Naming Translation

Do names contain meanings?  And by "contain" I mean, "label."  I'm suggesting "limit."  Do names set "exclusionary" boundaries? 

"Labels are limiting. They're exclusionary." 

That's what linguist David Ker says when reading my post on the labels "feminism," "rhetoric," "translation," and the "Bible."

"Roughly speaking, the scientist tries to name things and the artist tries to avoid naming things."

That's what acclaimed scientist and acclaimed novelist Alan Lightman says when writing and speaking about writing scientifically and writing artistically.

So I want to know what happens when a name is translated.  Is the name now more of a name?  Is the translated name more limiting, more exclusionary, more scientific?

If you've read my blog much at all, then you know I'm curious about how quickly -- how so easily and so effortlessly -- we in the West accept the binary distinction between science and art.  We follow Aristotle.  Aristotle named things.  He named science, and he named art.  He wrote of Physics, and he wrote of Poetics.  He claimed Logic, and he warned of slippery Logos and of Dissoi Logoi.

So what? we say.  So what if we use names to contain?  So what if we exclude?

Well, I asked Lightman about this.  He conceded that the binary of "scientist trying to name" / "artist avoiding naming" just doesn't work.  And he had to concede when thinking about his own work.  But he wanted to concede especially when recognizing that translators -- when really good -- are best not only as scientists but also as artists as well.

Let's just say that again so we don't miss it:

Good translators both do some naming and also leave some naming to be done by their readers.

This is exactly what goes on in the earliest Jewish translation of Torah by the Jews.  The Jews translating the Bible into Greek worked against Aristotle's clean division between Logic and Logoi, between Physics and Poetics.

And, in fact, when we come to "the Gospel," which is the limit that David Ker names, then we see much of this sort of translation going on.  I'm calling it -- even naming it -- wordplay.  And by "wordplay," I mean both playfulness with words and also interpretive wiggle room.

In an upcoming post, I'm planning to show -- in the gospel of "Jesus" -- some of the striking translational wordplay.  There's an example of one of the writers using Greek mixing (even mixing up) names in Greek, in Hebrew Aramaic, and in Hebrew.

So what? we ask again.  And I do think Ker is on to something.  The "so what" is the question of exclusion.  Who gets excluded when the translator presumes only to be a scientist?  When the translator decides to get so serious with names that there are clearly-defined labels and severely-strict limits, then who gets cut and who gets cut out?

"Christians who have translated the Bible have changed the Jewish names so as to de-Jew them." 

That's what New Testament translator Willis Barnstone, a Jew, claims in his history, his theory, and his practice of translation.

"So many women are kept out of the ministry on the grounds of 'what the Bible says' but the Bible in Greek actually doesn't say anything against women in the ministry. (Mis)translation is a different matter." 

That's what New Testament translator Ann Nyland, a woman, says.

So I want us in the West who are all too eager to practice the Aristotelian binary in translation to think again.

"all languages are translations. The moment I write, I translate. I translate what I feel in this or that language, which I am going to destabilize. The encounters of my emotions in my thought with the French language, for instance, is going to de-French and re-French French -- to free French... Of course the translator has to be a great poet and also a kind of mathematician of an equivalent order to displace the original to its next of kin."

That's of course what Hélène Cixous, a translator, a Jew, and a woman, says.  She also asks other questions when translating:

"La question des juifs.  La question des femmes.  La question des juifemmes... 

The question of the Jews.  The question of women.  The question of jewomen..."

So Sherry Simon says:

"We are reminded here of Derrida's question: can the process of transfer between texts already written in a plurality of tongues still be called translation?  How to translate a text which is already infected by the multiplicity of language...?"

So I'm planning to post again, to translate some when I do.  And I'm going to start with "the Gospel."  I'm going to look at some things that Jews we know as "Jesus," "Matthew," and "Peter" do with names.  I'm going to try to do some of those things myself, to try naming and also to avoid naming.   The name of that post will be "translating Peter."

Miss Piss Tiss

I intend this post to be about my "translation values" -- so what do I mean by the title, "Miss Piss Tiss"?

What I really want to hear is what you mean by that title?  Are you a 2nd-wave feminist pissed off that anyone still uses "Miss"?  Are you a Christian whose web browser blocks posts with words like "Piss" in them "to protect the kids from Internet foulness" (never reading [1] how the Christian Chaucer has men saying "Of Eua first pat for hir wikkednesse Was al mankynd broght to wrecchednesse. . . Socrates hadde with his wyues two. . . Xantippa caste pisse vpon his heed" or [2] how the Bible, Wycliffe's anyway, has 4 Kings xviii. 27 saying something about "the men that sitten on the wal, that thei ete her toordis and drynke her pisse")?  Are you Matt Le Tissier, a little in Cockney shock that anyone would confess how they are "dying for a matt le tiss"?  Are you N. T. Wrong or some other biblioblogger hiding who you really are so that you can talk without subjectivity about the one and only thing Paul must mean in any particular context when he writes (mostly in the objective genitive) the Greek word, pistis?  Oh, are you a Relevance Theory "linguist" who does not want to miss πίστις, which would be to commit sin, to "miss the mark" of the sanctified Original-word πίστις with your target-phrase made rigid now by the authorized field-test (which is also to unwittingly miss that Sappho never uses πίστις and is, moreover, to care less that field-testing among the Other, less-relevant half of the population would show more sensitivity towards co-incidental phallicized English such as target and Original and is, furthermore, to completely miss what Ms. Karen H. Jobes, Ph.D. means by simultaneous interpretation as a metaphor for better Bibles translation)?

