Reflections of the image of Jean-Paul Sartre in the Turkish intellectual milieu through translation

Abstract

When a philosophical theory moves across cultural and linguistic boundaries, it makes a new place for itself in a new territory and language. In this cultural transfer, translation plays a crucial role, since it is by means of translation that a theoretical text travels. Translation, as a form of “rewriting”, reflects the attitudes of the target culture towards the imported theory, yet the close relationship between translation and the migration of intellectual movements is often overlooked. This study, which aims to increase awareness of translation's role in the migration of theories, deals with the emigration of existentialist philosophy to Turkey via translation. It presents an account of the way in which the multifaceted figure of Jean-Paul Sartre was transferred to the Turkish intellectual milieu, and explores the correlations between the reception of Sartre and the migration of existentialism into Turkey.

Keywords:

• Jean-Paul Sartre
• existentialism
• traveling theories
• Turkish reception of Sartre

Notes

1. These are: Jean-Paul Sartre'ın insan anlayışı by Nejat Bozkurt (1984, Istanbul: I.Ü. Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi); Niçin varoluşçuluk değil? by Afşar Timuçin (1985, Istanbul: Süreç); J.P. Sartre ateizmi'nin doğurduğu problemler by Kenan Gürsoy (1987, Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları); Jean-Paul Sartre'ın Özgürlüğün yolları'nda anlatı kişisi ve toplumsal özne olarak birey by Mehmet Emin Özcan (2000, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları); Varoluşçuluk ve eğitim by Sabri Büyükdüvenci (2001, Istanbul: Siyasal); Sinema ve varoluşçuluk by Hakan Savaş (2003, Istanbul: Altıkırkbeş); Sartre felsefesinde varlık sorunu (2004, Istanbul: Elis) and Jean Paul Sartre ve varoluşçuluk (2004, Istanbul: Elis) by Talip Karakaya.

2. All translations from the Turkish are my own.

3. The interest in the book was so great that the second edition appeared within a month.

4. This is a common tendency in the Turkish intellectual milieu. For instance, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger shares the same fortune: his most important philosophical work, Sein und Zeit (1927), was translated into Turkish with a delay of almost 80 years.

5. In grouping the translators, I have followed the method proposed by Susam-Sarajeva (2006, 106–21).