“The” native speaker? As if native speakers of the same language always agree! (In fact, I’ve often found that non-native speakers speak the language more properly than many natives, because they care about it more.) Your utterances are becoming increasingly more absurd.
As I’ve pointed out, this hasn’t been true for more than a century, and even if it had been, do you think Shakespeare would care if there was no such construction? You’re just a linguistic conservative.
No, it is true. This is a mistake that has been overlooked. Many philosophy professors and other academics are idiots. They see Wille and think it must be ‘will’. They see zur and think it must be ‘to’. Neither is true.
Excuse me, but you really have absolutely no idea. Now you are even confusing syntax with grammar and word history. Nobody was talking about syntax, because the example we are talking about has nearly nothing to do with syntax. Obviously you do also not know what syntax is.
All humans who are capable of speaking are native speakers.
You have an excuse for everything, Ornello. This time it is the scapegoat ideology again. You are wrong.
That is nonsense, Ornello. It matters which native speaker Nietzsche was, and Nietzsche was German, thus a German native speaker, and wrote in German as his native language. So German is the source language. The translation has to start with the source language. ALWAYS!!!
I can guarantee you that you are no professional translator.
Syntax is the structure of a language, word order, etc. Go back to school. I shan’t reply to any more of your inane posts. You haven’t the ghost of a notion whereof you speak. It does have to do with syntax, because ‘will to (noun)’ violates syntax! A verb is required after ‘to’! ‘To’ here is and can only be part of an infinitive!
Look here, to see the variety of translations of Wille:
There is an announcer in the background of this song, who says:
In den letzten Monaten ist die Zahl der vermissten Personen dramatisch angestiegen. Die jüngste Veröffentlichung der lokalen Polizeibehörde berichtet von einem weiteren tragischen Fall. Es handelt sich um ein neunzehnjähriges Mädchen, das zuletzt vor vierzehn Tagen gesehen wurde. Die Polizei schließt die Möglichkeit nicht aus, dass es sich hier um ein Verbrechen handelt.
My translation
“In recent months the number of missing persons has dramatically increased. Yet another tragic case has been reported by local police. It concerns a 19-year old girl who was last seen a fortnight ago. The police have not ruled out [the possibility of] foul play.”
Again: You do not read my posts carefully. I did not say that syntax had nothing to do with the structure of language. I said that syntax has nearly nothing to do with what we were talking about. You are confusing syntax with grammar. But grammar and syntax are not the same. Grammar is more than syntax, and syntax is more than morphology.
You have an excuse for everything, Ornello. You are wrong.
That’s just a somewhat free translation. Literally it means “Towards the Genealogy of Morals (or Morality, in the sense of “morals”, not “moralness”)”.
If the primary aim is to make the translation as proper an English text as possible, then I agree that the translator should probably be a native English-speaker. But a good translation is not just a proper native-language text, but also an accurate rendition of the original. If the latter were the primary aim, the translator should probably be a native speaker of the original language. But both aims are equally important to a good translation. Perhaps, then, the translator should be somewhere in the middle, bilingual for example–or from a nation situated (linguistically) in the middle…
I really wonder how you translate that first sentence of section 668, which most literally reads: “‘Willing’ is not ‘desiring’, striving, longing: therefrom it heaves itself off through the affect of the command.” (Even more literally would be “begreeding” instead of “desiring”, but that doesn’t exist.)
There is an announcer in the background of this song, who says:
In den letzten Monaten ist die Zahl der vermissten Personen dramatisch angestiegen. Die jüngste Veröffentlichung der lokalen Polizeibehörde berichtet von einem weiteren tragischen Fall. Es handelt sich um ein neunzehnjähriges Mädchen, das zuletzt vor vierzehn Tagen gesehen wurde. Die Polizei schließt die Möglichkeit nicht aus, dass es sich hier um ein Verbrechen handelt.
My translation
“In recent months the number of missing persons has dramatically increased. Yet another tragic case has been reported by local police. It concerns a 19-year old girl who was last seen a fortnight ago. The police have not ruled out [the possibility of] foul play.”
I already quoted the Kaufmann translation of that sentence to you on page 1 (hence the “that”). It’s section 668 of Der Wille zur Macht.
That convention is then somewhat liberal, which may be fine in most cases, but in the case of Nietzsche, who was a philologist, it’s probably not the best choice.
Though I agree with this statement, I don’t think we hold this opinion for the same reasons, and contest whether you hold it for the right ones.
“On” is even an explicitly bad, wrong translation; as “zu” (unambiguously meaning “to”, never “on”) clearly tells us that Nietzsche was not presenting us with such a genealogy, nor was able to present a discourse “on” it - he rather uncovers some means to the establishing of such a genealogy, and presents us with various introductions to the concept that morality has a genealogy.
The writings of the many morally fixed and entrenched Nietzscheans on the web could be seen as “on a genealogy” - that is to say, built on the assumption that such a genealogy has been unambiguously made explicit and certain, and is something one can discuss as a clear-cut object. This however speaks to ignorance of the sort of goal that Nietzsche’s strength could afford to project; to be the genesis of a new morality. This may very well be an intended higher meaning to the title of the book; and of course “on” is perfectly out of place in that case.
Nietzsche always writes in order to increase his own and his readers powers; certainly the construction of a genealogy of morals must be seen as an exercise of creative will, not in the last place a way to touch on and where necessary and possible overcome the history of morals in oneself, and derive morals directly from ones own capacities, ‘the quantum of power that one is’. Therefore, to take the genealogy (or the various subtly differing genealogies) of morals as suggested by Nietzsche’s work too literally is an act of cowardice.
Very concisely: “Zu” always denotes a movement, a becoming. “On” is rather akin to the word “meta”, it implies fixed concepts and objects.
668
‘wollen’ ist nicht ‘begehren’, streben, verlangen: davon hebt es sich ab durch den Affekt des Commando’s es giebt kein ‘wollen’, sondern nur ein Etwas-wollen: man muß nicht das Ziel auslösen aus dem Zustand: wie es die Erkenntnißtheoretiker thun. ‘Wollen’, wie sie es verstehn, kommt so wenig vor, wie ‘Denken’: ist eine reine Fiktion. daß Etwas befohlen wird, gehört zum Wollen (: damit ist natürlich nicht gesagt, daß der Wille ‘effektuirt’ wird…) Jener allgemeine Spannungszustand, vermöge dessen eine Kraft nach Auslösung trachtet - ist kein ‘Wollen’ KGW VIII, 2.296, KSA 13.54
‘To will’ is not ‘to desire’, to strive, to aspire to; it distinguishes itself from these through the emotion connected with commanding. There is no such thing as ‘willing’, but only the willing of something; the aim must not be severed from the state in the manner of the epistemologists. ‘Willing’, as they understand it, is no more possible than ‘thinking’; it is a pure invention. It is essential to willing that something should be commanded (but that does not mean that the will is ‘exerted’). The general state of tension through which a force seeks to discharge itself, is not an instance of ‘willing’.
I have quite a lot of problems with your translation, but not with your translation of wollen and Wille, which surprises me. May I ask how you translate Wille zur Macht in the book (including the title)?
We decided to keep the title the same, to avoid marketing issues. ‘Desire for power’ was used within the text itself. This section does not represent Nietzsche at his most lucid.
Will through ‘macht’ is distinguished from will through ‘kraft’, inasmuch as macht -channels the force of kraft into overcoming through self mastering.
Well, in the sense of “intelligible” I agree, but not in the sense of “sane”. I think I understand exactly what he’s saying.
The title is one thing, but this is another. Don’t you think that what he says here about the will has implications for the doctrine of the will to power?
