political science
Shervin Moghimi Zanjani
Abstract
The main subject of this paper is Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha which is the essential text in the history of political thought and in a sense it is one of the most important sources of the controversial debates on politics in early modern England. We think that Patriarcha was one of the last systematic ...
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The main subject of this paper is Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha which is the essential text in the history of political thought and in a sense it is one of the most important sources of the controversial debates on politics in early modern England. We think that Patriarcha was one of the last systematic and coherent attempts to defend the "natural character of politics" and "divine right of kings to rule given by God alone. We try to show that Filmer’s point of view, in spite of its affinities with ancient political philosophers, it was essentially different because it is totally based on the revelation. Generally, we will attempt to understand Filmer’s text in the light of the rhetorical war between the defenders of the pre-modern political conception (emphasizing the naturalness of politics and denying the equity in political rights) and the proponents of the new politics (emphasizing the artificial character of politics and the idea of ‘the individual possessed unconditional right by nature”.) Also, we cast light on the Persian translation of the Patriarcha and argue that the non-literalness of this rendering has led to some misunderstandings and erroneous equivalents.
political science
Shervin Moghimi; Yashar Jeirani
Volume 18, Issue 6 , December 2018, , Pages 255-269
Abstract
This paper is a review of Javad Tabatabee's book titled A Consideration of the Translation of Modern Political Thought' Texts: A Case Study of Machiavell's Prince. In this book, Tabatabaee argues that two main factors of unreliable translation in the field of political philosophy are translator's ...
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This paper is a review of Javad Tabatabee's book titled A Consideration of the Translation of Modern Political Thought' Texts: A Case Study of Machiavell's Prince. In this book, Tabatabaee argues that two main factors of unreliable translation in the field of political philosophy are translator's artistic playing with words and his lack of knowledge about current and important interpretations of major works of political philosophy. In this paper, we argue that Tabatabaee's claims are for the most part plausible. Nevertheless, it seems that Tabatabaee ignores another important factor responsible for unreliable translations, i.e., translator's alteration of literal translation of philosopher's text by virtue of his assurance that he has a sufficient understanding of philosopher's meaning. Therefore, we try to argue that even if we observe two main conditions of good translation mentioned by Tabatabaee, this will not necessarily lead to a reliable translation. Thus, in addition to Tabatabaee's two main conditions, the translator also must observe the literal approach in translating philosophical texts.