Post-Aristotelianism and the Specters of Monolingualism

ABSTRACT

Various efforts to desediment the universality of Aristotelian thought suggest that we are in the “time” of post-Aristotelianism. Yet, is it possible to be post-Aristotelian if the reception, and even the subsequent critique, of Aristotelianism has been based not on Aristotle per se but on translations of Aristotle? The imperative, as we argue, is to not look beyond Aristotle but to approach Aristotle as a monolingualized specter—a presumed foundational presence not based in actuality. Adopting this perspective, we compare extant translations of Aristotle’s Politics and Rhetoric in order to foreground the hermeneutic precarity upon which post-Aristotelianism is premised. This essay thus offers not an endorsement or even a critique of post-Aristotelianism but aims to unsettle “Aristotle” as a cohesive figure or body of work to which we respond, the agreed-upon grounds of canonization or rejection. In this way, we highlight the field of rhetoric’s contingency on translational realities.

Notes

1. We would like to thank RR reviewers Brooke Rollins and Keith Lloyd for their thorough and generative feedback.

2. See Appiah; Reiss.

3. See Barnes; Jaeger; and Kennedy, Comparative.

4. This is a point noted also in the history of translation studies (for a sampling of this scholarly tradition, see Apter; Benjamin; Gramling; Venuti).

5. The will is reprinted in full in Barnes.

6. See also Dobbs; Kagan; Mulgan; Neel; and Nichols.

7. The 1981 Saunders translation is a revision of the 1962 Sinclair translation. A notable omission from this list is the 1984 Barnes revision of the 1916 Jowett translation, which was not included because there are no differences between the two in the passage in question.

8. The Greek text is derived from the 1924 Roberts translation.

9. It is true that, as Mulgan argues, “no one, in the ancient world, as far as we know, advocated the abolition of slavery,” although some believed that slavery was a matter of convention (43). Neel cites the Sophist Antiphon as an example of one who promoted the equality of all humans. Gagarin suggests that Antiphon’s concerns with the Greeks becoming “barbarian toward each other” (qtd. in Gagarin 71) reveal “that the original physis-based identity of people, on which nomos imposed an opposition between Greek and barbarian, has again become an identity: both Greeks and barbarians are now barbarians because of the way they treat one another” (qtd. in Gargarin 71–72). In other words, Antiphon believed that institutions and laws were in general determined by convention; that he believed slaves were slaves by convention is perhaps not necessarily due to ethical considerations.

10. Subtle distinctions emerge elsewhere in the Rhetoric. In Aristotle’s discussion of style in the third book, as presented by Kennedy, for instance, it is noted that “in poetry it would be rather inappropriate if a slave used fine language or if a man were too young for his words or if the subject were too trivial” (3.2.2). Meanwhile, Cooper’s translation reads: “Even in poetry, it is hardly appropriate if fine language is used by a slave or by a very young man, or for very trivial matters” (3.2). The use of the modal (would) in Kennedy’s translation, even if a seemingly inconsequential choice, is not insignificant when understood in the context of how interpretations of Aristotle’s “stance” on slavery have centered on the physis-nomos binary (see Dobbs; Kagan).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Allison Dziuba

Allison Dziuba is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Irvine. She currently serves as the Campus Writing & Communication Fellow.

Jerry Won Lee

Jerry Won Lee is associate professor in the departments of English, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is also core faculty in the PhD program in Culture & Theory, core faculty in the Global Cultures undergraduate major, and an affiliate faculty member in the Center for Critical Korean Studies. He currently serves as Director of the Program in Academic English. He has published on the cultural politics of globalization and on the politics of multilingualism and “global” Englishes in a range of journals. He has also published a monograph, The Politics of Translingualism: After Englishes (2018) and two co-edited volumes, Korean Englishes in Transnational Contexts (2017) and Translinguistics: Negotiating Innovation & Ordinariness (forthcoming).