G. H. R. Parkinson was betrokken bij twee vertalingen van Spinoza’s Ethica
Het blog van gisteren, waarin ik commentaar gaf op een onderdeel in zijn artikel “Being and knowledge in Spinoza,” werd voor mij aanleiding om nog iets méér over G.H.R. Parkinson te weten te komen. En dat viel aanvankelijk nog niet mee. Er bestaat van hem geen wikipedia- of andere pagina!
Eerder dit jaar had ik al eens een blog waarin ik verwees naar de boeken over de geschiedenis van de filosofie onder zijn hoofdredacteurschap, de Routledge History of Philosophy, en waarvan hij het deel (Vol. IV) over The Renaissance and 17th Century Rationalism voor zijn rekening had genomen. Daarin is vooral te wijzen op het onderdeel: "Spinoza: Metaphysics and Knowledge," pp. 273-312.
In een volgend blog 
zal ik komen met wat ik over hem te weten kom.
Hier wil ik het hebben over zijn bemoeienis met twee vertalingen van Spinoza’s Ethica.
In het vorige blog had ik al enige covers van boeken van hem over Spinoza laten zien, o.a. van zijn Ethica-vertaling:
B. de Spinoza, Ethics. Translated and edited with an introduction and notes by G. H. R. Parkinson, Oxford University Press, 2000
Everyman's Library
Maar eerder al, in 1989, had hij de vertaling van Andrew Boyle uit 1910 herzien en van een inleiding en noten voorzien. Voor de Everyman's Library leverde Andrew Boyle een vertaling van de Ethics en van de Treatise on the Correction of the Understanding. De eerste editie, in 1910 uitgegeven door J.M. Dent & Sons in Londen, kreeg een inleiding mee van George Santayana.
Die inleiding kon ik in een blog van april 2015 opnemen.
Sindsdien werd deze talloze malen herdrukt. De editie van 1959 kreeg een inleiding van T.C. Gregory. Daarna volgde in 1989 de herziening door Parkinson. Andrew Boyle (1881-1952) had geen speciale kennis van Spinoza, aldus Parkinson in zijn toelichting op de vertaling. Boyles vertaling van de Ethica bevatte volgens hem vele fouten. Hij vond niet altijd de juiste Engelse termen, was niet consistent en vatte soms Spinoza's argumentatie niet voldoende. Eigenlijk was t.t.v. die vertaling de Van Vloten & Land dé beste editie van Spinoza's werk, maar Boyle zou meer de editie van Bruder gebruikt hebben, die volgens Parkinson inferieur was t.o.v. die laatste uitgave van Spinoza's werk. Parkinson trachtte wat aantrekkelijk was aan Boyles vertaling te behouden, maar moest toch bijna drieduizend grote en kleine veranderingen doorvoeren.
Mij lijkt het heel onaantrekkelijk om een vertaling van een ander zo ingrijpend te herzien. Geen wonder dus dat hij in 2000 nog eens met een geheel eigen vertaling kwam.
De meest recente cover van de Ethica in de Everyman's Library uit 2002
Uit zijn inleiding neem ik hier het laatste gedeelte over, waarin het accent ligt op het typische ethische gehalte van Spinoza’s filosofie.
It is not necessary, for the purposes of this introduction, to go further Into Spinoza's famous (and difficult) theory of the attributes of substance. What has been said here is sufficient to show how different Spinoza's God is from the God in whom theists believe. One may indeed wonder whether it merits the name 'God'. In a famous phrase, Spinoza spoke of the infinite being as 'God, or Nature' (Deus seu Natura: Ethics, Pan IV, Preface), and it may be thought that he would have done better to call this being 'Nature' rather than 'God'. There lies behind this the suspicion that Spinoza's concept of God seems to have no part to play in religion. Spinoza's 'God', it may seem, is just the final explanation, the ultimate ground of things, and no more. But if the term 'God' is to be properly used, then it must be usable within the context of religious language, and in this context, It must be taken to refer to a personal deity.
