Against Sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη)

In their concern not to appear anachronistic or in order to justice to underlying complexity, clear and careful historians of philosophy often choose to leave crucial words/concepts untranslated. (They also end up ridiculously pretentious by mixing English and difficult foreign words.) But this presupposes that anachronism and injustice can be avoided in doing history of philosophy. That is silly; we always write from a perspective with lots of tacit commitments and choices. What matters is that our translation choices illuminate and are (reasonably) recoverable. To be blunt: by not translating one is saying nothing (and calling attention to it, no less) and, more poetically, speaking nonsense.