Well now, haven't we gotten silly?

In all seriousness, Carolyn Osiek, Charles Fischer Catholic Professor of New Testament, was a most helpful member of my dissertation committee, most careful to check my English translatings of Aristotle's Greek.  At my defense, she asked me to share my translation values. 

I wish I'd read (and said to Osiek and the rest of the audience) what John Hobbins wrote today.  

But then again, Hobbins has some funny reads of what Osiek writes.  It's even more laughable and strange because this blogger friend of mine, on the one hand, calls for conversation between egalitarian and complementarian debaters but, on the other hand, regularly silences another blogger friend of ours because she's a woman, speaking her mind on the very issue he says he wants conversation about.  (Poor Hobbins.  He's taking a beating today, not for his sexism, but from Peter Kirk and from Mike Aubrey because they think he's too like women, picking and choosing what he likes so subjectively and hardly playing their game in a more manly way, a way that determines conclusively what the man's text must mean.  The former actually calls out Julia Smith, calls her translation down and out). 

What does that last paragraph have to do with my translation values?  It's personal.  Both the digressive paragraph above and my translation values are to highlight what can be very personal.

So when Hobbins entitles his post today, "You need an excellent translation to understand the Greek New Testament," then I'm going to ask personal questions!   I may ask them of him, and I may ask them as if overhearing by myself:

"How do you know what I need, sir?  Why do I need to understand the Greek New Testament?"

I'm also going to wonder something Phyllis A. Bird wonders:

How is it that our translating need be more than, quite personally, "to overhear an ancient conversation, rather than to hear [one]self addressed directly"?

"I am not certain," Bird adds, "that the translator is even obliged to make the modern reader understand what is overheard." 

Now I hear the logical protests.  Yes, I overhear you all, some of you anyway, mumbling and grumbling out there that there is either (A) understanding or there is (not A) not understanding.  And, therefore, we all must conclude (have to come to this conclusion):  

If one doesn't understand, then one must misunderstand.  

Miss Piss Tiss, I reply.  And so do Krista Ratcliffe, Jacqueline Jones Royster, and Kenneth L. Pike -- three rhetoricians whose respective work has added value to the translatings in my dissertation.

(Ratcliffe rightly notes that Aristotle has excised "listening" out of his rhetoric theory, and she rightly recovers the lost art of eavesdropping on a conversation not meant for you or me.  

Royster correctly shows how “Using the subject position as a terministic screen in cross-boundary discourse permits analysis to operate kaleidoscopically, thereby permitting interpretation to be richly informed by the converging of dialectical perspectives” -- Aristotle wasn't so rich, nor is his son, that pretender, "logical Western objectivity."

Pike profoundly says that we do best when, in our translating, "person [and relation between persons] is given theoretical priority above formalism, above pure mathematics, above idealized abstractions." Why? "A person, as observer, has choice.” And any “theory [as part of the translation values of any person] is part of the observer; a different theory makes a different observer; a different observer sees different things, or sees the same things as structured differently; and the structure of the observer must, in some sense or degree, be part of the data of an adequate theory of language. A particular language, of a particular culture, in relation to a particular person with [her or] his particular history constitutes an implicit theory for that person." And "the observer universally affects the data and becomes part of the data.”)

To be clear, I don't remember saying any of this in answer to Osiek at my dissertation defense.   What I'm personally concerned about is that we're so steeped in the culture of Aristotle's logic that we feel that alternative voices are the demons of mis understanding.  We so desperately want to overcome our barbarisms, our babel.  

Bible bloggers and translators really want Saint Paul to overcome his babel too.  My translation values say, "Let him babel.  For his Jesus so babbled in parables, in hyperbole, in translations and transfigurations and supernatural transformations, in feminisms, in rhetorics, in dialectics, in barbarisms, in solecisms, in so many things that Aristotle would object to.  So why should we so object?  Let the great Bible tower fall, for all have fallen short."  Why do we have to understand or to misunderstand all of that?

Do we have a clue why polyglot George Steiner defines polysemy in his book After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation?  How can he define that word, that babel concept, this way? (page 35):

Polysemy, the capacity of the same word to mean different things, such difference ranging from nuance to antithesis, characterizes the language of ideology.

I imagine it's something personal, something to do with the fact that Steiner's mother tongues are not only English but also German and French and that he learned to read Homer's Illiad in Homer's Greek at six years of age.  Steiner knows, from experience, what overhearing is all about.  This starts to get even more personal when Steiner says, "even direct quotation is set alight by context (eg, when St.Paul cites Euripides)" (Grammars of Creation, page 96).

Steiner hears this too, subjectively eavesdropping as an etic outsider so personally albeit himself a Jew, like Jesus, like Paul:

Jesus' discourse in parables, his statements of withdrawal from statement--of which the episode in which he writes in the dust and effaces his writing is the emblematic instance--give to linguistic verticality, to the containment of silence in language, a particular impetus. As do the constantly polysemic, stratified techniques of semantic motions in the Pauline Epistles. It is these parables and indirect communications, at once more internalized and open-ended than are the codes of classical rhetoric, which beget the seeming contradiction of enigmatic clarity, the "comprehendit imcomprehensible esse" celebrated in Anselm's Proslogion. In turn, from these dramatizations of manifold sense, evolve the instruments of allegory, of analogy, of simile, of tropes and concealments in Western literature (though here also there are obvious and indispensible classical sources). (page 75)

Did Steiner overhear what he writes from the polysemic "second meanings" of Englishman, C. S. Lewis?  Lewis, as an outsider reflecting on the Jewish Psalms, makes this comment about the Jewish Jesus and then about the Jewish Paul:

He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the "wisecrack". He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be ‘got up’ as if it were a ‘subject’. If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, ‘pinned down’. The attempt is (again I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam.

