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Lynntropy2 karma

That totally makes sense. I would guess that might have been leading up to your book The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy... Thanks for the reply.

Lynntropy1 karma

The Gregory Hayes translation is very readable but perhaps not the most faithful to the original text. The Robin Hard translation isn't quite as much fun but it's still very modern and readable and it's a bit closer to the Greek original.

I've seen what you mean about the variety of modern or readable versus accuracy ("closer to the Greek original") and how strongly that can affect the meaning and how it resonates with me. I hadn't thought about things like:

That's less obvious in Marcus because he might use six different words in different places to describe basically the same idea.

So now I'm even more curious about learning to read the original texts. When/why did you decide you needed to learn to read Greek? Had you begun reading Stoic translations and were becoming a practitioner and desired to be able to read the actual text directly (which is kind of how I'm feeling) or was it more about being a scholar who writes about these texts and needing to analyze every exact word, or both? I wonder if it's similar to reading subtitles (some French a long time ago) in a movie and the fulfillment of recognizing the simplicity of the translation versus the nuance and meaning of what the character actually said and being thankful to experience the original content. Is reading Marcus in the original text enjoyable in that kind of way?

Would you advise learning to read the originals? Why or why not? Often even to build a vocabulary in another language you learn a lot more context about the society and day to day life and people; would you say that's true to learn this Greek and whether that's complicated further by the texts being written in such a different time? How did you learn? What did you read first? With Marcus using more nuance and more variety, does that clearly equal a larger vocabulary? If so, a new reader might pick up Epictetus before Marcus? (I would still most desire to be able to read Marcus; even with a dictionary in the other hand.)

I'm really curious about your experience and opinion on this. But, also, as I haven't seen the Robin Hard translation, I should probably read through it which will also inspire me toward or away from this desire to read the originals. Is there one that's even "closer" even at the expense of "modern" or "readable"?

I also just started Stoicism and the Art of Happiness on vacation (after reading lots of your other stuff elsewhere including your courses). Thank you very much for everything you do and the content you put into the world.