Abstract
Heidegger’s language was previously considered to be unique vocabulary or jargon. However, the publication of the collected works of Heidegger allows us to see in detail that he had acquired his ontological concepts largely by translating ancient Greek concepts into German. My paper aims to clarify the role of translation in Heidegger’s philosophy and to demonstrate the insights he has into the nature of translation. First, I illustrate that translation is required as an essential procedure for posing a question of meaning of Being in early Heidegger. The requirement for translation can, I argue, only be understood in the context of the general question concerning meaning Heidegger shared with his contemporaries. Second, I explore Heidegger’s method of translation called “literal” or “true-to-word” translation in his lectures from the 1940s, and show that his strategy in translation belongs to the underestimated tradition of “word for word” translation in opposition to the dominant ideal of “sense for sense” translation. I further argue that Heidegger’s true-to-word translation is aimed to cause an existential shift for readers by making the most self-evident in reader’s native language foreign and questionable, and to situate readers in possibilities of thinking on the Grundwörter of Being.
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Notes
- 1.
See Hans-Georg Gadamer’s retrospective comments on the impact of early Heidegger’s lectures in his article “Heideggers’ theologische’ Jugendschrift,” Dilthey-Jahrbuch für Philosophie der Geisteswissenschaften Bd. 6 (1989), p. 229. Also see Richard Rorty’s evaluation of Heidegger’s later thought as “edifying” philosophy or hermeneutics in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 369.
- 2.
This expression is used by George Steiner to describe the negative reaction of authors such as T. W. Adorno and Günter Grass in his Martin Heidegger: With a New Introduction (originally published in 1978; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), p. 9.
- 3.
See for example, Franco Volpi, “Being and Time: A ‘Translation’ of the Nicomachean Ethics? (trans. J. Protevi)” in Theodore Kisiel and J. Van Buren (ed.) Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in his Earliest Thought (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994).
- 4.
For an important and influential work regarding the significant role of translation in Heidegger’s philosophy, see Parvis Emad, “Thinking more deeply into the question of translation: Essential translation and the unholding of language”. John Sallis, Das Ende der Übersetzung, in Günter Figal und Hans-Helmuth Gander (ed.) Dimensionen der Hermeneutischen: Heidegger und Gadamer (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005).
- 5.
In this paper I limit the scope of my considerations into Heidegger’s labor of translating ancient Greek concepts into German. However, it is worth noting that the translations of Latin concepts into German also takes on a significant role in Heidegger’s philosophy, as evident e.g., in the concept of existence in Being and Time or temporality in the summer semester of Heidegger’s 1927 The Basic Problems of Phenomenology.
- 6.
In this paper I follow Parvis Emad’s view that in Heidegger the intralingual translation holds “the original and prominent status” over the interlingual translation and limit my discussion to the former type of translation. For Emad’s distinction of these two types of translation, see Frank Schalow, “A Conversation with Parvis Emad on the Question of Translation in Heidegger,” in Frank Schalow (ed.) Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking: Essays in Honor of Parvis Emad (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), p. 177.
- 7.
See John Sallis, On Translation, p. 23. Sallis provides a similar argument in terms of the makeup of the German word “Über-setzen” in his “Das Ende der Übersetung,” p. 12. As for the brief sketch of the historical development of the French concept of “Traduction,” see Richard Kearney’s introductory explanation in his “Introduction: Ricoeur’s philosophy of translation,” in Paul Ricoeur: On Translation with an intoroduction by Richard Kearney (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. xiii–xiv.
- 8.
See John Sallis, “Das Ende der Übersetzung,“p. 12.
- 9.
See John Sallis, “Das Ende der Übersetzung,“p. 13.
- 10.
This is impressively illustrated in Quine’s case of radical translation. See Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1960).
- 11.
See Michael Dummet, Origins of Analytic Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
- 12.
Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: North Western University Press, 2001), p. 3.
- 13.
Martin Heidegger, Neuere Forschung über Logik, in Frühe Schriften, GA1 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978).
- 14.
Martin Heidegger, Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Don Scotus, in Frühe Schriften, GA1 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), p. 404.