Descending lower, we find a somewhat similar difficulty with St. Paul. I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him so many gifts, withheld from him (what would to us seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian [albeit a formidable Jew]) that of lucidity and orderly exposition. (Reflections on the Psalms, page 113)

Maybe Lewis had been reading another Jew, a Peter, who writes of reading his dear and loved brother's writings:

ὁ ἀγαπητὸς ἡμῶν ἀδελφὸς Παῦλος κατὰ τὴν δοθεῖσαν αὐτῷ σοφίαν ἔγραψεν ὑμῖν ὡς καὶ ἐν πάσαις ἐπιστολαῖς [Παῦλου] λαλῶν ἐν αὐταῖς περὶ τούτων ἐν αἷς ἐστιν δυσνόητά τινα ἃ οἱ ἀμαθεῖς καὶ ἀστήρικτοι στρεβλοῦσιν ὡς καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς γραφὰς πρὸς τὴν ἰδίαν αὐτῶν ἀπώλειαν

Our dearly loved brother Paul, in the wisdom that has been granted to him, has also written to you all even as he speaks of these matters in all his letters; but places in them are hard to understand, which the unlearned and unstable distort, as they do the other writings, to their own personal destruction.-- 2 Peter 3:15-16

So when men continue to argue over what Paul must singularly mean by writing πίστεως (Ἰησοῦ) (Χριστοῦ) in each singular context, then there's avarice in their logic. They're afraid to misunderstand, afraid to confess that Paul here and there might be too "hard to understand" for them. They don't want to appear unlearned or to seem unstable. They equate distortion with subjectivity, with ambiguity, with polysemic phrasing that might knock them off their high places.

And Steiner adds:

[V]erbal discourse. . . is handcuffed to the avarice of logic, with its ordinance of causality, with its (probably crass) segmentation of time and perception into past, present, and future. Identity principles, the end-stopping of sentences (mathematical proofs can be of infinite length), axioms of continuity, render speech and writing, however polysemic our words, however subtle and animate with fantastication our phrasing of the imaginary, despotic. We speak in (rich) monotones. Our poetry is haunted by the music it has left behind. Orpheus shrinks to a poet when he looks back, with the impatience of reason, on a music stronger than death. (Errata, page 73)

And Hobbins adds [with -- Miss Piss Tiss -- me]:

An excellent translation of the Bible will be intelligible on its own [because personal outsiders are listening in and are making meanings that are quite meaningful].   [And since Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and English are all polysemic, human translators may always -- whether wittingly or unwittingly--] stretch the resources of the English language beyond the bounds of [so-called] “normal, idiomatic English” in the interests of bridging the distance separating one cultural context from another, and, in the process, draw attention back to the [ostensibly logical] argument, [the always discernible] structure, and [the polysemic] language of the source [guest] text [of the Jew who has written, a text that is politely, and personally now, hosted into English by later Jews or Hellenes or other goyim].

What πίστεως means to a 10-Yr-Old Girl

Very little.  That's what πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ means to a ten-year-old little girl, whose parents are splitting up after two decades of becoming one because one of them has chosen to covet another's spouse, to commit adultery, to bear false witness, and to kill the other with the crime of hate (never mind the idolatry of holiday rituals and such like flowers to the bereaved). 

"The meaning of that genitive case of old Greek of men then and now?" asks Nancy Ziegenmeyer, Honorata Kizende, Claudine Mwabachizi, Matthew Weiner, Patricia Wettig, Eve Ensler, Geneva Overholser, Jeffrey Gettleman, and some of you, and me.

But the arguing goes on up through Χριστmas.  There is more here than just a silly rhetorical enthymeme as the body of proof.  There is pure logic.  Scholars: behold, the sequitur of the syllogism, the reason for (the season of) the debate --

MAJOR PREMISE: . . . the dispute is bigger than mere points of grammar. Most of these phrases occur in passages which are central to Paul’s theology (Rom 3-4 and Gal 2-3).

MINOR PREMISE:  The topic is central to our interpretation of how Paul understood salvation. And Paul’s ideas are fairly much central to Christianity itself,

CONCLUSION:   so it fundamentally affects the Christian concept of salvation. It has been suggested, with little exaggeration, that the debate has the potential to “lay the groundwork for an entirely different paradigm in the theology of the New Testament” (Sigve Tonstad, “ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ: Reading Paul in a New Paradigm,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 40.1 (2002): 37-59).

And we're promised not just "1 reason" but "100 reasons." Here's that first one:

MAJOR PREMISE:  It is generally agreed that the meaning of πίστις ranges from faith/trust/confidence to faithfulness/trustworthiness, encompassing a fair few other meanings ‘inbetween’. Like all attempts at translation, there is no 1:1 correspondence between πίστις and any one English term.

MINOR PREMISE:  If a word takes a wide variety of meanings according to various contexts, it can still quite plausibly take one of those meanings in one particular context. . . . The term πίστις can simply mean either “faith” (e.g. Mk 11.22) or “faithfulness” (Rom 3.3), depending on the (so important) context.

CONCLUSION:  So it is, rather, a “semantic” fallacy to insist that it must mean both in any given context. . . . [Therefore,] the objective meaning (having human faith in Christ) [and NOT the not objective meaning (i.e., a subjective meaning)] is, on examination, the main gist of the phrase in Paul’s writings.

