Problems of Translation

This essay was born out of difficulties with the translation of the term Gemüt that I ran into while working on a Portuguese translation of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment.

By Gemüt Kant means the principle that unifies the various faculties that are in reciprocal relations to one another; it has a cognitive transcendental sense and also an animating aesthetic sense for the cognitive faculties. In addition to that, Kant takes the term Geist (spirit) as the faculty that creates genius, which he in part differentiates from Geist as the spirit of taste. In the latter sense, Geist means the same as esprit for the French, who, according to Kant, have good taste, but not Geist in its proper sense (R931, 15:413). Geist is the animating principle of our Gemütskrafte (powers of the Gemüt). Apprehending the Gemüt prior to any particular, its “genius consists in this capacity to create the universal and the ideal” (R932, 15:413.) Last, Kant takes the term Seele (soul) in general to be a metaphysical substance.

Kant provides for the term Gemüt the Latin counterparts animus and mens in the Opus Postumum: “Es ist im menschlichen Gemüt (mens, animus) als reinem, nichts als Seele des Menschen einwohnendes empirisch/praktisches … Prinzip” [It is in the human Gemüt (mens, animus) as a pure principle, not as an empirical/practical principle living in men's soul].