TRANSLATION, JUSTICE AND MEMORY IN PAUL RICOEUR’S ETHICAL THINKING
PAUL RİCOEUR’ÜN ETİK DÜŞÜNCESİNDE ÇEVİRİ, ADALET VE HAFIZA İLİŞKİSİ

Author : Mehmet BÜYÜKTUNCAY
Number of pages : 305-316

Abstract

In On Translation (2004/2006), Ricoeur treats translation as an ethical paradigm in the encounter with alterity with reference to such concepts as linguistic hospitality, the test and the resistance of the foreign. In a separate article, he proposes translation as a model for a European ethos, accompanied with like acts as the exchange of memories and forgiveness, which could further be expanded into a universal maxim. But, how is translation to be apprehended in a movement from ethical thinking to judicial thinking and juridical practice? In Reflections on the Just (2001/2007), Ricoeur notes that “[to] translate is to do justice to a foreign intelligence, to install the just distance from one linguistic whole to another” (31). Justice is not only the guarantor of impartiality and a distance in the relation between two adverse parties, but it is also relevant to translation in the form of making judgments and applying norms to a given case. In that respect, Ricoeur’s texts on translation should also be re-evaluated under the light of his other works, Memory, History and Forgetting (2000/2004) and Oneself as Another (1990/1992), which are mainly concerned with the duty of memory, narrativity, and human capability. This paper seeks to liaise the act of translation with justice in its theoretical and institutional dimensions exclusively in the light of concepts like distanciation, prudence and attestation, drawing an arch from Ricoeurean hermeneutics of the self and the text to translational and legal hermeneutics.

Keywords

Linguistic hospitality, just distance, arbitration, decision-making, attestation

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