Derrida, the Subject and the Other

Surviving, Translating, and the Impossible

Lisa Foran

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137577580
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

This book presents the relation between the subject and the other in the work of Jacques Derrida as one of 'surviving translating'. It demonstrates the key role of translation in thinking difference rather than identity, beginning with the work of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. It describes how translation, and its ethical demands, acts as a leitmotif throughout Derrida's writing; from his early work on Edmund Husserl to his last texts on politics and hospitality. While for both Heidegger and Levinas translation is always possible, Derrida's account is marked by the challenge of impossibility. Expanding translation beyond a merely linguistic operation, Foran explores Derrida's accounts of mourning, death and 'survival' to offer a new perspective on the ethics of subjectivity.

© The Author(s) 2016

Lisa ForanDerrida, the Subject and the Other10.1057/978-1-137-57758-0_2

Begin Abstract

1 The Saying of Heidegger

Lisa Foran¹

(1)

Philosophical Studies, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

End Abstract

Introduction

Derrida notes on many occasions the impact Heidegger’s work had on his own, even once claiming that he could not have written anything without Heidegger.¹ As such, my investigation into translation and the relation with the other, begins with an examination of Heidegger’s thinking on language. In this chapter I do three things—first, I set out the role of language in Heidegger’s work through an exegesis of some of Heidegger’s most pertinent texts on the theme. Second, I demonstrate the manner in which translation in many senses operates as a hodos or ‘way’ into the task of thinking. Finally, I ask whether Heidegger’s thinking of difference is radical enough or whether his thinking remains trapped in some way in a thinking of the same; a question that will return in subsequent chapters.

I begin with the account of language in Heidegger’s seminal Being and Time (1927). Here I mark the relation between the truth of Being and language as apophansis. I note in particular the manner in which Heidegger sees writing and repeatability as a threat to the revelatory power of language and the implications of such a view for translation. Between the publication of Being and Time in 1927 and that of the ‘Letter on Humanism’ in 1947, Heidegger’s thinking underwent a ‘turn’ or Kehre. This turn, as Heidegger is at pains to point out in that latter work; is not a radical departure from Being and Time but rather a development of his thinking. Key to this development is a deeper engagement with language and its relation to Being. It is no coincidence that many of Heidegger’s texts from the 1940s deal with translation and so, in the second section of this chapter, I examine Heidegger’s extended translation of the Anaximander fragment. In the last section I examine what Heidegger terms the essence of language—Saying—and its relation with man as a co-belonging. I claim that while Heidegger consistently emphasizes the as yet ‘unsaid’ of Saying, he falls short of positing an ‘unsayable’ and that this has radical implications for the translatable and untranslatable.

Language in Being and Time

In Being and Time Dasein, ‘that entity that each of us is,’ is described as Being-in-the-world, which is a unitary phenomenon. In order to analyze this unitary phenomenon Heidegger examines the ‘constitutive items in its structure’ which are not to be understood as contents subsequently pieced together, but rather as aspects occurring simultaneously within the whole. These ‘constitutive items’ are the worldhood of the world, the ‘who’ of Dasein and Being-in as such. Within the structure of Being and Time, the principal analysis of language takes place in the broader context of the ‘Being-in as such’ (Division One, Chapter Six).² Here Heidegger describes the ‘there’ of Dasein’s Being-there (or ‘there-Being’, Da-sein) as state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit), understanding (Verstehen) and discourse (Rede). These three existentialia, or conditions of Dasein’s existence, are co-constitutive and co-occurring. For the sake of space I will focus here on the accounts of understanding and discourse without dwelling on state-of-mind. I will then illustrate the relationship between discourse and the possibility of truth as unconcealment.

