In Conversation with Hegel: A Translator’s Story

Abstract

Moving from the author’s personal experience with translations into English of some of Hegel’s and Jacobi’s texts, the article reflects on the nature of philosophical translations and the nature of Hegel’s philosophical language itself. In that regard, central in the article is the author’s translation of Hegel’s Science of Logic, which is approached as a double conversation: a conversation with ordinary language and a conversation with the classical metaphysics. The author argues that Hegel’s Logic itself is a work of translation from the historical discourse into the norms of objective presence. To render the conversational character of Logic in English is to find the right logical rhythm of its translation.