Graham replies to my post on intellectual generosity here, and his slight disagreement with me is well taken. I suppose translation of the sort Graham has done, or I’ve done with Lefebvre (or to a much lesser extent with Foucault) is perhaps closer to intellectual service than generosity.

I like Graham’s followup about the ‘person in question should be of a level comparable to that which they translate’. That’s quite a challenge to think of examples. Foucault translated Kant’s Anthropology, and Lefebvre and colleague Norbert Guterman translated some Marx, Lenin and Hegel, but these were early in career. Lacan translated one of Heidegger’s essays – the ‘Logos’ one if I remember correctly. The relative standings of Foucault and Kant; Lefebvre and Marx; Lacan and Heidegger seem to me fairly clear, but they are obviously all serious figures. Beyond that? There were the translators of Aristotle – William of Moerbeke, Hermann the German and Albertus Magnus – whose work enabled so much that Aquinas did, but they clearly realised they were not of the same calibre as Aquinas, and so again it was closer to service work. Hobbes translated Thucydides and Aristotle, but I can’t think of many other examples. But it’s an interesting thing to reflect on.