Gordon Clark: Two Translations of Plotinus (The New Scholasticism)

1938. Two Translations of Plotinus. The New Scholasticism Vol. XIII No. 1 Jan.

TWO TRANSLATIONS OF PLOTINUS

For the study of Plotinus the translations of Stephen Mackenna (completed in 1930) and M. Emile Bréhier (not yet completed) will be of the greatest service for years to come. It is not premature to compare these, for only the last half of the sixth Ennead of Bréhier’s translation remains to appear. But a comparison is a matter of many details, and while the few mentioned here may not justify a final verdict, they may contribute to it as straws in the wind.

On page 114 of Vol. I the late Stephen Mackenna describes his translation in the following words: “The present work pretends to be faithful-and, if we must be precise, literary rather than literal. This is not to say that it is a paraphrase.” Just above Mackenna acknowledges that “the present worker must have made mistakes, some perhaps that to himself will one day appear inexcusable; his one consolation is that the thing he will that day welcome from other hands· has most certainly passed through his own, and been deliberately rejected.”

In a work of such difficulty absence of mistakes would be miraculous; and if mistakes are to be pointed out, no other than the discoverer of those mistakes appreciates better how faithful and literary. the work is as a whole. Even the capitalized barbarisms, such as Reason-Principle, Intellectual-Kosmos, Authentic Existents, leave the English of the translation more normal than the Greek of the author. But with due regard for the accomplishments of the worker, it is difficult to accept in its full sweep his claim that in every case where mistakes have occurred the correct translation has been considered and deliberately rejected. At least Mackenna's translation of V iii 9 does not give obvious evidence of such.

The chapter mentioned occurs in a tractate which defends Platonic realistic epistemology. The mind is not separated from the objects of knowledge by images or impressions, but grasps truth directly. The mind is “what it thinks. Arguments follow to show that the self-knowledge presupposed by this theory is possible and indeed necessary. In the immediate context Plotinus tells us to set aside sensation and the lower activities of the soul, to attend to the highest activities, and in so doing to discover the nature of the Mind which knows itself. For purposes of comparison a translation¹ is here attempted which will be far from literary.

[Editor’s Note: the next two paragraphs refer to Bréhier's translation – RH]

The remainder of it [i.e. of the soul after body, sensation, etc. have been set to one side] is that which we were calling an image of Mind, [an image which] preserves some light from that [Mind], just as from the sun, below the sphere of the magnitude,² comes that around it illuminated by it.

Now no one asserts that the light of the sun exists within itself about the sun, since it sets forth from the sun and remains around it; but there is always one [light] proceeding out of the one before it, until it reachs us on earth. I t must be remembered, however, that all [the light] about the sun exists in some other [substratum] in order not to admit a space void of body below the sun. But the soul, a sort of light from Mind and residing about Mind, depends on it and does not exist in another [substratum] but [is centered] around that [Mind], nor does it have place. For neither has that [Mind].

[Editor’s Note: the next two paragraphs refer to Mackenna’s translation – RH]

What is left is the phase of the soul which we have declared to be an image of the Divine Intellect, retaining some light from that sun, while it pours downward upon the sphere of magnitudes (that is, of Matter) the light playing about itself which is generated from its own nature.

Of course we do not pretend that the sun's light (as the analogy might imply) remains a self-gathered and sun-centered thing; it is at once outrushing and indwelling; it strikes outward continuously, lap after lap, until it reaches us upon our earth: we must take it that all the light, including that which plays about the sun’s orb, has travelled; otherwise we would have a void expanse, that of space - which is material - next to the sun’s orb. The Soul, on the contrary – a light springing from the Divine Mind and shining about it - is in closest touch with that source; it is not in transit but remains centered there, and, in likeness to the principle, it has no place.

The line of line thought attributed to Plotinus in this much parenthesized rendering agrees with and virtually depends on the translation by M. Bréhier in the Budé series. In support of this interpretation the following considerations are submitted.

