Customer Reviews

Human Phenomenon: A New Edition and Translation of Le phenomene humain by Sarah Appleton-Weber

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Years after having his ideas squelched by the Catholic Church, the posthumous publishing of the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is even to this day a remarkable work.

After having read this one negative review I had continued to slog my way through the Walls translation of 1959 "Phenomenon of Man" I had just about given up being able to really represent the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in my Master's thesis.

However, I managed to stumble across a mention of this new edition, with a retranslation including a new title "The Human Phenomenon." I then read the review and was reluctant to change course. However, after finding a copy of this volume in my university library I realized I had wasted valuable time with the 1959 version. I should have been reading this all along.

Including the missing and mistranslated sections makes all the difference, as well as including better punctuation and italicizing.

For anyone interested in broadening their spiritual or scientific horizons, I highly recommend reading this version. It is truly eye-opening.

This new translation is welcome, yet it makes claims beyond its value. It is offered as a corrective to the serious deficiencies of the 1959 translation of Bernard Wall, although he is never acknowledge by name. Only a few illustrations are given of these serious deficiencies, but the man one concerns the title, where the Phenomenon of Man is said to be serious mistranslation. One observes how the word ?man? is judiciously avoided throughout, often making a sentence longer or awkward through this avoidance. In general, this new translation reads less clearly than Wall?s version. Sentences are often vague or awkward where in Wall they are sharp and clear. I recommend anyone to do a sentence by sentence comparison for themselves.
Leaving aside the question of the merits of the translation itself, the claims made in the Forward and the Introduction embody an attitude foreign to that of Teilhard. The work is spoken of with high excitement for things it is believed to imply, but which it does not say. Teilhard insists that this Essay is strictly scientific and not philosophical or theological, yet the discussions in these introductions treat it as though it is, thus aligning it with precisely the misguided criticisms it received in 1959. There is even a tinge of New Ageism in them. One feels that all these comments are all unnecessary clutter, and that the original introduction of Julian Huxley is of far higher quality, to the point, and more in keeping with the actual concerns of Teilhard the scientist.

In my view this new translation does not improve on Wall?s translation, and in many ways it is not as good. I was left rather disappointed.