Harmon on the New Being and Time

Posted on June 22, 2010
Filed Under Philosophy | 1 Comment

Harman over at OOP makes an interesting comment about the new revised translation of Being and Time.

I never quite understood what the problem supposedly was with the original Macquarrie & Robinson translation. There are a few weird hyphenated coinages in there, yes, but the fact they were able to nail it well enough in the 1960′s that the translation is still used almost half a century later is a remarkable achievement. Most translations don’t last that long.

And besides, I kind of like de-severance for Ent-fernung. I say that half-jokingly, but what I mean is that Macquarrie & Robinson gave us a sort of King James Bible of Anglophone Heidegger studies, and even its weirdnesses have soaked into our bones by now. I’d be perfectly happy to know it would be around for another century or so.

Some of the comparisons I’ve read definitely do look a lot better to my eye. I think the biggest problem is with undergraduates who pick up the translation trying to make heads or tails of what Heidegger is really saying. Yes commentaries help. But smoothing out the language and trying to avoid too many bizarre neologisms is usually a better way of doing things.

All that said I think he makes an excellent point about how translation terms get picked up in the literature and take a life of their own. Mormons in particular have this problem of KJV language becoming such a part and parcel of our theology that it is hard to switch to a different translation. I’d love the Church to switch to the NIV or NRV but given all the quotes I think something significant would be lost. It’s interesting that this same dilemma affects philosophy. Although I think it simply a much different situation simply due to the fact that any philosopher ought not remain a naive reader for long.

Related posts:

  1. New Stambaugh Translation
  2. Davidson: Private Language
  3. Vagueness
  4. Options & Alternative Possibilities
  5. Language, Philosophy, and Terms
  6. Language, Externalism and Meaning

Comments

One Response to “Harmon on the New Being and Time”

But the neologisms are so spot on and make so much sense once you get a grasp of what they are pointing to! There is also something to be said for working with the difficulty of the text as that creates the space, as it were, within which the phenomenon can appear divorced from our preconceptions, as the text does not allow one to simply rest with them. Of course, this has the other difficulty that some people simply won’t put in the effort necessary to actually understand the difficult text, hence the near endless complaints about obscurantism and such. This then also creates difficulties when talking with non-phenomenologists, as endless attempts to clarify what Heidegger is saying and continually saying, “No, he does not mean [this or that traditional concept],” and, “Rephrasing it with that terminology obscures what Heidegger’s trying to say”, often just leaves the other in utter confusion. I don’t think I’ve ever had a successful conversation with anyone who hadn’t already put significant time into understanding Heidegger et al., which then just reinforces the claims of obscurantism and such.

I’m always reminded of my own 6-month wrestling with the text and commentaries before it finally started to make some degree of sense, and the needed few years after that for it to really connect with my own life, to really be appropriated, to be “soaked in [my] bones”.

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