installed in the Palace,
weeping bitterly upon his ill-omened coming to the Forbidden City.
With him came his mother (Tzŭ Hsi’s sister) and several nurses. The
first event of his reign, imposed upon him, like much future misery,
by dynastic precedent, was to be taken at once to the Hall where his
deceased predecessor was lying in State, and there to kowtow, as
well as his tender years permitted, before the departed ruler. A
Decree was thereupon issued in the names of the Empresses
Dowager, who thus became once more Regents, announcing, “that
they were absolutely compelled to select Tsai Tien for the Throne,
and that he should become heir by adoption to his uncle Hsien-Feng,
but that, so soon as he should have begotten a son, the Emperor
T’ung-Chih would at once be provided with an heir.”
By this means the widowed Empress A-lu-te was completely
passed over, and the claims of her posthumous son ignored in
advance. Once more Tzŭ Hsi had gained an easy and complete
victory. It was clear to those who left the Council Chamber after the
issue of this Decree, that neither the young widowed Empress nor
the unborn child of T’ung-Chih were likely to give much more trouble.
For form’s sake, and in accordance with dynastic precedents, a
Memorial was submitted by all the Ministers and Princes of the
Household, begging their Majesties the Empresses to resume the
Regency, who, on their part, went through the farce of acceding
graciously to this request, on the time-honoured ground that during
the Emperor’s minority there must be some central authority to
whom the officials of the Empire might look for the necessary
guidance. It was only fitting and proper, however, that reluctance
should be displayed, and Tzŭ Hsi’s reply to the Memorial therefore
observed that “the perusal of this Memorial has greatly increased our
grief and sorrowful recognition of the exigencies of the times, for we
had hoped that the Regency was merely a temporary measure of
unusual expediency. Be it known that so soon as the Emperor shall
have completed his education, we shall immediately hand over to
him the affairs of the Government.”
The infant Emperor was understood to express “dutiful thanks to
their Majesties for this virtuous act” and all the formalities of the
tragic comedy were thus completed. The Empress Dowager gave
orders that the repairs which had been begun at the Lake and
Summer Palaces should now be stopped, the reason given being
that the Empresses Regent would have no time nor desire for gaiety
in the years to come; the real reason being, however, that the death
of the Emperor removed all necessity for their Majesties leaving the
Forbidden City.
Tzŭ Hsi’s success in forcing her wishes upon the Grand Council
and having her sister’s infant son appointed to the Imperial
succession, in opposition to the wishes of a powerful party and in
violation of the dynastic law, was entirely due to her energy and
influence. The charm of her personality, and the convincing
directness of her methods were more effective than all the forces of
tradition. This fact, and her triumph, become the more remarkable
when we bear in mind that she had been advised, and the Grand
Council was aware, that the infant Emperor suffered from physical
weaknesses which, even at that date, rendered it extremely unlikely
that he would ever provide an heir to the Throne. Those who
criticised her selection, knowing this, would have been therefore in a
strong position had they not been lacking in courage and decision,
since it was clear, if the fact were admitted, that Her Majesty’s only
possible motive was personal ambition.
From that time until the death of the Emperor and her own, on the
14th and 15th November 1908, the belief was widespread, and not
infrequently expressed, that the Emperor, whose reign began thus
inauspiciously, would not survive her, and there were many who
predicted that his death would occur before the time came for him to
assume supreme control of the Government. All foretold that Tzŭ Hsi
would survive him, for the simple reason that only thus could she
hope to regulate once more the succession and continue the
Regency. The prophets of evil were wrong, as we know, inasmuch
as Kuang-Hsü was allowed his years of grace in control of affairs,
but we know also that after the coup d’état it was only the fear of an
insurrection in the south that saved his life and prevented the
accession of a new boy Emperor.
