Power and Powerlessness of Kant’s Third Critique: Reflections on Ukrainian Translation

This paper examines the first complete Ukrainian translation of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (2022). I discuss the consistency of the Ukrainian translator’s decisions in rendering Kant’s terminology in Ukrainian and assess the accuracy of the translation of Kant’s extremely complicated and nuanced syntax. Based on this assessment, I concluded that this translation provides a strong argument in favor of the idea that translations of classical texts of such complexity will not meet academic standards without scholarly editing. An example of a recurring terminological mistake is the translation of Kant’s “Schluß” as “conclusion,” whereas it means “inference” or “syllogism.” The most common syntactical mistakes are misinterpretations of pronouns (demonstrative, personal, possessive) in subordinate clauses.