'The Dualism of Human Nature' Translators' Note
in Durkheimian Studies
Author:
and
Irène Eulriet
Irène Eulriet
University of Bristol i_eulriet@yahoo.co.uk
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William Watts Miller
William Watts Miller
British Centre for Durkheimian Studies wwattsmiller@gmail.com
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‘The Dualism of Human Nature’ was made available some time ago in English, and this undoubtedly helped to stimulate the mass of commentary that has grown around the essay and made it well-known. But it is time to replace the old translation, since it is so inadequate and fault-ridden. For example, it involves a systematic impulse to change a Durkheimian collective noun such as our will into English individualized plurals, such as ‘our wills’. Or it often cuts things out. Thus it eliminates Durkheim’s key talk of creative effervescence, which merely becomes ‘creativity’. An opposite tendency is to add things in.