The designation of the new reign was then ordered to be “Kuang-
Hsü,” meaning “glorious succession”; it was chosen to emphasise
the fact that the new Emperor was a direct lineal descendant of the
last great Manchu Emperor, Tao-Kuang, and to suggest the hope
that the evil days of Hsien-Feng and T’ung-Chih had come to an
end. The next act of the Empresses Regent was to confer an
honorific title upon the late Emperor’s widow; but the honour was not
sufficient to prevent her from committing suicide on the 27th of
March as an act of protest at the grievous wrong done to her, to the
memory of her husband and to the claims of his posthumous heir.
This was the unofficial explanation current, but opinions have always
differed, and must continue to differ, as to the truth of the suicide,
there being many who, not unnaturally, accused Tzŭ Hsi of putting
an end to the unfortunate woman. Against this the Empress’s
advocates observe that, having succeeded in obtaining the
appointment of Kuang-Hsü to the Throne, and the matter being
irrevocably settled, there existed no further necessity for any act of
violence: but few, if any, suggest that had circumstances
necessitated violent measures they would not have been taken. The
balance of evidence is undoubtedly in the direction of foul play. But,
however administered, it is certain that the death of the Empress A-
lu-te influenced public opinion more profoundly than she could ever
have done by living; as a result, thousands of Memorials poured in
from the Censorate and the provinces, strongly protesting against
the selection of the infant son of Prince Ch’un for the Throne, as a
violation of all ancestral custom and the time-honoured laws of
succession. It is significant that all these protests were clearly
directed against Tzŭ Hsi, her colleague’s nonentity being practically
and generally recognised. For a time Tzŭ Hsi’s popularity (and
therefore the position of the Yehonala clan) was seriously affected,
and when, four years later, the Censor, Wu K’o-tu, committed suicide
near T’ung-Chih’s grave to emphasise the seriousness of the crime
and to focus public attention on the matter, the Empress was
compelled to bow to the storm and to give a second and more
solemn pledge that the deceased Emperor should not permanently
be left without heirs to perform for him the sacrifices of ancestral
worship. It will be seen hereafter how she kept that pledge.
Prince Ch’un, in the capacity of father to the new Emperor,
submitted a Memorial asking leave to be permitted to resign his
various offices, because, as an official, he would be bound to
kowtow to the Emperor, and as a father he could not kowtow to his
own son. In the course of this Memorial, which reminds the reader
unpleasantly of Mr. Pecksniff, the Prince observes that when first
informed of his son’s selection as heir to the Dragon Throne, “he
almost fainted and knew not what to do. When borne to his home,
his body was trembling and his heart palpitating severely; like a
madman, or one who walks in dreams, was he, so that he incurred a
serious recurrence of his liver trouble and the state of his health
became really a matter for anxiety. He would prefer that the silent
tomb should close forthwith over his remains rather than to continue
to draw the breath of life as the useless son of the Emperor Tao-
Kuang.”
The Empress Dowager, in reply, directed her faithful Ministers to
devise a careful compromise “based on the special requirements of
the case,” the result of which was that Prince Ch’un was permitted to
resign his offices and excused from attendance at all Court
ceremonies involving obeisance to the Emperor, but was retained in
a sort of general capacity as “adviser to the Empresses Regent” to
serve when called upon. On the birthdays of the Empresses Regent,
he would be permitted to prostrate himself before them in private,
and not as a member of the Court in attendance on the Emperor. His
first class Princedom was made hereditary for ever, and he was
commanded to give the benefit of his experience and sage counsel
to his successor, Prince Tun, as officer commanding the Manchu
Field Force—an order which he must have obeyed, for the Force in
question became more and more notorious for its tatterdemalion
uselessness and the corruption of its commanders.
Remembering the institution of the first Regency, it will be noted
how faithfully history can be made to repeat itself in the Celestial
Empire.
 IX
THE PROTEST AND SUICIDE OF WU K’O-TU

