The enduring significance of Christos Yannaras: some further works in translation

The Greek philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras is becoming better known in the English-speaking world with the publication of an increasing number of his works in English translation. With the help of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Yannaras articulates an ontological (as opposed to an ontic) version of Being based on relation. Beings exist not as ontic entities but only with reference to the person. Relation actually constitutes existents. Our fulfilment as human beings lies in our ascending from the mode of nature, which is bound by necessity, to a mode of existence characterised by self-transcending referentiality or love. Two obstacles are considered: the problem of evil and the ‘religionisation’ of Christianity. The fundamental problem of evil is that it renders human life without meaning. There are, however, no rational explanations of evil. The only reply lies beyond language, in faith/trust, self-transcendence and self-offering. A religionised version of Christianity transforms faith into an ideology which holds out salvation as a reward for the individual. The Church – the ecclesial event – is not a collection of individuals seeking their own salvation but a community of people called to struggle together to attain true existence, to pass from the finite mode of nature to that mode which knows no limitations of decay and death. An intellectualist approach to philosophy does not help us to achieve this goal. For philosophy is not simply an exercise in thinking but the struggle to attain existential freedom. Such freedom is transformatory, referential and ek-static.     

The translation and introduction of Mo Yan's works based on neurolinguistics

As an advanced function of the cognitive neural mechanism of human brain, inductive reasoning is an important skill in language communication. Under the background of the development of information intelligence, it is a new research field to effectively display the cognitive neural function of inductive reasoning with the advantage of the logic operation of artificial intelligence algorithm. Therefore, in this paper, based on the neurolinguistics, the translation and introduction of Mo Yan's works were studied. And on the basis of the analysis of the characteristics of the cognitive neural mechanism of sentence inductive reasoning, by using fMR and ERP techniques, the narrowing characteristics of the semantic integrated components in the induction were investigated, and the dual processing model of inductive reasoning was discussed. After that, artificial intelligence particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was introduced, and the problem of alignment in the translation of English and Chinese sentences in Mo Yan's works was transformed into the problem of finding the optimal solution for the corresponding fitness function in Chinese and English sentences in bilingual space. Thus, a scientific mathematical model was used to improve the accuracy of translation. The simulation experiments show that this study can effectively improve the accuracy of the translation and introduction of Mo Yan's works.     

《中华道藏》整理点校工作完成在即各地宫观与善信大德订购踊跃

由中国道教协会、华夏出版社、中国社会科学院世界宗教研究所共同发起的《中华道藏》的整理、点校工程 ,在海内外诸多高道、大德的热心支持和关怀下 ,经过全国百余名研究道教的专家、学者以及众多编校工作人员五年多的艰辛工作 ,绝大部分的工作已经接近完成 ,可望于今年年内和广大读者见面。编委会正在对已完成三校的书稿 ,请华夏出版社、中国社科出版社和《光明日报》等报社、出版社的一些资深专家进行两遍逐字逐句的精校 ,并已完成部分。考虑到《中华道藏》作为道教经典的神圣性 ,考虑到广大读者的切身利益 ,编委会做出决定 :采取一切必要…     

When Freud headed for the East: Aspects of a Chinese translation of his works

Working on the basis of a resumé of the Chinese translations to date of individual works by Sigmund Freud and critiques of these as secondary translations from the English, the particular difficulties of translating into a non‐Indo‐European language with an isolating and analytical writing system are presented. By way of introduction, reference is made to English and French‐language contributions to the issues of translation.     

The Place Of Geometry: Heidegger's Mathematical Excursus On Aristotle

'The Place of Geometry' discusses the excursus on mathematics from Heidegger's 1924–25 lecture course on Platonic dialogues, which has been published as Volume 19 of the Gesamtausgabe as Plato's Sophist , as a starting point for an examination of geometry in Euclid, Aristotle and Descartes. One of the crucial points Heidegger makes is that in Aristotle there is a fundamental difference between arithmetic and geometry, because the mode of their connection is different. The units of geometry are positioned, the units of arithmetic unpositioned. Following Heidegger's claim that the Greeks had no word for space, and David Lachterman's assertion that there is no term corresponding to or translatable as 'space' in Euclid's Elements , I examine when the term 'space' was introduced into Western thought. Descartes is central to understanding this shift, because his understanding of extension based in terms of mathematical co-ordinates is a radical break with Greek thought. Not only does this introduce this word 'space' but, by conceiving of geometrical lines and shapes in terms of numerical co-ordinates, which can be divided, it turns something that is positioned into unpositioned. Geometric problems can be reduced to equations, the length (i.e, quantity) of lines: a problem of number. The continuum of geometry is transformed into a form of arithmetic. Geometry loses position just as the Greek notion of 'place' is transformed into the modern notion of space.