Here's the second:

MAJOR PREMISE: Proponents of the subjective genitive interpretation sometimes cite the work of [a couple of other scholars] in order to demonstrate that the predominant meaning of πίστις is “faithfulness” in the Greek Old Testament and Hellenistic Jewish literature.

MINOR PREMISE:  While there is a presumption for “faithfulness” in the overall statistics, there is no such easy presumption in respect of the New Testament occurrences of πίστις, given that the New Testament usage demonstrates a marked increase in the use of the term to denote “faith/trust in”. . . . [And] the meaning of πίστις as “faith/trust in” . . . is beginning to emerge in 4 Maccabees, Philo and Josephus . . . [a]nd already in the Qumran interpretation of Habakkuk 2.4, a passage central to the discussion of πίστις Χριστοῦ in Romans and Galatians, אמונה denotes “trust in” or “loyalty to” the Teacher of Righteousness (1QpHab 8.2-3).

CONCLUSION:  This trend continues in the New Testament writings, where Jesus is the recipient of human trust and faith.

Hello?  Are you still awake?  What's going on here?  It's the game of logic.

In other words, the game played so seriously is this: "get it right."  Yes, use logic if you have to. Be coldly objective whether siding either with objectivity or with subjectivity. Get it right, dammit. (Oh, don't say "dammit" -- not necessarily because that's not the Christian thing to do, but it sounds so pathetic, so illogical. And father Aristotle would not approve.)

Since you've let me bring up Aristotle again, can we remember how for him "logic" was the only game in town?  Logic let Aristotle get the facts right, presumably, without too much of a hint of "pathos." What rhetoricians say he said about "ethos" was a better way to argue than "pathos."  Far and away better than either "pathos" or "ethos" for Aristotle, however, is "logos." But that's all still "rhetoric," the stuff of the womanly Speakeristas.

Aristotle invented logic, and as far as I can tell actually even coined the term λογική /logikē/, which he began using to separate his teachings from those of his own teachers, Plato and Socrates.  Logic was NOT EITHER "rhetoric" OR its "antistrophos" called "dialectic," a partial "corrective" to "barbarisms" and "solecisms" and "poetry" and "sophistisms" and such sloppy, subjective stuff that even foreigners and women might use.

Logic was NOT "logos" and especially not "dissoi logoi." The absolute power of reason was NOT cultural relativism. (Notice, I'm using past tense as if we have not appropriated "logic" today, but we have.)

The strategy of logic is to "get it right." To get to the facts. To separate out the bias, the subjectivities, to get at the true nature of the thing in itself.

The strategy of logic is what Robert E. Quinn calls "the telling strategy." It's the mathematician's and logician's game of using statements, one following another, to drive home a conclusion. Linguists use "logic," and call it "description" NOT "prescription." Christian apologists use "logic," and call it "propositional Truth" for the "absolute" nature of the "Word of God." Modern modernists have used "logic," and call it objectivity (as opposed to relativity, subjectivity, and post-modernism that ought to die once a modernist spoofs the pedantic scholarship in a pomo journal--even though spoofing is not necessarily logic or very modern at all). Logic is the "contingency difficulty" or the "epiphenomenal difficulty" that anti-modernist George Steiner says poetry readers sometimes have. (Sometime, I'd like to say something about what Steiner says about "the constantly polysemic stratified techniques of semantic motions in the Pauline Epistles." Steiner suggests that Paul writes like the translators of Jesus have him speak: in parables. And Mark's Jesus, at least, warns against the contingency or epiphenomenon of a seed "falling by the wayside" -- which is the absolute horror of the telling strategy of logic.)

The strategy of logic is what parents sometimes try on their teenagers, not remembering they once were teenagers too who by and large could care less for logic. (I got my first taste of logic in Geo-metry class when I was pubescent adolescent and so couldn't bring myself to take "pure logic" until a wiser post-Sophomore post-teen in college). When logic fails, parents resort to other strategies of commanding obedience, such as forcing and negotiating (also known as bribery or spoiling). There's another strategy I should mention, a better one, a feminist strategy. But that'll have to wait for another day -- or at least for a few more paragraphs.

I guess I should say a couple of other things about Aristotle's use of logic. But then I want also to acknowledge a few (somewhat related) comments from blogger friends.

Aristotle wanted his disciples "to tell" the facts, and to tell them objectively, syllogistically.  But the secret is his "logic" often failed.  Thus, he'd resort to other strategies, like distorting logic and forcing the facts of nature.  Since we're talking about his logic, note what historian Edward Schiappa has said:  

Aristotle consistently sought to contrast his philosophical system [of logic] with that of his predecessors even if the contrast required distortion of his predecessors’ doctrines. . . . Aristotle reduced the origin of rhetoric to the study of probability, thereby accommodating the history of rhetoric to his own system of logic and giving his own treatment precedence. . . . [and in defiance of facts, he] fictionalized some of his own history of presocratic philosophy in order to offer his own as the final solution. . . . Aristotle [would] argue from an either/or logic [to contrast the method of the sophist] Protagoras [who] used a both/and logic. . . [a non-logic that was to Aristotle dangerously] rich and variable enough to be capable of multiple—and even inconsistent—[and nature-distorting] accounts. . . . Aristotle’s comments in the Metaphysics [were made even though they] contain a similar distortion [as the one he makes with history]. Aristotle argued that if two parties disagree about what-is and what-is-not, one of the parties must be mistaken (1063a). (Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric, page 52)

Logic becomes so important to Aristotle that he is willing to “fictionalize” history and to “define” rhetoric so that history and rhetoric favor logic and are subservient to logic.  So what?  So, for the creator of the method that bible scholars still use today to argue by, logic was not enough.  The strategy of telling what the facts are and are not is not enough.

