German Philosophy: Language and Style

The remarks which follow are intended to address a certain apparent asymmetry as between German and Anglo-Saxon philosophy. Put most simply, it is clear to every philosopher moving backwards and forwards between the two languages that the translation of an Anglo-Saxophone philosophical text into German is in general a much easier task than is the translation of a German philosophical text into English. The hypothesis suggests itself immediately that this is so because English philosophical writings are in the main clear and intelligible, and therefore easy to translate. The texts of German philosophy, on the other hand, both classical and contemporary, seem in many cases to be marked by stylistic obscurities or idiosyncracies of a sort which make them not translatable in the strict sense at all. When, not long ago, I attempted to demonstrate a version of this untranslatability thesis at a conference in Bonn celebrating the 100th anniversary of Heidegger's birth, my lecture was shouted down by a large contingent of Japanese Heideggerians in the audience who insisted with great vehemence that 'of course Heidegger is translatable' on the basis of the fact that, as they pointed out, there exist already seven different translations of Sein und Zeit into Japanese. As we shall see, the strong thesis of untranslatability cannot survive critical examination in its unrestricted form. This is first of all because it is an oversimplification to regard 'translatability' as an absolute, all-or-nothing matter. That part of the German language which is directly or easily or literally translatable into English, for example, is presumably not identical with that part of the same language which is directly translatable into Danish or Korean. Any treatment of untranslatability will stand in need also of a certain temporal or historical relativization in virtue of the fact that what can be translated unproblematically from one language into another may change with time, for example as one gets used, progressively, to styles or forms derived from another language which at first seemed alien. In many cases a special translation tradition must be created before a work can be successfully translated, and the Japanese (like the Italians) may well be further advanced in this respect in relation to the works of classical German philosophy than are the Anglo-Saxons. In considering the strong thesis of untranslatability, however, and in directing our attention thereby not so much to the concepts or ideas as to certain stylistic …