Editions, translations, transformations: refashioning the Arabic Aristotle in Egypt and metropolitan Europe, 1940–1980

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a virtue-theory of the good life, has enduring influence. Its impact on the Arabo-Islamic tradition stemmed from ninth-century Arabic translations by Eustathius and Ishaq ibn Hunayn. Belief in the Arabic Nicomachean Ethics' loss was overturned in the 1950s with the discovery of a unique Fez manuscript, containing portions of both Eustathius' and Ishaq's translations. Arberry and Dunlop began work on a critical edition and translation, but Arberry's death and the subsequent disappearance of his edition stalled progress. Dunlop's translation remained unpublished at his death. Akasoy and Fidora finally published a complete critical edition and translation in 2005. However, between Arberry's and Akasoy and Fidora's editions, Abd al-Rahman Badawi, a prominent Egyptian existentialist philosopher, published his own critical edition in 1979. Badawi's unique background – studying with European existentialists while deeply engaged with traditional Islamic philosophy – shaped his approach. His edition aimed not just at philological accuracy but also at making Aristotle accessible to a modern Arabic-speaking audience, creating a hybrid text reflecting his complex intellectual and political context, encompassing both European and Islamic influences. This paper contrasts Badawi's approach with that of Akasoy and Fidora, focusing on how Badawi's edition, through both textual and paratextual interventions, can be understood as a form of translation.

The paper draws upon existing scholarship on the history of the Arabic Nicomachean Ethics, including the work of Ullmann on the discovery and transmission of the manuscript. It also engages with the scholarship on translation studies, particularly Venuti's work on the translator's invisibility, and Timpanaro's analysis of positivism's influence on classical philology. The author references Said's work on Orientalism, situating Badawi's edition within the broader context of post-colonial intellectual production. The conceptual framework also engages with scholarship on Aristotle's ethical theory, drawing on the work of Sen, Nussbaum, and MacIntyre to highlight its continued relevance.

The paper employs a mixed-methods approach. It combines traditional textual analysis of Badawi's edition with a corpus-based analysis of lexical patterns. The corpus analysis uses three main sources: the Genealogies of Knowledge (GoK) project's medieval Arabic and ancient Greek corpora, and Sketch Engine's Modern Arabic corpus. The GoK corpora are used to examine the lexical patterning of key political terms, specifically those related to the concept of 'citizen,' in both the Greek original and the medieval Arabic translations. Sketch Engine's Modern Arabic corpus provides a baseline for comparing the medieval Arabic usage with contemporary usage. The author uses concordances – lists of all occurrences of a search term in context – to identify collocations and diachronic shifts in meaning. The paper focuses on the term 'citizen' (politēs in Greek) and its translation into Arabic, analyzing Badawi's choices against the background of medieval translations and Modern Standard Arabic. The analysis of Badawi's paratexts – footnotes, introductions, etc. – provides additional contextual information. This combined methodology allows the author to investigate the interplay between philological concerns, the editor's interpretations, and the linguistic evolution of concepts in Arabic.

The analysis of Badawi's paratexts reveals a complex interplay of influences: the original Greek text, Tricot's French translation, other classical texts, and the norms of classical and Arabic philology. Badawi's footnotes include lexicographical explanations, comparisons between Arabic and Greek, and philosophical discussions, revealing a process of reinterpretation and modernization. Badawi’s edition includes hundreds of paratextual interventions in the footnotes. These are different from the footnotes in Akasoy and Fidora's edition which is restricted to presenting the critical apparatus. Badawi's footnotes include explanatory notes, comparisons between Arabic and Greek, rationales for translators' choices, clarification of names and events, references to secondary literature, clarifications and glosses, references to parallel concepts and philosophical discussions of ethical themes. Badawi's footnotes also include retranslations, correcting what he considers errors in the medieval Arabic text. The corpus analysis demonstrates how Badawi’s choice of vocabulary for ‘citizen’ reflects the evolving semantics of the word in Arabic. The medieval translators used terms based on ‘madina’ (city), reflecting the city-state context of Aristotle’s thought. However, in Modern Standard Arabic, these terms have acquired connotations that make them less suitable for conveying the nuances of Aristotle's concept of citizenship to a modern audience. In contrast, Badawi’s use of ‘muwāṭin’ (citizen of a nation), a more modern term, aligns better with contemporary understandings of citizenship, revealing a translation process that shapes the meaning and reception of the text. The study finds that Badawi, driven by a desire to make Aristotle's philosophy relevant to a modern Arab audience, makes choices that are more influenced by modern Arabic lexicon than by a strictly philologically rigorous approach.

The paper demonstrates that Badawi's edition is not simply a philological reconstruction but also a translation that actively shapes the meaning and reception of Aristotle's work in a modern Arab context. Badawi’s choices, although potentially anachronistic from a purely philological perspective, are strategically motivated by his desire to make Aristotle's philosophy accessible and relevant to a contemporary Arabic-speaking audience. The study challenges the traditional distinction between translation and critical edition by showing how the latter is inevitably influenced by interpretive and translational choices. The methodology highlights the value of combining traditional textual analysis with corpus linguistics to understand the processes of meaning-making in edited texts. The findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of how classical texts evolve through translation and editing, highlighting the political, cultural, and linguistic dimensions involved.

This paper shows that critical editions, like translations, are acts of interpretation and recontextualization. Badawi's edition of the Arabic Nicomachean Ethics serves as a compelling case study, illustrating how an editor's choices, driven by personal philosophical goals, cultural considerations, and linguistic factors, can transform a text. The methodology of combining traditional textual analysis with corpus linguistics offers a powerful tool for analyzing this transformative process in future studies. Future research could explore similar case studies across different languages and historical periods, further refining our understanding of the dynamics between translation, editing, and the evolution of ideas.

The study's analysis of the Modern Arabic corpus is limited by the availability of data through Sketch Engine. Access to a broader range of Modern Arabic texts could enhance the analysis. Furthermore, the focus on the concept of ‘citizen’ means that the findings may not be fully generalizable to other concepts or texts. The copyright restrictions limiting access to the raw data of some corpora used in this research represents another limitation.