Immediately after the death of T’ung-Chih’s young widow, the

validity of the Imperial succession and the violation of all traditions
which Tzŭ Hsi had committed, became a matter of grave concern to
the conservative and more conscientious supporters of the Dynasty.
The first evidence of dissatisfaction was contained in a Memorial
submitted by a Manchu sub-Chancellor of the Grand Secretariat
who, while accepting the situation as it stood in regard to the boy
Emperor, Kuang-Hsü, stipulated that safeguards or guarantees
should be given by the Throne for the eventual regulation of the
succession and for the provision of heirs to His orbate Majesty,
T’ung-Chih. The Memorial was as follows:—

“The selection of an heir to the Throne is a matter resting

entirely with the Sovereign and beyond scope of interference
or criticism by any subject. But in cases where the
arrangements made necessitate modification in order to
render them perfect, a loyal subject is justified, if not
compelled, to speak his mind freely.
“The whole Empire looked forward to seeing our late
Emperor enjoy a long and prosperous reign, but he has
passed away without leaving any posterity. The selection of a
successor which your Majesties the Empresses Dowager
have, in your wisdom, decided upon is admirable no doubt,
particularly since you have promised that an heir shall
eventually be provided for His Majesty, T’ung-Chih. This
proves that in regulating the dynastic succession, you are
proceeding precisely as if it were a case of adoption from one
family into another: you have therefore wisely decided that not
only shall a son be adopted to the late Emperor, but that in
due course his succession will be carried on by a grandson in
the direct line of generation, so that His Majesty’s posterity
may be established without a break, and perpetuated without
intermission for all time.
“The proposal in itself is excellent, but study of the Sung
Dynasty’s history has led me to view the matter with no small
apprehension. The founder of that Dynasty, the Emperor
Chao Kuang-yin (tenth century), following the directions of his
mother the Empress Dowager, made his brother heir to the
Throne instead of his son, it being understood that upon his
brother’s death the succession should revert to his son.[30]
Subsequently however, the brother, having come to the
Throne, and having listened to the evil suggestions of his
Privy Councillors, ignored the claims of his nephew, and
placed his own son upon the Throne. In that instance,
obedience to the wishes of his mother has brought down
upon the Emperor Chao Kuang-yin the undying censure of
posterity. If the Empress, on that occasion, had done her duty,
and had caused unbreakable bonds to be given assuring the
reversion of the succession to the direct line, no irregularities
could possibly have occurred: the Decrees would have been
as immovable as the Sacred Mountain, and as self-evident as
the nine tripods of the Emperor Yü. It would have been
impossible for any misguided Councillors of State to justify
their unlawful interference with the rightful course of
succession.
“From all this we learn that the succession, although
decided in a moment, affects all posterity. Was it not,
moreover, by self-sacrifice and strong family affections[31] that
our Dynasty acquired the Empire: have we not for example
the records of each succeeding virtuous Emperor? We cannot
therefore entertain any doubt but that the present Emperor,
when he comes to have an heir, will forthwith make him son
by adoption to the late Emperor, so that the succession may
proceed along the direct line. No doubt this is the intention,
but, as history shows, there exists a danger that, with the
 lapse of time, suggestions may be put forward similar to those
of the Privy Council nine centuries ago, which would utterly
frustrate the wise policy animating your Majesties the
Empresses Dowager, and leave no fixed principles for
posterity to follow. With your approval, therefore, we would
ask that the Princes and Ministers be now required to draw up
and record an unbreakable and unchangeable pledge as to
the succession to the Throne, which should be proclaimed for
the information of all your Majesties’ subjects.”

Tzŭ Hsi was becoming decidedly irritable on this subject of the

succession, and there can be little doubt that her own conscience
and the views of patriotic Memorialists came to much the same
conclusion. The Rescript which she issued on the present occasion
was short, sharp, and suggestive of temper:—

“We have already issued an absolutely clear Decree on this

subject,” she said, “providing for an heir to the late Emperor,
and the Decree has been published all over the Empire. The
Memorialist’s present request gives evidence of unspeakable
audacity and an inveterate habit of fault-finding, which has
greatly enraged us, so that we hereby convey to him a stern
rebuke.”