So Jane says "Balancing feminism and faith . how do I do that?
IT's a bit like breathing I suppose .."  

And Dan adds: "there is not one answer that the authors agree on to the question of 'can i be a feminist and love god?' but the answers are great." He's pointing us to My Red Couch: And Other Stories on Seeking a Feminist Faith, which is "a collection of narrative essays written by and for a 'young, feminist, Christian' audience. . . . [essays that] bring a 'complex, nuanced, and less polemicized feminism' to the struggle to integrate feminist ideology with Christian faith and life."

Both Jane and Dan, to me, seem to answer Joel's question, "Postmodernism is not a problem, is it?" No, postmodernisms are solutions to modernism. They can be deconstructions of the constructed logic of modernism. They can be counter-speak of the syllogistic statements that purport to give "the right answer," the one-and-only-one correct conclusion, as opposed to the not right answer, the wrong one.  

We quickly add that postmodernism depends on modernism, which means it'll probably be the perpetual motion machine Jacques Derrida described it as.  I'm just grateful to females courageous enough translate the bible, rhetorically too.  Julia Smith did, and makes meanings with her readers (as the Greekish Paul does with his) by her "literal" renderings of πίστεως Ἰησοῦ as "faith of Jesus." Note how the ambiguity of her English is a different ambiguity of Paul's Greek, and yet they are counter-logical ambiguities all the same. (UPDATE: one of you sends me this, which shows that Julia Smith was ahead of some current self-identified postmodernist thinkers, who, looking to "Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentile: Beyond the New Perspective, p. 255). . . submit that this warrants a return to the translation of the 'faith of Christ' in Bible translations in order to keep the gentive deliberately ambiguous (much like the 'righteousness of God')"). Thanks to Suzanne for reminding readers of the availability of Smith's Bible. She's also given us a window into her "egalitarian church" where "the staff are all men" and where she feels no need for that "logic" of female representation through "affirmative action"; as importantly! Suzanne gives some suggestions for snacks in her "brief Christmas notes." These are the important things for my 10-year-old niece this holiday season, believe me.

Translating Aristotle's Sexism: Part 3

The following is a sample of a few more of Aristotle’s biological and political writings.  It’s for the doubters.  And can many of us doubt his male-dominating influence on our persistently patriarchal cultures today?

Aristotle is writing to coldly observe what he sees in nature.  He is, in most cases, using logic to define and academic elitist language to classify.  The entire process of his describing is a male prescribing.  Excerpts of Aristotle’s Greek with my feminist rhetorical translating appear below.  But I have bracketed the technical transliterations or sexist terms usually included by masculinist translators.  This translating and bracketing serves as my only commentary on these passages.  The aim of including them here is to recognize that Aristotle was thoroughly phallic in his various writing.  By no means am I trying to be comprehensive with the selections.  I begin with his physical science first and then move to his social science writings.  The bracketed phrases below indicated the “traditional phallogocentric translation,” and what precedes the bracketed phrases is the contrastive feminist rhetorical translating.  For example, in the first set of tables below, the Greek word ὑστέρα is presented followed by its traditional phallogocentric translation, “a hysteria,” which I bracket; then, both before the brackets and in a fuller context in another box, I show “a uterus” as a feminist rhetorical translating.  I give several tables in succession without commentary below.  My purpose is to illustrate Aristotle’s most blatantly phallic writings and how a feminist rhetorical translating recognizes and highlights the phallicism.

Τοῦ δὲ θήλεος ἴδιον μέρος ὑστέρα, καὶ τοῦ ἄρρενος αἰδοῖον, --Aristotle History of Animals 493a

a uterus, [a hysteria] --traditional phallogocentric translation

The respective part of a female is an emptiness, a uterus, and of a male is a spear, a penis. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

Ἔχουσι δὲ πλείους οἱ ἄρρενες τῶν θηλειῶν ὀδόντας καὶ ἐν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἐπὶ προβάτων καὶ αἰγῶν καὶ ὑῶν· --Aristotle History of Animals 501b

humans [men]  --traditional phallogocentric translation

Males have more teeth than females in the case of humans [men], sheep, goats, and swine.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

Οἱ δ’ αἴλουροι οὐκ ὄπισθεν συνίοντες, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ὀρθός, ἡ δὲ θήλεια ὑποτίθησιν αὑτήν· εἰσὶ δὲ τὴν φύσιν αἱ θήλειαι ἀφροδισιαστικαί, καὶ προσάγονται τοὺς ἄρρενας εἰς τὰς ὀχείας, καὶ συνοῦσαι κράζουσιν.   --Aristotle History of Animals 540a

a sexual way [physically aphrodisiacal, peculiarly lecherous], and comes on to [wheedles] the male cat  with sexual advances, and cries out [caterwauls] --traditional phallogocentric translation

Cats do not come together in intercourse  from the rear with respect to the female, but the male stands erect and the female puts herself underneath him; and, by the way, the female cat is naturally attracting in a sexual way, and comes on to the male cat  with sexual advances, and cries out as they come together. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

 

