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.