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Attunement and Translation

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Book cover Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 65))

Abstract

This paper addresses this question of how hermeneutic directives govern the task of translating the key terms of Heidegger’s thinking. These directives are never reducible to the standards of semantical equivalency supported by a dictionary; instead, they issue from the hidden wellspring of what is unspoken and unsaid, whose manner of attunement brings thinking into its reciprocity with being and permits its disclosure in the most “elemental words.” A “hermeneutically sound” translation, then, renounces the presumption of absolute transfer of Heidegger’s key words, taking its orientation instead from the attuned response and comportment toward the disclosing power of language. In a way that harks back to Heidegger’s essay at the inception of this volume, it is seen that the venture of translating, like thinking, must first descend into the “poverty” of language in order to experience the “wealth” of its power to let being become manifest.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an outstanding discussion of the being-historical ground of language as “hearing,” see George Kovacs, “Heidegger in Dialogue with Herder: Crossing the Language of Metaphysics toward Be-ing-historical Language,” Heidegger Studies, 17 (2001): 45–63.

  2. 2.

    For a different view of translation, one which is based on a theory of signs or a semiotics, see Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, trans. Eileen Brennan, “Introduction” by Richard Kearney (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. x–xv, pp. 8–15.

  3. 3.

    Heidegger, “Nachwort zu ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’”, in Wegmarken, GA 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976b), pp. 310–311.

  4. 4.

    For Emad’s use of the word “intoning,” see Parvis Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), p. 64.

  5. 5.

    Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, GA 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), p. 1.

  6. 6.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 56.

  7. 7.

    Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes GA 19 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992a), p. 592. Plato’s Sophist, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 410.

  8. 8.

    Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, GA 29/30 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983b), p. 466. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 321, translation slightly modified.

  9. 9.

    For Heidegger’s discussion of “Die Grammatik des Wortes ‘Sein,’” see Einführung in die Metaphysik, GA 40 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983a), pp. 58–60.

  10. 10.

    For Heidegger’s reference to the “leap” into the hermeneutic circle, see GA 2, p. 418.

  11. 11.

    For clarification of this phrase, see Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Wege ins Ereignis: Zu Heideggers “Beiträge zur Philosophie” (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), pp. 18, 24, 30, 33, 36, 40, 56, 59, 62, 70, 77, and 92. Also see Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, pp. 75, 103, 115, 120, 123, 125–30, and 159.

  12. 12.

    Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989). Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 234; tr. 166.

  13. 13.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 3.

  14. 14.

    Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975), pp. 460–461. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 323–324.

  15. 15.

    For this questionable claim, see T. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 370–374.

  16. 16.

    For a discussion of boredom as a grounding-attunement, see Parvis Emad, “Boredom as Limit and Disposition,” Heidegger Studies, 1 (1985): 63–78.

  17. 17.

    For Heidegger’s discussion of the “Essential Sway of Be-ing,” see GA 65, p. 484; tr. 341. For a further exposition of the “midpoint,” in its relationship to thought and language, see Heidegger, “Über das Prinzip ‘Zu den Sachen selbt,’” Heidegger Studies, 11 (1995): 5–8.

  18. 18.

    For an example of this phrase, see Heidegger, Nietzsche: Die Wille zur Macht also Kunst, GA 43 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1985), p. 123. For an analysis of the subtlety of the attuning of the attunement, apart from subjectivity, see Frank Schalow, “The Gesamtausgabe Nietzsche: An Exercise in Translation and Thought,” Heidegger Studies, 9 (1993): 150–151. This nuance is overlooked by Krell in a key passage from his translation of Nietzsche, Volume I. The Will to Power as Art (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1979), p. 126. Krell bases his translation on the Neske, rather than the Gesamtausgabe edition. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Erster Band (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1961), p. 105.

  19. 19.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 77. For Emad’s account of the limitations of assertions, see pp. 57–58.

  20. 20.

    GA 65, p. 510; tr. 359.

  21. 21.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 87.

  22. 22.

    GA 65, p. 97; tr. 67.

  23. 23.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 131.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., p. 161.

  25. 25.

    GA 65, p. 78; tr. 54–55.

  26. 26.

    GA 65, p. 78; tr. 55.

  27. 27.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, pp. 30–31, p. 38.

  28. 28.

    Emad, Ibid., p. 16. Emad states: “Why does the monological reductive approach choose this mistranslation [‘beings as a whole?’] rather than the correct rendering, ‘beings in a whole’? It does so because the mother tongue demands smooth readability of the translated terms and resists opening itself to the unfamiliar words and phrases of the language of the thinking of and by being. Thus, it makes for a smoother reading to take the crucial phrase das Seiende im Ganzen as meaning ‘beings as a whole’ instead of coming to terms with its terminological meaning, ‘beings in a whole.’ The monological reductive approach prefers to distort the terminological meaning of this phrase because it is committed to the supremacy of the mother tongue.”

  29. 29.

    Heidegger, Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte “Probleme” der “Logik”, GA 45 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984), p. 2. Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic”, trans. A. Schuwer and R. Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 4. For a discussion of this quotation, see Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 53.

  30. 30.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 64.

  31. 31.

    See Heidegger, “Brief über den ‘Humanismus,’” in Wegmarken, GA 9, pp. 313–314.

  32. 32.

    For a discussion of this “silence,” see Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Sprache. Die Metaphysik der Sprache und die Wesung des Wortes. Zu Herders Abhandlung “Über den Ursprung der Sprache”, GA 85 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1999), pp. 55, 72, 85.

  33. 33.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 56.

  34. 34.

    For Ricoeur’s account of translation as a form of “interpretation,” as unfolding the signifying context of a text, albeit without regard to truth as disclosedness, see Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, trans. Eileen Brennan (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 36. For an attempt to link Heidegger’s and Ricoeur’s approach to translation, see Kenneth Maly, Heidegger’s Possibility: Language, Emergence–Saying Be-ing (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press 2008), pp. 163–166.

  35. 35.

    GA 65, p. 406; tr. 285.

  36. 36.

    GA 54, p. 18; tr. 12.

  37. 37.

    For a discussion of thinking as an activity, see Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 65.

  38. 38.

    See John Sallis, On Translation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 1, 100–102. For a critique of this deconstructionist view of “untranslatability,” see Frank Schalow, “Freedom, Truth and Responsibility: A Critical Look at the Recent Translations of the Gesamtausgabe,” Heidegger Studies, 23 (2007): 98–99.

  39. 39.

    Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, GA 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992b), p. 202. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 141.

  40. 40.

    For one of Heidegger’s key references to the “poverty of thinking,” see GA 9, p. 364. Also, see in this volume, “Poverty,” trans. Thomas Kalary and Frank Schalow.

  41. 41.

    GA 3, 249; tr. 175 [translation slightly modified]. Italics mine in both Emad’s and Heidegger’s statements.

  42. 42.

    Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, p. 39.

  43. 43.

    For Heidegger’s discussion of the importance of restoring the power of these elemental words, see GA 2, p. 291.

  44. 44.

    GA 9, p. 310.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of New Orleans, 2000 Lakeshore Dr., 70148, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Frank Schalow

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    F. Schalow

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Schalow, F. (2011). Attunement and Translation. In: Schalow, F. (eds) Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 65. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1649-0_15

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