Rooms and Telescopes

Schopenhauer writes that

Thus we shall find that author profitable the occasional use of whose mind when we think affords us sensible relief, and by whom we feel ourself borne wither we could not attain alone. Goethe once said to me that, when he read a page of Kant, he felt as if he were entering a lighted room.

Certainly there are authors who produce that effect for me, though I would more likely name historians than philosophers. But Schopenhauer continues

Inferior minds are not such merely by their being distorted and so judging falsely, but above all through the indistinctness of their whole thinking. This can be compared to seeing through a bad telescope, in which all the outlines appear indistinct and as if obliterated, and the different objects run into one another.

Many translations of German philosophy are bad telescopes. I have put aside a copy of Kant's  Critique of Judgement because the effort of discovering the thought through the English is wearying when not maddening. Kant's philosophy is in itself difficult enough without the obstacle of a bad translation. I hope to find a better one soon.

(The quotations are from Book II, Chapter XV of The World as Will and Representation.)