The Memorials and remonstrances of many high officials

emphasised the seriousness of this question of the legitimacy of the
Imperial succession to the nation at large, and its profound effect on
the fundamental principles of ancestor worship. Nevertheless, having
delivered their souls, the Mandarinate, led by the Peking Boards,
were disposed to acquiesce in the fait accompli; in any case, there
was no sign of organised opinion in opposition to the will of the
Empress Dowager. The irregularity was evidently serious, and
Heaven would doubtless visit the sins of the Throne, as usual, on the
unoffending “stupid people”; but the individualism and mutual
suspicion that peculiarly distinguish the Chinese official world,
precluded all idea of concerted action or remedial measures.
 One official, however, had the full courage of his convictions, and,
by the time-honoured expedient of self-destruction, focussed the
attention of the nation on the gravity of the question, as no amount of
fine writing could have done. Resort to suicide by indignant patriots,
as a proof of their sincere distress, is a practice praised and justified
alike by historians in China and Japan, and there is no denying that,
as an argument against all forms of despotism, it has the crowning
merit of finality. It has, moreover, certain qualities of deliberate
courage and cultured philosophy that bring irresistibly to mind the
Roman patrician at his best, and which fully account for the
distinction which such a death confers amongst a people that loves
its orthodoxies, as it loves peace, undisturbed.
The name which will go down in Chinese history, as the defender
of the national and true faith in connection with the illegal succession
of the infant Emperor Kuang-Hsü, is that of the Censor, Wu K’o-tu,
an upright and fearless scholar of the best type. For the reasons
stated in his farewell Memorial, he waited four years after the death
of the Emperor T’ung-Chih, hoping against hope that the widespread
dissatisfaction of the literati and officials would take definite form,
and lead the Empress Dowager to regulate the future succession,
and to placate the disinherited ghost of T’ung-Chih, by the issue of a
new Decree. Disappointed in this hope, he seized the classically
correct occasion of the late Emperor’s funeral (1879) to commit
suicide near his grave, taking care to leave behind him a swan-song
which, as he knew, will live long in the memory of scholars and
officials throughout the Empire. His death had the immediate effect
of convincing Tzŭ Hsi of error. Realising the strength of public
opinion underlying the Censor’s protest, she endeavoured at once to
placate his accusing spirit by giving the pledges for which he had
pleaded, in regard to provision in the future of a successor to T’ung-
Chih. Nor was it on this occasion only that the death of Wu K’o-tu
influenced her actions and disturbed her superstitious mind. In after
years, and especially at the time of the flight to Hsi-an, she
recognised his influence, and the punishment of her misdeed, in the
disasters which had overtaken the Throne.
 As an example of the principles of action, and the calm frame of
mind which are the fine flower of the Confucian system of
philosophy, and, therefore, worthy of our close and sympathetic
study, we give the full story of the death of this patriotic protestant,
as well as a translation of his Memorial.
His suicide took place in a small temple at Ma-shen ch’iao, close
to the mausoleum of T’ung-Chih. His minutely detailed instructions
for the disposal of his remains, with the least possible trouble to his
family and friends, bespeak the gentleman and the scholar. To the
priest in charge of the shrine, a “bad man,” he addressed the
following characteristic letter:—

“Priest Chou, be not afraid. I have no desire to bring evil

upon you. I was compelled to borrow the use of your plot of
hallowed ground, as a spot appropriate for the death of an
honest man. Inform now the Magistrate at once, and see that
the Memorial enclosed in my despatch box is forwarded
without delay. Buy for me a cheap coffin and have it painted
black inside. My clothes are all in order, only the leather soles
of my boots require to be cut off before you lay me in your
coffin. I have cut my finger slightly, which accounts for the
blood stains that you may notice. Twenty taels will be ample
for my coffin. I should not think that the Magistrate will need to
hold an inquest. Please have a coating of lacquer put on the
coffin, to fill up any cracks in the joints, and have it nailed
down, pending the Empresses’ decision as to my remains.
Then, buy a few feet of ground adjoining the late Emperor’s
tomb, and have me buried quickly.[32] There is no need for me
to be buried in my ancestral cemetery; any spot is a good
enough resting place for a loyal and honest man.
“You will find forty-five taels in my box, of which you may
keep the balance after paying for my coffin and burial
expenses. As to my watch, and the other articles on my
person, it is known at my home exactly what I brought here
with me. You must see to it that no one is permitted to insult
my corpse, and my son will be deeply grateful to you for
 performing these last offices for me, in his place. You need
not fear that the Magistrate’s underlings will make trouble for
you, but be careful not to tamper with the box containing my
Memorial to the Empresses.
“You can cut my body down to-morrow morning, and then
have it placed in some cool and shady spot. Fearing that
possibly you might come in by accident and find me hanging,
I have taken a dose of opium, so as to make certain of death.
If you should dare to meddle with my private affairs, as you
have been trying to do these past few days, it will only lead to
your being mixed up in the case, which might bring you to
grief.
“All I ask of you is that you notify the Magistrate at once,
and that you do not allow women and children to come in and
gaze upon my remains. There is nothing strange or abnormal
here; death had become an unavoidable duty. Those who
understand me, will pity; that is all. The last earnest
instructions of Wu K’o-tu.”

