grgr: overcoming of metaphysics

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

In einer eMail vom 27.06.00 19:33:04 (MEZ) - Mitteleurop. Sommerzeit schreibt 
michel.ryckx at freebel.net:

<< Can anybody tell me how reading/quarreling Heidegger can make reading mr. 
Pynchon's
 works more interesting?  Besides, ever since I heard he (Heidegger) used bad 
Greek
 etymology (I remember a classical scholar once explaining that 'alèthèia' 
(truth)
 has nothing to do with 'analanthanomai' (uncovering)), he was using bad 
methods,  a
 philosopher unworthy.  Or was that another German philosopher?  I seem to 
confuse
 them all the time.  Having no degree myself at all (I left school at 18) I 
think
 reading is rewarding in itself:  it will not change me -I think- but it will 
only
 make me happier, sometimes. >>
I doubt if Pynchon knows Mr. Heidegger although P. is an "Homme des lettres". 
And Heidegger is hardly translatable, because of his very special use of 
Greek etymology (but his critics of occidental metaphysics is based on it, 
and that is exactly the problem of Heidegger's philosophy!) and because of 
his sometimes curious neologisms which even a German-speaking reader can 
hardly understand. 
An example for the problems with translation: Sarte translated "Dasein" with 
"realite humaine" (in "L'Etre et le Neant", The Being and the Nothing) which 
is false.  Sartre denied the existence of an unconscious with that (as a 
critics of psychoanalysis) but this has nothing to do with Heidegger's 
"Dasein".  Dasein is another word for "In-Der-Welt-sein" (Being-in-the-world) 
which means that a human being is conscious of the fact that "Being-in-the 
world" and "pure being" like an animal or a thing are totally different 
things. Okay, but what has this to do with Pynchon? Nothing. You can combine 
everything with everything (the postmodern way...) but Pynchon would say that 
this is really boring. Philosophers come and go, but P. would think: to hell 
with untranslatable German neologisms...
kwp