Mackenna's word it in the first sentence, in the phrase “while it pours downward,” refers grammatically, like the preceding participle retaining, to the remainder of the soul, with the result that this remainder is said to generate its own light. This is impossible because the remainder is an image which receives light. Further, Mackenna disregards the which introduces the analogy of the sun. He makes εκεινου³ adjectival to ηλιον, although οιον stands between, whereas εκεινου must refer to the preceding νου. Mackenna is then forced to insert a parenthesis in the next sentence and to understand it as a restriction on the analogy. But no restriction or apology is intended; rather there is an extension or confirmation of the analogy. The light of the mind, says Plotinus, must be regarded as everyone regards the light of the sun, as not confined to its source but as producing illumination below. And the extension of the analogy continues, still another sentence in the remark that just as the sunlight somewhere below the sun is not absolutely identical with the sunlight in the sun, so too the light in the highest part of the soul is not absolutely identical with the light of the mind, but only similar.

Later, to be sure, there is a restriction on the analogy, but it is not, as in Mackenna's translation of the lines just commented on, for the purpose of saving the honor of the sun, as if simple astronomy were in danger of being misunderstood, but to save the honor of mind, which for the past few chapters has been the subject of careful explanation. This restriction, which Mackenna also misses, is that whereas the light of the sun requires a medium for propagation, that of mind needs none. Mackenna introduces the notion of travelling. But the reason given in the text for the εν αλλφ⁴ viz. to avoid a void, sustains the notion of the substratum.

A slight emendation may be made also of Mackenna's translation of I i 13, 3. At the end of a difficult tractate Plotinus asks: “What is it that investigates these things, is it we or the soul? It is we, but by means of the soul. How by means of the soul? “Aρα τφ εχειν επεσκεψατο; H η ψυχη.” Mackenna translates this phrase: “Does this mean that the soul reasons by possession (by contact with the matters of inquiry)?”

The question as Mackenna puts it seems very natural in Plotinus, because realism requires such a contact of mind and object. Here, however, the preceding sentence has stated that the subject which reasons is we. Hence the logical subject of the next verb to investigate should also be we and not the soul. The verb is in the third singular instead of first plural because of the original το επωκεψαμενον. The answer to the question also requires we as the subject. Mackenna, immediately following the parenthesis above, answers: “No; by the fact of being a soul.” This is impossible, because first, to deny knowledge by contact as the No does is incorrect, and second, the remainder of Mackenna’s answer in its context makes no sense. Bréhier's translation of question and answer is clearly correct. “Est-ce par le seul fait de la [i.e. the soul, not the objects of knowledge] possedor que ces recherches ont lieu? Non, c'est parce que nous sommes nous memes notre ame.”

Would it be too trivial to refer also to a passage in which it seems that Mackenna’s desire to produce a literary translation led him too far? One might literally translate III vi 1, 12-14 as follows: “And in general our reason and will do not subject the soul to such turnings and changes as the heating and cooling of bodies.” Mackenna writes: “For ourselves it could never be in our system-or in our liking-to bring the Soul down to participation in such modes and modifications as the warmth and cold of material frames.”

It would seem from these too few passages that Bréhier's translation is the more accurate, and this has been confirmed by several other slight indications. But it must be remembered that Plotinus is difficult both in language and thought, and that while Greek is sometimes ambiguous, both French and English are still more so. By comparing the two translations their ambiguities sometimes cancel to merge into an accurate sense, and sometimes they give us the different possibilities of an ambiguous original, as in V iii 4, 17. Bréhier has had the better training and is more familiar with the Hellenistic age, but both translations stand as monuments of infinite patience and love of scholarship.

GORDON H. CLARK.

Wheaton College,

Wheaton, Ill.

1. Lines 7-18 in the text of M. Bréhier, Budé series.

2. Bréhier says in a note: C'est encore ici, et dans tout le chapitre, l'image des theologies solaires qui hante l'esprit de Plotin.

3. ο εικονα εφαμεν νου σωζουσαν τι φως εκεινου, οιον ηλιου μετα την του μεγεθους σφαιραν το περι αυτην εξ αυτης λαμπον.

4. αλλα παν και το περι αυτον θησεται εν αλλω ινα μη διαστημα διδω κενον το μεγα τον ηλιον σωματος.