Raymond Aron, “Maurrassism and Gaullism” (1964)

“Maurrassisme et gaullisme,” Le Figaro (17 December 1964). Draft translation, 2020. A brief, journalistic piece; but interesting, certainly to those concerned with de Gaulle, and perhaps to those concerned with Aron, too.

French original:

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/de-gaulle-a49944824

PDF of this version:

https://www.academia.edu/43481484/Raymond_Aron_Maurrassism_and_Gaullism_1964_

Claudio Mutti, Interview with Aurel Cioran

Interview conducted 3 August 1995, Sibiu. Note that Emil Cioran had died on 20 June that year. Italian original, Origini 13 (February 1996). This translation made from the French version in Nouvelles de Synergies Européennes 22 (August–September 1996). Cioran offers interesting reflections on his brother’s relationship with religion, youth, and involvements with Nae Ionescu and the Legionary movement.

French version:

http://planetcioran.blogspot.com/2006/11/entretien-avec-aurel-cioran.html

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/histoire-c18369981/85

PDF of this translation:

https://www.academia.edu/43160665/Claudio_Mutti_Interview_with_Aurel_Cioran_1995_6_

Carlos Caballero, “Mystics and Conquerors: Cioran and the History of Spain” (1988)

Provisional translation of “Mystiques et Conquérants: Cioran et l’histoire d’Espagne,” Punto y Coma 10 (1988). The present translation was made from Nicole Bruhwiler’s French version in Orientations 13 (1991) as it appears at http://www.archiveseroe.eu/. Quotations from Cioran are my own translations, and will therefore differ from Richard Howard’s authoritative versions. I have not located every quotation, and have left Caballero’s citations untouched.

PDF of this version:

https://www.academia.edu/43108599/Carlos_Caballero_Mystics_and_Conquerors_Cioran_and_the_History_of_Spain_1988_

Original:

http://planetcioran.blogspot.com/2006/10/mystiques-et-conqurants-cioran-et.html

http://www.archiveseroe.eu/cioran-a48271323

Interesting Copies of Kant’s First Critique and Leibniz’s Discourse

A few weeks before I first went up to university, I was given a haul of old philosophy books by a relative of a family friend. Among them were two very tired volumes full of arachnidan annotations and odd scraps of paper (something I tend to consider a plus).

First, Leibniz, George R. Montgomery (transl.), Discourse on Metaphysics, etc. (Chicago: Open Court, 1931), with the front cover fallen off but still present; second, Kant, Norman Kemp Smith (transl.), Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan, 1929), with the front cover fallen off and left who knows where. The latter is a first edition of Kemp Smith’s notable translation, and so a very nice thing, but in a bad state.

R. L. Nettleship’s Uncollected Works

Excepting translations from German, letters to Thring and Bosanquet published in volumes of selected letters of those men, and edited volumes of Green’s works, the publications of Richard Lewis Nettleship not included in the two-volume Remains are, I think, as follows.

“An Italian Study of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’” Macmillan’s Magazine XXXIX (November 1878–April 1879), pp. 23–31.

“The Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato,” in Evelyn Abbott (ed.), Hellenica (London: Rivington’s, 1880), pp. 67–180. Reissued as The Theory of Education in Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935).

“Professor T. H. Green: In Memoriam,” The Contemporary Review XLI (January–June 1882), pp. 857–77.

Introductory memoir in Works of Thomas Hill Green vol. 3 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1888), pp. xi–clxi.

Infinite cheers to archive.org for the facsimiles! If there’s anything I’ve left out, please do say.

New Acquisition: R. L. Nettleship, Philosophical Remains (1901)

Under this universal house-arrest, couriers scamper hither and yon to sustain the rest of us, who work—or not—from home. Which means that, while bookshops are closed, I was still able to order Richard Lewis Nettleship’s Philosophical Remains (second ed., London: Macmillan, 1901), which arrived, despite warnings of delay from Amazon, in only three days. Thanks very much to Savery Books of Brighton.

“Philosophistisiren” with Novalis, Pater, Nettleship

Novalis, in one of his Logologische Fragmente:

Philosophistisiren ist dephlegmatisiren—vivificiren.

Two translations thereof, with their context. First by Walter Pater in his conclusion to The Renaissance:

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive for us,—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

And second by Richard Lewis Nettleship in “The Value of Theory,” one of his Lectures on Logic (cf. Philosophical Remains, second ed. [London: Macmillan, 1901], p. 128):

To philosophise is to get rid of one’s phlegm, to acquire a vivid consciousness of some aspect of reality. This is the value of theory or thinking; but thinking which is not also producing, thinking which leaves experience what it was before, has no value.

To philosophise is to dephlegmatise—to vivify. What would this be in blue-eyed English? The phlegmatic are peaceable, equanimous. To “get rid of one’s phlegm,” then, is to rouse oneself to—passion? But that’s bastard Latin. Perhaps:

To lust after wisdom is to stir up strife in one’s heart, to grow newly alive.