Next, to his son, he expressed his dying wishes in a letter which

embodies many of the Confucian scholar’s most cherished ideals
and beliefs, a document pathetic in its simple dignity, its pride of
ancient lineage and duty well done according to his lights.

“Chih-huan, my son, be not alarmed when you hear the

news of my death, and on no account allow your grief to
disturb the family. Your mother is old, your wife is young, and
my poor little grandchildren are but babies. Tell them that I am
dead, but bid them not to grieve over my suicide. Our family
tree goes back over five hundred years; for two centuries
there have been members of our clan among the Imperial
concubines, and for three hundred years we have devoted
ourselves to husbandry and scholarship. For eighteen
generations our family has borne a good name; I, who am
now seventy years of age, can claim an unsullied record,
although as a lad I was somewhat given to dissipation. No
man can truthfully accuse me of having failed to observe the
main principles of duty, and it is for this reason that my friends
and former pupils have always sought my services as a
teacher of the Confucian doctrine. Quite recently I declined
the pressing invitation of the Grand Secretary, the Marquis
Tso Tsung-t’ang, who wished me to become tutor to his family,
because the date was at hand for His late Majesty’s burial,
and I desired quietly to await to-day’s event.
“Ever since, at the age of twenty-four, I took my M.A.
degree, I have been of prudent conduct, and have observed
the proprieties in official life. In the study of history I have ever
been deeply touched by examples of patriotism and loyalty to
the Sovereign, and the splendid lives of the ancients have
moved me, now to tears and again to exuberance of joy.
“Upon the death of the late Emperor, I had determined to
memorialise the Empresses Dowager, through the Censorate,
and had fully made up my mind to accept my fate for so
doing; but an old friend, to whom I showed the draft, begged
me not to forward it, not only because I had already been
punished for similar rashness on a former occasion, but
because he said some of its allusions to current events were
not absolutely accurate. Therefore I waited until to-day, but
now I can wait no longer. It is my wish to die, in order that the
purpose of my life may be fittingly accomplished and a lifetime
of loyalty consummated. My death is in no way due to the
slanders which have been circulated about me.
“When you receive this letter, come straightway to the
Temple of the Threefold Duties at the bridge of the God of
Horses, twelve miles to the east of Chi Chou and quite close
to the Imperial mausolea. There seek out the Taoist priest,
Chou; he knows my burial place, and I have asked him to buy
me a coffin and to have it painted black inside. My burial
clothes are all in order, but I have asked him to cut off the
leather soles from my boots.[33] He is to buy a certain small
piece of ground, close to the Imperial tomb, which is to be my
grave. This will be far better than having my remains taken to
the ancestral burial ground, and there is really no need for me
to rest there, as my younger brother already lies beside your
grandparents. He, you remember, committed suicide twenty
years ago at his house in Peking, because of private troubles,
and now I follow his example, because of disorder in the
State. People will say, no doubt, that our family burial ground
is become a place of evil omen, but pay no heed to them. No
doubt you will desire to take home my remains, but do not so.
Take instead my photograph, the one I had taken just before I
left Peking, and have an enlargement of it hung up in our
family hall. Thus shall you observe the old custom which
preserves relics of the departed. Why go to the expense and
trouble of transporting a coffin over a thousand miles?
“Even though it should happen that the Empresses should
cause dire penalties to be inflicted upon my corpse because
of my effrontery of language, you may be sure that in this
enlightened age, there is no possibility of my offences being
visited upon my wife and family. All you need do is to borrow
from our friends money enough to take you from Peking, and
after that, you must make the best of your way to our family
home, begging if necessary. On no account must you remain
in Peking, for by so doing you will only attract attention and
further endanger your father.[34]
“What I chiefly deprecate in you, my son, is your quick