Ἔστι δὲ καὶ δύσθυμον μᾶλλον τὸ θῆλυ τοῦ ἄρρενος καὶ δύσελπι, καὶ ἀναιδέστερον καὶ ψευδέστερον, εὐαπατητότερον δὲ καὶ μνημονικώτερον,. . . . . Βοηθητικώτερον δὲ καί, ὥσπερ ἐλέχθη, ἀνδρειότερον τὸ ἄρρεν τοῦ θήλεός ἐστιν  --Aristotle History of Animals 608b

more lying [with pseudo behavior], readier to deceive manlier [braver] than the female.  --traditional phallogocentric translation

The female is more dispirited and more despondent than the male, more shameless and more lying, readier to deceive and possessing a better memory for grudges . . . . But as we have stated, the male is more able to help and is manlier than the female.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

Ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὴν μορφὴν γυναικὶ παῖς, καὶ ἔστιν ἡ γυνὴ ὥσπερ ἄρρεν ἄγονον· ἀδυναμίᾳ γάρ τινι τὸ θῆλύ ἐστι τῷ μὴ δύνασθαι πέττειν ἐκ τῆς τροφῆς σπέρμα τῆς ὑστάτης --Aristotle Generation of Animals 728a

[morphed] like . . . in form [sperm] seed or semen. --traditional phallogocentric translation

Now a boy is like a woman or wife in form, and the woman or wife is, as it were, a childless impotent male; for it is through a certain lack of ability that the female is female, being unable to concoct the nourishment in its last stage into seed or semen. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

διὸ γένος ἀεὶ  ἀνθρώπων καὶ ζῴων ἐστὶ καὶ φυτῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων ἀρχὴ τὸ θῆλυ καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν ἕνεκα τῆς γενέσεως ἂν εἴη τὸ θῆλυ καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν ἐν τοῖς ἔχουσιν. βελτίονος δὲ καὶ θειοτέρας τὴν φύσιν οὔσης τῆς αἰτίας τῆς κινούσης πρώτης—ᾗ ὁ λόγος ὑπάρχει καὶ τὸ εἶδος—τῆς ὕλης, βέλτιον καὶ τὸ κεχωρίσθαι τὸ κρεῖττον τοῦ χείρονος. διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐν ὅσοις ἐνδέχεται καὶ καθ’ ὅσον ἐνδέχεται κεχώρισται τοῦ θήλεος τὸ ἄρρεν· βέλτιον γὰρ καὶ θειότερον ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως ᾗ τὸ ἄρρεν ὑπάρχει τοῖς γιγνομένοις—ὕλη δὲ τὸ θῆλυ. συνέρχεται δὲ καὶ μίγνυται πρὸς τὴν ἐργασίαν τῆς γενέσεως τῷ θήλει τὸ ἄρρεν· αὕτη γὰρ κοινὴ ἀμφοτέροις. --Aristotle Generation of Animals 732a

[men] humans [generation] birthings the [definition] statement and the [form] visual,  [cause] birth mixes sexually [mingles]  work of birth [generation] --traditional phallogocentric translation

This is why there is always a class of humans and animals and plants. But since the male and female essences are the first principles of these, they will exist in the existing individuals for the sake of birthings. Again, as the first efficient or moving cause, to which belong the statement and the visual, is better and more divine in its nature than the material on which it works, it is better that the superior principle should be separated from the inferior. Therefore, wherever it is possible and so far as it is possible, the male is separated from the female. For the first principle of the movement, or efficient birth, whereby that which comes into being is male, is better and more divine than the material whereby it is female. The male, however, comes together and mixes sexually with the female for the work of birth, because this is common to both. --a feminist rhetorical translating

In addition to observations in his physical-science writings, Aristotle says similar things in his ethical, political, and metaphysical works.  In these, Aristotle is also sexist:

ἐν οἷς φανερόν ἐστιν ὅτι κατὰ φύσιν καὶ συμφέρον τὸ ἄρχεσθαι τῷ σώματι ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ τῷ παθητικῷ μορίῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τοῦ μορίου τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος, τὸ δ’ ἐξ ἴσου ἢ ἀνάπαλιν βλαβερὸν πᾶσιν. ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις ὡσαύτως· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἥμερα τῶν ἀγρίων βελτίω τὴν φύσιν, τούτοις δὲ πᾶσι βέλτιον ἄρχεσθαι ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπου· τυγχάνει γὰρ σωτηρίας οὕτως. ἔτι δὲ τὸ ἄρρεν πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ φύσει τὸ μὲν κρεῖττον τὸ δὲ χεῖρον, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄρχον τὸ δ’ ἀρχόμενον. τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι καὶ ἐπὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων. --Aristotle Politics 1254b

the chief nature [physical properties] the person [soul, psyche] over the body [soma], the statement [the rational element] over the passionate [pathetic, pathos] broken apart [analysized]. humans [men]; [physical] nature ruled [by man]; this principle [trope], people or humankind [all men]. --traditional phallogocentric translation

And it is apparent that the chief nature born together is that of the person over the body, and the mind and the parts of the statement over the passionate is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the chief part of the inferior is always hurtful or broken apart. The same holds good of animals in relation to humans; for tame animals have a better nature than wild ones, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled; for then they are preserved or rescued. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; the one rules, and the other is ruled; and this principle, by force, extends to all people or humankind. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