- 15.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer), pp. 2–4.
- 16.
For the relationship between Husserl’s categorical intuition and Heidegger’s understanding of Being, see Jiro Watanabe, “Seinsverständnis, Aussage und Zeitlichkeit: Zum Problem bei Frege, Husserl, Russell und Heidegger,” in Hubertus Busche, George Heffernan und Dieter Lohmar (Hrsg.) Bewußtsein und Zeitlichkeit: Ein Problemschnitt durch die Philosophie der Neuzeit (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1990).
- 17.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer), pp. 150–151, 157, 232.
- 18.
Frank Schalow, “Attunement and Translation,” in Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking: Essays in Honor of Parvis Emad, p. 293.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 1.
- 21.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 28–29, 35–36.
- 22.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 37.
- 23.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 32.
- 24.
Martin Heidegger, Phenomenological interpretation of selected papers of Aristotle’s ontology and logic, GA62 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), p. 6.
- 25.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, GA54 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992), p. 16.
- 26.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Best Kind of Orator, in (trans. H. M. Hubbell) De Inventione: De Optimo Genere Oratorum (Cambridge, MA/ London: Harvard University Press), p. 365.
- 27.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1990, originally published in 1960), pp. 389–390.
- 28.
Antoine Berman analyzes many varieties of “distorting tendencies” involved in the act of translation such as clarification, expansion, and qualitative or quantitative impoverishment. See, his La Traduction et la lettre, ou L’auberge du lointain (Paris: Seuil, 1999).
- 29.
Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation), in GA62 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), p. 372.
- 30.
ibid.
- 31.
Martin Heidegger, Heraklit, GA55 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979), p. 44.
- 32.
Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, GA10(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), p. 145.
- 33.
Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher, “Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens,” in Hans Joachism Störig (hrsg.) Das Problem des Übersetzens (Stuttgart: Henry Goverts, 1963), p. 65.
- 34.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 16.
- 35.
According to Gadamer, Schleiermacher’s notion of re-experience of original creative acts is one of the evidences that his hermeneutics has a psychological aspect. See, Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 191.
- 36.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 21.
- 37.
Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, p.38.
- 38.
ibid.
- 39.
See Émile Benveniste’s critical comments on Saussure’s attempt at general linguistics in his Problems in General Linguistics (London: Faber and Faber, 1973, translated by Elizabeth Palmer). Some readers of Heidegger also reject interpreting Heidegger’s praxis of translation in terms of specific linguistic theories. See the conversation between Parvis Emad and Frank Schalow “A Conversation with Parvis Emad on the Question of Translation.”
- 40.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 16.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Ibid. “Dazu kommt es erst dann, wenn das übersetzte Wort »Unverborgenheit« uns übersetzt in den Erfarungsbereich und die Erfarungsart, aus dem das Griechentum und im jetztigen Fall der anfängliche Denker Parmenides das Wort αλήθεια sagt.”
- 43.
See for example, William Dilthey, “Beiträge zum Studium der Individualität,” in Die geistige Welt: Einleitung in die Philosophie des Lebens, Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).
- 44.
For the general view of contemporary discussion on empathy, Karsten Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Science (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006). For criticism of projectionist view of other minds from phenomenological perspective, see Chapter 9 of Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction into Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Sciences (New York: Routledge, 2008).
- 45.
Schleiermacher, “Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens” p. 65.
- 46.
Antoine Berman, The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany (trans. S. Heyvaert; New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), p. 147.
- 47.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 22.
- 48.
ibid.
- 49.
Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, p. 139.
- 50.
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 4, 12.
- 51.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Heideggers’ theologische’ Jugendschrift” p. 228.
- 52.
Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, p.31.
- 53.
See the introduction to Paul Ricoeur, Le Juste 2 (Paris: Esprit, 2001); Also, Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, p.10.
- 54.
Paul Ricoeur, On Translation, pp. 31–32.
- 55.
Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, pp. 182–183.
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Ikeda, T. (2019). Martin Heidegger and the Question of Translation. In: de Warren, N., Taguchi, S. (eds) New Phenomenological Studies in Japan. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 101. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11893-8_9
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