Ordinarily when we use the word ‘understanding’ we tend to mean ‘being able’ or ‘competent’ to do something or ‘being a match for it.’ However, for Heidegger this kind of understanding is derived from primordial or existential understanding where that ‘which we have such competence over is not a “what”, but Being as existing.’³ As an existentiale understanding is a mode of Dasein’s very Being. Dasein, as being-there is always already in a world, this world is disclosed to Dasein as significant and as its (Dasein’s) potentiality-for-Being. This disclosedness of the world is existential understanding which has the structure of projection. ‘Projection’ (Entwurf) here means that Dasein, in its Being, is always ‘throwing’ possibilities for its Being ahead of itself.⁴ These possibilities are on the one hand described by Heidegger as definite and on the other hand as purely possible.⁵ While this may at first seem contradictory it is essential to grasp these two characteristics of the possible together. Since Dasein is Being-in-the-world and the world is always already disclosed to Dasein in a particular way, then Dasein ‘has already got itself into definite possibilities.’⁶ Dasein either lets these possibilities pass by or ‘seizes upon them,’ this is the modality of Dasein’s Being. Nonetheless, since Dasein is thrown into a world in which other entities already are, and which has already been disclosed in a certain way; these possibilities are pre-structured. There is a ‘range’ of possibilities in terms of what can be disclosed to Dasein at any given time. Dasein’s possibilities are different today than they will be a century from now. What will remain the same, however, is Dasein’s existential structure of Being-possible. The possibilities that Dasein throws ahead of itself can subsequently be ‘seized upon’ and appropriated but within understanding itself, they remain only possibilities. Understanding then, as an existentiale, is the mode of Dasein’s Being in which ‘it is its possibilities as possibilities.’⁷

‘Sight’, ‘light’ and ‘showing’ play important roles in Being and Time and many of the descriptions of Dasein emphasize the ability to ‘see’ that which is. Dasein’s ability to engage with its environment and the things it finds there in a meaningful way is described as Umsicht generally translated as ‘circumspection’ or literally ‘around sight.’⁸ Understanding too is described as a type of ‘sight,’ although this is neither ‘just perceiving with the bodily eyes’ nor ‘pure non-sensory awareness of something present-at-hand.’⁹ Rather, understanding allows Dasein to ‘see’ entities as meaningful through their network of involvements in the world within which Dasein finds itself. Understanding, as which Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities, has its own possibility of developing itself in interpretation. Interpretation is the manner in which understanding appropriates the possibilities it had previously projected: interpretation is the manner in which understanding ‘becomes itself.’¹⁰

The relation between interpretation and understanding is perhaps best understood in terms of what Heidegger calls the ‘fore-structure’ and the ‘as-structure’. Understanding acts as a tripartite fore-structure made up of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Fore-having (Vorhabe) is an understanding of the background network of involvements of that which we wish to interpret. Fore-sight (Vorsicht) is an understanding of how to approach the entity in question. Fore-sight ‘takes the first cut’ at what was understood in fore-having in a definite way. An interpretation of an entity has always ‘already decided for a definite way of conceiving’ the entity in question and this way of preconceiving is what Heidegger terms fore-conception (Vorgriff).¹¹ It can either be drawn from the entity itself or it can force the entity into concepts that do not belong to its way of Being, in either case it reflects Dasein’s anticipated understanding of how the interpretation will terminate.¹²

Interpretation, emerging out of existential understanding is not the process of ‘throwing a signification’ over something present-at-hand but rather the ‘laying out’ of the involvement of something initially grasped through understanding. It is through interpretation that the ‘as’ structure is made explicit. We ‘understand’ a room when we enter it, interpretation brings particular things within the room ‘close’ to us—seeing the vacant chair as a possibility to be grasped (and sat upon). Further, interpretation feeds into understanding modifying and developing our background understanding through experiences of improving things or putting them to rights.¹³ This circular movement of background understanding to interpretative articulation and its subsequent return to a background understanding is not, argues Heidegger, to be understood as a vicious circle. Rather, this hermeneutic to-ing and fro-ing provides the positive possibility of knowing and the disclosure of meaning: ‘only Dasein can be meaningful or meaningless.’¹⁴ But what exactly is meaning for Heidegger? As understanding, Dasein projects possibilities ahead of itself which are then articulated by interpretation. These possibilities are projected upon meaning which is to be understood as the intelligibility of an entity, its disclosure to Dasein. Since Dasein alone has the form of Being which is a disclosive Being-in-the-world, and since only Dasein has the mode of Being as understanding; then only Dasein can reveal the meaning of an entity. Meaning ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• Introduction: From Translation to Translating
• 1 The Saying of Heidegger
• 2 The Unsaying of Levinas
• 3 Derrida: Life and Death at the Same Time
• 4 Derrida and Translation
• 5 The Impossible
• Conclusion: Sur-Viving Translating
• Backmatter