ABSTRACT

Although David Hume never addresses translation at length, he regularly invokes an interlingual movement at decisive moments in his work. Each of this article’s three sections addresses a pair of such moments. The first argues that translation establishes the association of ideas in A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. The second analyzes translation as the ground of both the rational and the emotional arguments for God in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The third and final section addresses translation as a highly regulated object of criticism in the History of England before turning to the Essays where it launches the search for the standard of taste in all criticism. Because translation thus intervenes not only in Hume’s criticism, where one might expect it, but also in his historiography, theology and epistemology, this article concludes by formalizing the interdisciplinary perspective translation opens in Hume’s work.

摘要

尽管大卫·休谟从未详细讨论过翻译，但他经常在其作品的决定性时刻援引跨语言运动。本文的三个部分分别讨论了两个这样的时刻。第一种观点认为，翻译建立了《人性论》和《人类理解探究》中思想的关联。第二部分分析了翻译作为《自然宗教对话录》中对上帝的理性和感性论证的基础。第三部分也是最后一部分，在转向散文之前，将翻译作为英国历史中受到严格监管的批评对象进行讨论。在那里它开始寻找所有批评的品味标准。因为翻译不仅介入了休谟的批评（正如人们所预料的那样），而且介入了他的史学、神学和认识论，因此本文的结论是形式化了休谟著作中翻译所开启的跨学科视角。