On the New Translation into Russian of I. Kant’s Treatise “Religion In the Boundaries of Mere Reason”

Abstract

The paper considers the features of the new Russian translation of Kant’s Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, which was published as a part of the new three-volume collection of Kant’s works prepared for the 300th anniversary. In the new version of the translation, the title of the writing is Religiya v granicah odnogo tol’ko razuma (earlier — Religiya v predelah tol’ko razuma). The paper introduces the history of this work translations into Russian, starting from the 19th century up to the present, and briefly characterizes the distinctive features of previous translations, their strengths and weaknesses. It represents currently available German editions of this work and their peculiarities, emphasizes some textual and substantive features of the new Russian translation, and indicates the edition of Kant’s work in German on the basis of which this translation was prepared. The latter explains the structure of this edition, its pagination, and the logic of the translators’ commentaries and preface sections. As an illustration of translation difficulties, the paper deals with a number of concepts that the translators decided to translate differently from previous editions, such as das radikal(e) Böse (korennoe zlo), the pair das Böse / das Übel (zlo / zloschastie, zloklyuchenie), das Gute and several related homonyms (in the new translation it is consistently translated as dobro, including the notion das höchste Gut — vysshee dobro), die Frömmigkeit and die Gottseligkeit (blagochestie/bogochestie), Theolog (teolog), as well as the concept, which has been still decided to be retained in the previous translation — Gesinnung (umonastroenie). The paper explains the reasons for choosing these particular terms in each difficult case. Finally, it discusses specificities of the philosophical and theological context of the development of Kant’s philosophy of religion (the influence of Lutheran theology and Pietism), and specifies biblical quotations used by Kant.