ἐπεὶ δὲ τρία μέρη τῆς οἰκονομικῆς ἦν, ἓν μὲν δεσποτική, περὶ ἧς εἴρηται πρότερον, ἓν δὲ πατρική, τρίτον δὲ γαμική (καὶ γὰρ γυναικὸς ἄρχει καὶ τέκνων, ὡς ἐλευθέρων μὲν ἀμφοῖν, οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἀλλὰ γυναικὸς μὲν πολιτικῶς τέκνων δὲ βασιλικῶς· τό τε γὰρ ἄρρεν φύσει τοῦ θήλεος ἡγεμονικώτερον, εἰ μή που συνέστηκε παρὰ φύσιν, καὶ τὸ πρεσβύτερον καὶ τέλειον τοῦ νεωτέρου καὶ ἀτελοῦς)—ἐν μὲν οὖν ταῖς πολιτικαῖς ἀρχαῖς ταῖς πλείσταις μεταβάλλει τὸ ἄρχον καὶ τὸ ἀρχόμενον (ἐξ ἴσου γὰρ εἶναι βούλεται τὴν φύσιν καὶ διαφέρειν μηδέν), ὅμως δέ, ὅταν τὸ μὲν ἄρχῃ τὸ δ’ ἄρχηται, ζητεῖ διαφορὰν εἶναι καὶ σχήμασι καὶ λόγοις καὶ τιμαῖς, ὥσπερ καὶ Ἄμασις εἶπε τὸν περὶ τοῦ ποδανιπτῆρος λόγον· τὸ δ’ ἄρρεν ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ τοῦτον ἔχει τὸν τρόπον. ἡ δὲ τῶν τέκνων ἀρχὴ βασιλική· τὸ γὰρ γεννῆσαν καὶ κατὰ φιλίαν ἄρχον καὶ κατὰ πρεσβείαν ἐστίν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ βασιλικῆς εἶδος ἀρχῆς. (διὸ καλῶς Ὅμηρος τὸν Δία προσηγόρευσεν εἰπὼν πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τετὸν βασιλέα τούτων ἁπάντων.)  φύσει γὰρ τὸν βασιλέα διαφέρειν μὲν δεῖ, --Aristotle Politics 1259b

what’s home-order-esque [economics, the science of household management] the ruler-esque [despot, leader]  the father-esque [paternal] relation, the marriage-esque [conjugal] these two at least [both] rule [trope or mode of government], City-state-esque control [political, republican government] a kingdom [monarchy]; by nature [physically] to command [rule hegemonically] nature [physics] and the older [presbyterian] and fully developed [telos] younger and immature [a-telos]). City-state-esque control [Politics, republican government] nature [physical properties] patterns and statements [schematics and logistics, or insignia and titles] statement [logos, speech] relationship [trope] The rule [of the father] affection [philea] and of seniority [presbyter], good form [kalos, finely] father [pater] of men or husbands and of gods [theos], by nature [by physics] --traditional phallogocentric translation

And since, as we saw, what’s home-order-esque has three divisions, one the relation of the ruler-esque to slave, of which we have spoken before, one the father-esque relation, and the third the marriage-esque—(for it’s a rule over woman or wife and over children, these two at least as under freemen, yet not with the same sort of rule, but over the woman or wife as in the exercise of City-state-esque control and over the children as in a kingdom; for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female except in some cases where their union has been formed contrary to nature and the older and fully developed person than the younger and immature). It is true that in most cases of City-state-esque control the ruler and the ruled interchange in turn (for they tend to be on in equal level in their nature and to have no difference at all), although nevertheless during the period when one is ruler and the other ruled they seek to have a distinction by means of patterns and statements  and honors, just as Amasis made his statement about the foot-bath; but the male stands in this relationship to the female continuously. The rule over the children on the other hand is that of a king; for the male parent is the ruler in virtue both of affection and of seniority, which is characteristic of a kingdom or royal government (and therefore Homer by good form designated Zeus by the words of the father of men or husbands and of gods, as the king of them all women and men).  The rule that a husband has over his wife, a free person, is the same sort of rule that exists over free persons in a City-state.  For by nature [by physics], the kingdom ought to be this way. --a feminist rhetorical translating

ἄλλον γὰρ τρόπον τὸ ἐλεύθερον τοῦ δούλου.  ἄρχει καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν τοῦ θήλεος καὶ ἀνὴρ παιδός,. . .  . ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ἔστιν ἠθικὴ ἀρετὴ τῶν εἰρημένων πάντων, καὶ οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ σωφροσύνη γυναικὸς καὶ ἀνδρός, οὐδ’ ἀνδρεία καὶ δικαιοσύνη, καθάπερ ᾤετο Σωκράτης, ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν ἀρχικὴ ἀνδρεία ἡ δ’ ὑπηρετική, --Aristotle Politics 1260a

otherwise [troped, has no deliberative faculty at all] custom-esque culture of good character [ethical arete, moral virtue] all women, men, slaves, and free [all men] the restraint [temperance]; manliness [courage] Dike’s Justice [justice] ruler-esque [archike] server-esque [hyperetike] --traditional phallogocentric translation

The slave of the freeman or free woman, in fact, is otherwise; the female of the male has rule, as does a child. . . . Clearly, then, the custom-esque culture of good character belongs to all women, men, slaves, and free but the restraint of a man or husband and of a woman wife, or their manliness and Dike’s Justice, are not, as Socrates maintained, the same; his manliness is ruler-esque, but what she has is server-esque. --a feminist rhetorical translating

Aristotle’s voice in these passages is that of the misogynist.  He assumes, reasons, and concludes that the male sex is superior to the female sex.

