Customs Tariff and Origin

The twelfth entry is le recouvrement a posteriori, and its last two words look like a phrase an English reader already owns. In English « a posteriori » has stayed in the seminar room: it names knowledge drawn from experience rather than from reasoning alone, the other half of « a priori », and it seldom leaves a book of philosophy. French took the same Latin and let it into ordinary speech, where it simply means after the event. Un contrôle a posteriori is a check made once the goods have gone, justifier une décision a posteriori is finding the reasons afterwards, and a posteriori, on comprend mieux is what somebody says with hindsight. Nothing philosophical is going on in any of them. This entry, then, is duty collected after the goods have been released, which English customs law calls « post-clearance recovery ». A translation that keeps « a posteriori » is not wrong in the dictionary sense, but it sends an English reader to the wrong shelf, looking for a theory of knowledge where there is only a date.