ephemera

defrydrychowski.wordpress.com -- ephemera


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 This is very puzzling.  I assumed it was a mis-translation when I saw it in a secondary source, but it seems that every translation of the reference to Aesop's Rhodus salta proverb in the preface to Hegel's Philosophy of Law runs "One cannot jump over Rhodes."  But, from my primitive Duolingo German (as confirmed by the great and terrible Google AI), uber can also mean "beyond." And if you translate it as "beyond," you retain the original sense of a fellow who claimed he could jump only in Rhodes.

Original German:

 Es ist eben so thöricht zu wähnen, irgend eine Philosophie gehe über ihre gegenwärtige Welt hinaus, als, ein Individuum überspringe seine Zeit, springe über Rhodus hinaus.

And Google Translate of this gobbet gives:

It is just as foolish to imagine that any philosophy transcends its present world as it is to imagine that an individual can leap beyond his time, leap beyond Rhodes.

(I might change the first "beyond" to "outside".)  

Undoubtedly, I'm missing something, but... peculiar.