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The Human Phenomenon: A New Edition and Translation of Le Phenomene Humain. By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Translated and edited by Sarah Appleton-Weber with a foreword by Brian Swimme. Portland, Ore.: Sussex Academic Press, 1999. xxxii + 283 pp. $69.95 (cloth).
When I first read The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard's scientific opus, forty years ago, it struck me with the force of a major revelation, and it changed forever my perception of the created order. I was therefore quite eager to read The Human Phenomenon, Sarah Appleton-Weber's recent translation of that groundbreaking volume, which has had such an influence on the popular culture of the past decades, and has opened the way for a sound theology of ecology.
In her explanation of the need for a new translation, Sarah Appleton-- Weber cites the added data from subsequent publications of the works of Teilhard, which had been proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church, as well as errors of translation in the first English edition in 1959. She writes
The most far-reaching error ... is the failure to differentiate between Teilhard's two terms "homme" and "humain." The title itself of the 1959 edition is incorrect. Teilhard's subject is not the "phenomenon of man" as one among other...