http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com

/other/locke.htm

http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/other/locke.htm

Most of the time he is putting slightly antiquated English terms into not antiquated, e.g many ages since -> many ages ago.

He has also corrected Locke in at least one place! Locke says

For a mental proposition being nothing but a bare consideration of the ideas, as they are in our minds, stripped of names, THEY lose the nature of purely mental propositions as soon as they are put into words.

A mental proposition is nothing but a bare consideration of the ideas as they are in our minds, stripped of names; so IT loses the nature of a purely mental proposition as soon as it is put into words.

Interesting nonetheless. I suppose if you want to strip out the activity of teaching early modern thought, from that of learning different forms of English, which is an education in itself, it is a Good Thing. But can’t help feeling something is lost on the way. E.g. the correction above is of what is typical of much of Locke, and is part of the charm. Which is now lost.

Also, real translators are always tempted to translate some term of a pre-modern writer with a modern term. E.g. in medieval terminology there is ‘supposition’ which one is tempted to translate as ‘denotation’ or ‘reference’ to make it more intelligible to a modern audience. This is anachronistic, and distorts what the old philosophers had to say.

This distortion was taken to an extreme, in my view, in the work of DP Henry, in attempting to ‘translate’ scholastic writing on logic into predicate calculus. Bennett’s work is not so extreme, but it is a flavour of that.

Really don’t understand what is wrong with undergraduates reading early modern texts in the original. Haven’t taught students for some time, I admit.