Spinoza, for his part, would agree that there is a connection between religion and the concept of God; however, he would deny that religion, in the genuine sense of the term, requires the concept of a personal God. Religion, as he understands it, is 'Whatever we desire and do of which we are the cause, in so far as we ... know God' (Ethics, Pan IV, Prop. 37 Note I). To grasp the full meaning of this, one must take account of the fact that there is for Spinoza a link between one's knowledge of God and one's activity as a moral agent. This link involves what is perhaps the key concept of Spinoza's moral philosophy, namely, the concept of freedom. By 'freedom', in the context of his moral philosophy, Spinoza does not mean the freedom to philosophise which he defended in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, nor does he mean what is commonly called the 'freedom of the will'. Spinoza was in fact a strict determinist; in his view, whatever happens must happen, and nothing can happen other than what does happen (Ethics, Part I, Prop. 33). A free agent, for him, is not someone whose actions are undetermined; a free agent is someone whose actions are self-determined, i.e. who is an autonomous agent. The connection between such freedom and the knowledge of God is this. Spinoza argues that to be self-determined is not to be controlled by one's passions; one is self-determined when one's reason is in control. This means that one is free when one understands oneself and, in so doing, understands that `God, or Nature' of which one is a part.
Since God, by virtue of being self-caused, is self-determined, it is not surprising that Spinoza should say that God is a 'free cause' (Ethics, Pan 1, Prop. 17 Corol. z). The problem is, how anything other than God can be called free. Spinoza insists that each particular thing is determined by another (Ethics, Part I, Prop. 18); how, then, can there be any point in finite beings such as ourselves having freedom as a goal? The answer, stripped of Spinoza's technical terminology, is this. To be a rational agent is to understand; now, Spinoza argues that when we understand something, we are not reacting to external stimuli. Rather, God is (as it were) thinking through us, or, as Spinoza says, God is 'explained through the nature of the human mind' (Ethics, Part II, Prop. 11 Corol.).
Just how this is to be interpreted is a matter of controversy, but perhaps enough has been said to show, in general terms, how Spinoza's moral philosophy is related to his views about God. It has been seen that the free man, the man who is the master of his passions, is the man who has understanding, and that such understanding involves a knowledge of, and indeed in a sense is, the knowledge of the ultimate and self-explanatory being. We can now return to Spinoza's use of the term 'religion' to refer to the desires and actions which are caused by our knowledge of such a being. The question is, whether this is a proper use of the term 'religion' — a question the answer to which bears on the question whether Spinoza is entitled to call his self-caused being by the name 'God'. Certainly, it is hard to see how Spinoza's concept of religion can have any place for the concept of worship, or of petitionary prayer. Some might argue, however, that these concepts are not necessary to religion. What is necessary, they would say, is the idea that human beings are part of a whole, and one which is in some way a rational whole. If one views religion in this way, then there is a case for saying that Spinoza did hold religious views, and that he had a right to use the word 'God' in the way that he did. One may add that it is probably this aspect of his philosophy, and not (say) his technical views about substance or about knowledge, that has proved attractive to many who are not philosophers.
What has just been said about Spinoza and religion provides an answer to another question raised earlier [..]: namely, whether Spinoza is one of those who see science and religion as in conflict. The answer is that he would not recognise such a conflict — provided that 'religion' is taken in his sense of the term. We have seen that, for Spinoza, to speak of religion is to speak of those desires and actions that spring from a knowledge of God. Similarly, he would say that a scientific knowledge of the world depends in the last analysis on a knowledge of God, the ultimate explanation of all things. Spinoza would say, then, that in his sense of the term 'religion', there is no conflict between religion and science. However, he also believed that false views about God had been a major obstacle to understanding, and to those false views he was firmly opposed.
G. H. R. PARKINSON
Reageren