[np] Found in Translation

[Mark Kohut]

Kai,
 
I wrote had "hardly been translated" picking up from the words you sent, which I did read, that says
that work found two translations in just thirteen years.....I may have misread the "just" in that the
'just' implies the work took a long time to translate but I also thought two translations in 13 years for an international
thinker was far fewer than in older glory days. (Lots of possible reasons, I know).
 
Besides what may descibe my own situation regarding the reading of Heidegger, I was more appositely
referring to those philosophers and cultural critics who have argued that Heidegger's character flaws---
his Nazi sympathizing and denial---go deep enough to shape his "thinking" which is, when unpacked,
full of anti-democratic, anti-sympathetically-human, abstracted into bloviation, ideas. 
 
With some thinkers, and I would indict some philosophers, their character flaws can pervade their systematizing,
since the most ambitious of them are trying to speak about EVERYTHING. If the tower is everywhere, so is projection---
autobiography---as Nietzsche among others, has said. 
 
 For me, most writers who are not philosophizing, who are lyrically (broadly understood) giving us life as lived and insights into it, a vision of it, character flaws can lead to such insights. I, for example, love Celine's work. And Eliot's ( but I wince at the anti-Semitism); and early Pound--but
not enough to read much, etc. 
 
You are right in catching me out as too vague when I referred to Heidegger's 'character flaws' as a reason not to read him...
It is those flaws in the thinking---yes, the argument rages as to whether his Nazi-sympathizing DOES infect his DASEIN and vision---
which are why I, and many others, consider no longer reading him.......
 
 

From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [np] Found in Translation



> And I might say that the reason his second major work has hardly been translated migiht be
because of the unearthing of his character faults----and subsequent diminishing of the felt need
to read him.....<

No, you got that wrong. It has been translated even twice!  (Do see again below, including the link with the review). There is certainly no lack of interest in 'Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)' in the anglophone world,  --- some people even learn German to read it in the original.

Nevertheless, let me say something about the "diminishing of the felt need to read him" because of real or imagined "character faults" which seems to describe your own situation. Of course you do what you do. And of course I'd also prefer all my favorite philosophers and artists to be goody-goodies dressed in white. But to boycott great artistic and philosophical works out of moral disgust was never an option for me. Do you really want to kick out Céline, Pound, Eliot, Heidegger or Schmitt (and then think of all the Stalin supporters!) to gain a politically correct reading experience?


On 04.08.2013 15:21, Mark Kohut wrote:
> In my limited but perhaps typical therefore generalizable circumstances when young,
> heidegger in English was hugely influential in some philosophy circles---and beyond.
> Many intellectual Catholic academics, among others, had embraced his overturning approach.....
> And I might say that the reason his second major work has hardly been translated migiht be
> because of the unearthing of his character faults----and subsequent diminishing of the felt need
> to read him.....
> 
> *From:* Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> *To:* pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Saturday, August 3, 2013 5:29 AM
> *Subject:* [np] Found in Translation
> 
> 
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/found-in-translation/?_r=2&
> 
> We all need translations, and it's good someone defends them in
> principle. Hamid Dabashi's first example, however, is not unproblematic:
> 
> "Consider Heidegger. Had it not been for his French translators and
> commentators, German philosophy of his time would have remained an
> obscure metaphysical thicket. And it was not until Derrida’s own take on
> Heidegger found an English readership in the United States and Britain
> that the whole Heidegger-Derridian undermining of metaphysics began to
> shake the foundations of the Greek philosophical heritage. One can in
> fact argue that much of contemporary Continental philosophy originates
> in German with significant French and Italian glosses before it is
> globalized in the dominant American English and assumes a whole new
> global readership and reality. This has nothing to do with the
> philosophical wherewithal of German, French or English. It is entirely a
> function of the imperial power and reach of one language as opposed to
> others."
> 
> Three points:
> 
> Derrida's project was an application of Heidegger, right, and US decon
> is based on Derrida; the three approaches are nevertheless not one and
> the same, as Derrida himself did put out several times.
> 
> What's left out here is the Asian Heidegger reception: Already in the
> 1920s students from India and Japan came to Marburg and Freiburg to
> study under the Black Forest Wizard, and by now there are seven Japanese
> translations of 'Sein und Zeit' (Being and Time). In China and Korea
> they read Heidegger too.
> 
> What makes Heidegger difficult to translate is neither the grammar nor
> the length of sentences. It's the vocabulary which consists of old words
> like 'Sorge', 'Gestell' or 'Gelassenheit' that, though put in a
> philosophical context, are still radiating traditional meanings which
> Heidegger unearths by means of etymology. There are also neologisms,
> words crossed out, or divided (Dasein ---> Da-sein). This seems very
> hard to translate to me, and in Heidegger's case definitely much more
> gets lost in translation than in the cases of Nietzsche or Marx. How
> difficult it is to translate Heidegger into English you can see from the
> fact that his second opus magnum 'Vom Ereignis (Beiträge zur
> Philosophie)', written secretly in the late 1930s and posthumously
> published in 1989, found two translations in just 13 years. Here's a
> review of the second one which appeared last year:
> 
> http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/32043-contributions-to-philosophy-of-the-event/
> 
> I sympathize with Dabashi's idea of a mind "beyond East and West", but
> each time I'm trying to read Nishida Kitaro I realize that it's
> difficult when you're not able to read Japanese.
> 
> 
> 
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