Nonetheless, a defender of Aristotle may claim that among scholars generally “[t]here is a great deal of confusion over what Aristotle says in his biological writings about females and whether what he says about them there is ideological”; this is what Robert Mayhew says in The Female in Aristotle's Biology (2).  And Mayhew argues that he himself can “determine” that Aristotle’s biological treatises “are products of honest science” and “not of bias and ideology” (2).  Moreover, a feminist may allow that “Aristotle is never dogmatic . . . and does not profess to give anything but the somewhat casual expression of his own personal knowledge and opinions”; this is what Wright says in Feminism in Greek Literature (218-19).  Wright adds that “[i]t is unfortunate that [Aristotle’s] experience of women was misleading, and that the problems of feminism do not always fall within the confines of science” (221).  

I think, to be fair, there should be a look at both Aristotle’s “ostensibly-honest” science but also at passages in which he seems “friendlier to females” than normally he seems.  Of course, there are only a few more-obviously benign passages by Aristotle on females.  These include the following:

ἀνδρὶ δὲ καὶ γυναικὶ φιλία δοκεῖ κατὰ φύσιν ὑπάρχειν· ἄνθρωπος γὰρ τῇ φύσει συνδυαστικὸν μᾶλλον ἢ πολιτικόν, ὅσῳ πρότερον καὶ ἀναγκαιότερον οἰκία πόλεως, . . .   οἱ δ’ ἄνθρωποι οὐ μόνον τῆς τεκνοποιίας χάριν συνοικοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν εἰς τὸν βίον· εὐθὺς γὰρ διῄρηται τὰ ἔργα, καὶ ἔστιν ἕτερα ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός· ἐπαρκοῦσιν οὖν ἀλλήλοις, εἰς τὸ κοινὸν τιθέντες τὰ ἴδια. διὰ ταῦτα δὲ καὶ τὸ χρήσιμον εἶναι δοκεῖ  καὶ τὸ ἡδὺ ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ φιλίᾳ.  --Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 1162a

an affectionate friendship [philea] by nature [physicality]; a human being [a man] naturally [physically] City-state-esque [politicking]  human beings [men]  life [bios]  these two . . . at least [both; necessarily the one is not the other] --traditional phallogocentric translation

But a man or husband and a woman or wife seem to have an affectionate friendship by nature; for a human being, there is naturally a coupling together —even more than being naturally City-state-esque, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more forceful than the City-state . . . human beings live together not only to create children in households favored together but also for the various purposes of life; for from the start the work is divided, and that of men or husbands and women and wives are different; so they help each other by sharing their individuality. It is for these two reasons at least, for utility and sweet pleasure, that there seems to be something special found in this kind of affectionate friendship.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

διόπερ οἱ μὲν ἀνδρώδεις τὴν φύσιν εὐλαβοῦνται συλλυπεῖν τοὺς φίλους αὑτοῖς. . . . γύναια δὲ καὶ οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἄνδρες τοῖς συστένουσι χαίρουσι, καὶ φιλοῦσιν ὡς φίλους καὶ συναλγοῦντας. μιμεῖσθαι δ’ ἐν ἅπασι δεῖ δῆλον ὅτι τὸν βελτίω. --Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 1171b

manly by nature [courageous physically] affectionate friends [philea]. . .  to copy [to mimick] --traditional phallogocentric translation

Therefore, those who’re manly by nature take on this blessed resistance to sharing their own pain with their affectionate friends. . .  In contrast, women or wives and these different men or husbands favor mourning together, and are affectionate and friendly with affectionate friends and with sufferers together. However, it is clear that in everything one ought to copy the better sort. --a feminist rhetorical translating

But even these passages (i.e., from the Politics and Ethics), that sound to Mayhew somewhat kinder to females. do not make the pro-Aristotle Mayhew retreat from his observation that “Aristotle’s conception of the female is, in general and in many details, false” [i] (2).  This exceptional concession for Mayhew actually supports the view of most people who recognize Aristotle’s misogyny and his pro-slavery views.  Most agree with F. A. Wright:  When Aristotle said “‘Women and slaves are inferior [to all men and especially to free men . . . ] by the conditions of existence as I see them: therefore they are inferior by the laws of nature’ . . . he was wrong in this matter” (Feminism In Greek Literature From Homer To Aristotle 219, 221).  An examination of Aristotle’s own phallic statements makes clear that his methods and his conclusions by them are suspect.

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[i] Mayhew, in his The Female in Aristotle's Biology: Reason or Rationalization, does determine that “Aristotle’s conception of the female is, in general and in many details, false.”  His aim, however, seems to be to discredit other Aristotle scholars who find the Greek man to be a sexist misogynist.  Mayhew adds:  “But frequently, too little care is taken over rigorous scholarship on the part of some of his fiercest critics.  Often, there is little concern for what precisely his views are on a particular issue.  Nor is there much concern with presenting support for the claim that his arguments about females are little more than rationalization” (2). 

Mayhew would, rather, have done well to review Gareth B. Matthews’s “Gender and Essence in Aristotle,” which considers whether Aristotle intends a “Complementarity Theory” or a “Norm-Defect Theory” of difference between the sexes; Mayhews carefully examines all of Aristotle’s writings on the difference to show that sometimes Aristotle does not seem to speak of females as defective males.  But Mayhew also completely ignores the two best contemporary works that are concerned precisely with both Aristotle’s science and his philosophy on females and women.  The best works are the following books by two of the “fiercest critics” of Aristotle’s sexism: Feminism In Greek Literature From Homer To Aristotle (first published in 1923) by F. A. Wright and The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 Bc-Ad 1250 (1997) by Prudence Allen