tongue; you must really try to amend your ways in this respect
and endeavour to be less hasty. If people tell you that your
father was loyal, do not contradict them; if they say he was an
honest man, you should agree. Read carefully the advice of
Ma Yüan, the great General, to his nephew, and Wang Hou’s
admonitions to his sons.
“When your mother married me she had good prospects, as
the daughter of an old military family. Since her marriage she
has dutifully served my parents, and her reputation for filial
devotion is excellent. I regret that I was not destined to bring
her happiness and good fortune: she is old now, and you
alone are left to her. It is your duty to take her to our home
and minister to her old age.
“As regards the few poor acres of land left me by my father,
I feel that I cannot reasonably expect you to follow the
example of the ancient worthies and to surrender it all to your
brothers, but at least I ask that you should allow them to live
amicably with you. Your wife is a sensible woman—tell her
from me that the happiness of every household depends on
the temper of its womenfolk. I knew one woman who feigned
death in order to induce her husband to treat his brothers
more kindly, but this was a heroic act, far above the moral
capacity of your wife.
“As to the forty taels[35] which you will find on my person,
you will hand over to the Taoist priest, Chou, any balance
there may remain after he has paid for my coffin and burial
expenses. On arriving at Chi Chou, go at once and see the
Magistrate, to whom I have written; thence proceed to the
temple, where you must give them some extra money to
compensate them for all the trouble they have had. Thereafter
return to Peking, and there await the Empresses’ decision in
regard to my case.
“See to it that my small debts are all paid, that my life may
end in fitting and harmonious dignity. At a moment like this, I
am naturally agitated in mind. It is hard to foretell what the
decision of the Empresses may be, but at least my
conscience is clear, and what does anything else matter? For
your own personal safety, I do not think you need have any
fear.
“Present my compliments to Chang Chih-tung: I only wish I
could have had more of the old time talks with him. Go also to
the Marquis Tso Tsung-t’ang. He has not treated me well of
late, but slanders poisoned his sympathy, at which I do not
wonder. The memory of his former kindnesses is precious to
me, and I know that he will never let you starve.
 “Your wife, in giving birth to my grandchildren, has
conferred blessings upon me; you must never think of
allowing her parents to provide for you. Leave therefore at
once for our family home. There must be no delay about this.
As to the Taoist priest, it irks me to make use of people in this
way. He is a bad man; yet must we bear with him. Tell him
that I regret having put his temple to this purpose; he need
only spend ten taels on my coffin and a few taels more for the
little plot of ground to bury me in. I am a worthless official and
deserve nothing better than this.
“Why have I delayed so long? Because I did not wish to
disturb the Empresses with the news of my death at this
critical time. All the Decrees which have appeared since the
Emperor Kuang-Hsü came to the Throne have moved me
greatly, and much have I deplored my inability to serve Their
Majesties better. In days of old, loyal servants of the State
were wont to commit suicide as an act of remonstrance
against the degeneracy of their Sovereigns. Not for a moment
are the Empresses to be compared to monarchs like Ming
Huang of the T’ang Dynasty, who deserted his capital before
the invader, or Li Tsung, of the Sungs, whose foolishness led
to the Mongol wars. Nevertheless my death is due to the
same principles as those which actuated those faithful
Councillors.
“Go home now, and teach your children to study. Do not
open my Memorial to the Empresses. It is sealed, and I have
asked the local Magistrate to forward it for presentation.”

His Memorial to the Throne was, in fact (as the letter to his son
plainly indicates), an indictment of the degeneracy of the ruler of the
Empire; incidentally, it throws much light on the orthodox point of
view in regard to the question of the Imperial succession. Its
preamble sets forth the object with which it was written, and in the
hope of which the writer died, namely, to induce the Empress
Dowager to determine the future succession, providing an heir to the