Presentation of the text (referred to: Emilio Garroni, Kant and the Bestimmungsgrund / ‘Principle of Determination’ of the Aesthetic Judgement (1989))
The translated text presented here is, for its brevity and a certain dryness,
a good illustration of Emilio Garroni's conception of the relationship between philology and
philosophy. A very circumscribed question – what possible interpretive consequences
can derive from the lack of recognition of the technicality of a Kantian
expression of the third Critique (Bestimmungsgrund) – offers Garroni the opportunity
to develop important considerations on diglossy (speaking and thinking
in another language) and translation in the development of a conscious and critically
controlled (responsible) hermeneutics. In Garroni’s opinion, translation, or
the comparison with another language, seems to be an ideal tool to avoid mental
laziness, since it forces “the scholar who speaks and thinks in the same language
of the text in question to continually return, through another language, to that
which may seem obvious, even too obvious at times.” Garroni refers here to what
may be obvious on a linguistic level, but translating and reformulating offer more
far-reaching benefits in the sense of deeper understanding and insights.