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#138108 01/27/05 12:48 AM
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aorto Offline OP
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Can anyone translate this?


#138109 01/27/05 12:54 AM
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Babel Fish gives:

World refusal

not sure what that means, but...


formerly known as etaoin...
#138110 01/27/05 01:31 AM
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Sounds like ultimate eccentricity to me.


#138111 01/27/05 01:56 AM
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Are you sure it's spelled right, aorto? The first syllable means world, as even Babelfish knows, but the rest of it looks a little fishy to me (if it is indeed German... and what else could it be?)


#138112 01/27/05 02:04 AM
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#138113 01/27/05 02:14 AM
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Googling the term turns up a couple of hundred hits (auf Deutsch, wie erstaunt!) that all seem to relate to Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism or some mix of two or more of those belief systems. In that context, "world refusal" makes sense, if it is expressing a rejection of the material world, nicht wahr?


#138114 01/27/05 12:06 PM
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That's pretty accurate from what I can tell. It's the title of one of Max Weber's books (thus the Buddhist, Taoist references).

I was hoping for a German word indicating the direction of the world or the direction that the world is taking.

The title of the book means 'A Refusal of the Direction of the World' or something like that.


#138115 01/27/05 12:25 PM
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Oops, I spoke too soon. Didn't even bother to look it up!




#138116 01/27/05 01:48 PM
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> It's the title of one of Max Weber's books

Yeah, one of his essays in a collection at least.

Here is the text to look at, fwiw:
"Theorie der Stufen und Richtungen religiöser Weltablehnung"
http://www.china1900.info/gedanken/weberstudie/zwischenbetrachtung.htm

Very dense stuff(!), principally to do with the triumph of the mind over matter, i.e. becoming enlightened ("Triumph des Geistes über den Körper”). Here an excerpt from the end:

"Die einzelnen weltablehnenden Erlösungsethiken der Vergangenheit setzten nun jede mit ihrer Weltablehnung an höchst verschiedenen Stellen dieser rein rational konstruierten Skala ein."

I'd render that:
The various "world-rejecting" ethics of redemption of the past now approached their disaffirmation of the world from entirely different positions along this utterly rational scale system.

BTW, the word “Weltablehnung” is unknown outside this philosophical subject matter.


#138117 01/27/05 04:03 PM
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sounds like a branch of pataphysics.


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