Polytropy

Index to this series

The discussion having been postponed for our fifth reading in the Republic, I give here some remarks that started out as part of my commentary on Book IV. The remarks concern

• the translations of the Republic that I have been reading, mainly those of
  • Alain Badiou (b. 1937), translated in turn from the French by Susan Spitzer;
  • Allan Bloom (1930–92);
  • Paul Shorey (1857–1934);
• the “Interpretive Essay” that accompanies Bloom’s translation;
• a 1969 review of Bloom’s translation and essay by Gilbert Ryle (1900–76), who embarrasses the profession of philosophy (if it be a profession).

I quote also Christopher Hitchens, Daryl H. Rice, Agnes Callard, Martha Nussbaum, and Henry David Thoreau.

Here’s a table of contents:

• Shorey
• Badiou
• Ryle
• Bloom

Shorey

In the preface of his own translation, Bloom says Shorey’s is one of the two best English translations. The other is A. D. Lindsay’s, but I know nothing about him or it.

Being part of the Loeb Classical Library, Shorey’s translation is

• convenient for

  • including the Greek, so that one can see that Shorey makes “the principle of doing one’s own business” (433b) from τὸ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν (Bloom has “the practice of minding one’s own business”);
  • using footnotes rather than endnotes;

• inconvenient for having

  • two volumes;
  • small thin pages, so that leafing through to find the passage you want is hard.

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