This engrossing study, first published in 1989, explores the basic mutuality between philosophy and translation. By studying the conceptions of translation in Plato, Seneca, Davidson, Walter Benjamin and Freud, Andrew Benjamin reveals the interplay between the two disciplines not only in their relationship to language, but also at a deeper, cognitive level.

Benjamin engages throughout with the central tenets of post-structuralism: the concept of a constant yet illusive true meaning has lost authority, but remains a problem. The fact of translation seems to defy the notion that...