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ABSTRACT
This article offers an analysis of the implicit conception of translation at work in Malebranche’s Entretien d’un philosophe chrétien, et d'un philosophe chinois (1708).
KEYWORDS:
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Notes
1 For a more sustained discussion of Walter Benjamin on “translatability”, see Benjamin, “Translation and Ambiguity”, 39–46.
2 Derrida continued to address the question of translation throughout his writings. See, for example, Derrida, “Qu'est-Ce Qu'une Traduction Relevante?”, 575. For a sustained engagement with the way translation figures within his work, see Crépon, “Traduire, Témoigner, Survivre”, 27–38. For a more extensive coverage of the way Derrida’s work opens up the question of translation in general, see Kamuf, “Passing Strange”.
3 Derrida, “La Pharmacie De Platon”, 80.
4 What is meant by the term figure is constructions of the identity that the Chinese are then constrained to live out.
5 All references to the Entretien d'un philosophe chrétien, et d'un philosophe chinois are to the edition established by André Robinet and published as Tome XV of the Oeuvres Complètes. All references are in the body of the text. (Henceforth all other references to the Oeuvres Complètes will be to OC followed by volume then page number). References to the Oeuvres are to the edition edited by Geneviéve Rodis-Lewis. Again, references are to volume followed by page number. All translations from Malebranche are my own.
6 Euthyphro, 16e.
7 See Benjamin, “Who Were the Faithful? Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei”.
8 De Cusa, De Pace Fidei, 18. On the overall significance of his text with this history of religion, see Aikin, “Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei and the Meta-Exclusivism of Religious Pluralism”.
9 Sameness is an important term in the argument to come. It marks a specific form of relation. There at least two defining elements. The first is that difference entails variety. Difference is defined by the repetition of the Same. Secondly, while the presence of actual differences, e.g. the conditioned and the unconditioned, would necessitate an engagement with the nature of the relation, the relation would have to be thought, with differences whose ground is Sameness; the question of the relation is otiose.
10 For a detailed recent investigation of this topic, see Tianshen and Linghun, A Brief Response on the Controversies over Shangdi.
11 ἦν is the imperfect form of the verb “to be” (ϵἰμί). Its use underscores both the pastness and the always already present registration of that which has already occurred.
12 For an overall history, see Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy. The traditional way of conceiving of that history has been complicated by recent work in the area. See, for example, Liu, “Behind the Façade of the Rites Controversy”.
13 This claim assumes the presence of a project to come, namely of a reformulation of political theology. Moving from its simplistic identification with the secularization of the terminology of theology to identify the indispensability of the relationship between God, the law and sovereignty in any conception of the political.
14 Malebranche, OC X, 12.
15 Ibid., 24.
16 Cassin, “Traduire Les Intraduisibles, Un État Des Lieux”, 26.
17 For the background to and some of the debates that Malebranche’s writings on China and Chinese philosophy have occasioned, see Mungello, “Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy”); Reihman, “Malebranche’s Influence on Leibniz’s Writings on China”; Reihman, “Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy”. For a discussion of Li, see Mungello, “Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy”, 556–7.
18 Della Mirandola, Conclusiones Nongentae, 126–7.
19 Deleuze, Oration on the Dignity of Man, 212.
20 Ibid., 19. Emphasis added.
21 On the centrality of expression in Spinoza, see Deleuze, Spinoza Et Le Problème De L'expression.
22 For the complex relation between Malebranche and Descartes, see LoLordo, “Descartes and Malebranche on Thought, Sensation and the Nature of the Mind”. It might be added, however, that an instance of the immediacy of the knowledge of God can be located in the following question posed on the Meditations: “for what is more self-evident [ex se est apertius] than the fact that the supreme being exists, or that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs, exists?” (Descartes, Oeuvres De Descartes, 69).
23 For a general account of “touch” within the history of French philosophy that includes Malebranche, see Marin, “L'œil Et La Main”.
24 Malebranche, OC III, 290.
25 The becoming Christian of the human being is the conception of subjectivity that demands attention in any account of how abstract universality emerges. It is clear that while the descriptor “Christian” may drop away, that does not mean that what then emerges is a conception of universality that is not in some way grounded in the movement of becoming Christian. It is this point that would need to be brought to the protestations of secularity that mark the registration of the universal in Badiou’s interpretation of Saint Paul. See Badiou, Saint Paul.
26 Gramsci, Quaderni Del Carcere, II. 1307.
27 For an extensive account of Malebranche’s conception of theodicy, see Rutherford, “Malebranche's Theodicy”.
28 Ibid., 28.
29 It should not be thought surprising that Malebranche was a central figure for Schmitt. See, on their relation, Frank, “Re-imagining the Public Sphere”, 70–93.
30 59.24. For an overview of the position of oikonomia in John of Damascus, see Louth, St John Damascene. For a discussion of this passage with his work as a whole, see Benjamin, “Oikonomia, Incarnation and Immediacy”.
31 Malebranche, Oeuvres II, 10.
32 Malebranche OC X, 149–50.
33 Yair Lorberbaum has provided an important account of the position of the imago dei in the context of Jewish thought. See Lorberbaum, In God's Image.
34 Malebranche, Oeuvres II, 939–4.
35 —Ibid.
36 Malebranche, OC II, 396.
37 In addition, reference is made to the term vigilant since this is the term that James Risser uses to describe Derrida’s project in regard to “pure presence.” That latter is immediacy. Risser writes, that “in relation” to Derrida his “deconstructive critique is a vigilance against a system of signs that leads to pure presence, to a claim to a stabilized meaning.” Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other, 170.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew Benjamin
Andrew Benjamin is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Monash University, Australia.