IF YOU READ the link I gave to both my post about it and the blog brawl I got into with an atheist who was obviously either lying about being able to read German or about what it said, you will know I said that I should have done in the beginning of it what I finally resorted to, provide a nearly word for word translation of it. Of course, that's impossible because the word order in German follows different patterns than English sentences do but I stuck to the original as close as I think anyone could.
9:04 PM, November 20, 2015
Blogger The Thought Criminal said...
Oh, for crying out loud. Identify what Habermas said there was no alternative for. Here I've translated it word for word.
Das Christendom ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt
Christianity is, for normative understanding of modernity, not only a preformation
oder ein Katalysator gewesen.
or a catalyst.
Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben,
[What] Egalitarian universalism, from which the ideas of freedom and communal concord
von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral,
of autonomous life and emancipation, of individual moral conscience
Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind,
human rights and democracy have sprung from,
ist unmittelbar ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits
is an unmittigated inheritance from the Jewish doctrine of justice
-und der christlichen Liebesethik.
and the Christian ethic of love.
In der Substanz unverändert,
In unchanged substance
ist dieses Erbe immer wieder kritisch angeeignet und neu interpretiert worden.
this inheritance has been critically adopted, over and over, and newly interpreted.
Dazu gibt es bis heute keine Alternative.
For that [meaning for producing all those things] there is till today no alternative.
Auch angesichts der aktuellen Herausforderungen einer postnationalen Konstellation
Even given the present challenges [to Christianity] in a post national world,
zehren wir nach wie vor von dieser Substanz.
we feed from this substance [ the combination of Jewish justice and love in Christianity]
Alles andere ist postmodernes Gerede".
Everything else is postmodern babble.
In other words, Christianity isn't a mere precursor or a catalyist for those things listed, it is the very thing that nourishes them, even today, there is no alternative source of those things.
Habermas is talking about the culture of Europe and the Western world in general, by an overwhelming margin, of the two things listed which could be the direct source of that long list of things we enjoy in modern egalitarian democracy, the direct source of its prerequisites, is identified in the subject of the first sentence, Christianity.
With German intellectuals, you don't get the whole meaning of a passage if you choose to ignore everything that is said. They don't have the current Anglo-American superstition that complex ideas can be conferred in 4th grade language and simple sentences, you've got to read every word.
It was the atheist bloggers who were lying about what Jurgen Habermas said, if anyone wants to point out where my translation of it is inaccurate, try your best.
Since I don't like to repeat something without pointing out something new, really think hard about that first sentence and what it means in terms of America's liberal democracy failing to the cheapest of show-biz con-man hate mongers.
Das Christendom ist für das normative Selbstverständnis der Moderne nicht nur eine Vorläufergestalt
Christianity is, for normative understanding of modernity, not only a preformation
oder ein Katalysator gewesen.
or a catalyst.
Der egalitäre Universalismus, aus dem die Ideen von Freiheit und solidarischem Zusammenleben,
[What] Egalitarian universalism, from which the ideas of freedom and communal concord
von autonomer Lebensführung und Emanzipation, von individueller Gewissensmoral,
of autonomous life and emancipation, of individual moral conscience
Menschenrechten und Demokratie entsprungen sind,
human rights and democracy have sprung from,
ist unmittelbar ein Erbe der jüdischen Gerechtigkeits
is an unmittigated inheritance from the Jewish doctrine of justice
-und der christlichen Liebesethik.
and the Christian ethic of love.
What he, an atheist, life-long scholar and thinker has concluded near the end of his life about where any notion of modern, egalitarian, democratic decent life comes from, are the very things that not only atheists despise but, clearly, many "evangelical Christians" and "traditional Catholics" reject as much, the radical economic and social justice of the Jewish Scripture and the Christian ethic of universal love. Exactly what Americans have been entertained out of by more than a half century of violent, macho, cynical, stupid entertainment and propaganda. American democracy was murdered in the movie and TV studios and on shock jock, hate talk radio. It won't come back till the effective margin that elected Trump and Republican-fascists are converted to that.
The so-called "enlightenment" has had more than two and a half centuries to come up with alternative sources to nourish those, if they had been there a European atheist intellectual like Habermas would have found them. Since he didn't, there's no rational reason for anyone to believe those exist or can be produced from what founded "the enlightenment." I have documented how one, after another the founders and heroes of the "enlightenment" have, instead, supported the opposite. In terms of the American Constitutional system, anyone who kept or supported the keeping of human beings in slavery or the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their land and other properties, in short, just about all of the fabled founders who inserted the anti-democratic provisions into the Constitution.
I'll give you the same challenge that the math prof I challenged never took up, show me where the quote doesn't say what my translation says and my conclusions from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment