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Anne forwarded me this small beautiful exchange between scholars.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uSdHoNJu5fU<\/a><\/p>\n I wanted to add that<\/p>\n \n I do not agree… You never need anything to read anything.<\/p>\n Actually to understand Derrida it is not necessary to read e.g. Sein and Zeit. The question is then of course, what exactly did you understand in reading “Grammatology”, and even more, re-reading it: will you still understand the same? The tricky thing is that claiming to understand anything in philosophy is to a certain extent always a lie.<\/p>\n My problem is that I did not understand this and a lot of times felt dumb and helpless.<\/p>\n So I do not understand Zizek and it took me years to understand him.<\/p>\n The awful thing is that one has to “with-stand” philosophy to “under-stand”. Interestingly in german under-stand is ver-stehen. The\u00a0\u00a0“ver” means that by doing something actively you somehow actively do something not intended.<\/p>\n \n E.g.<\/p>\n ver-zeihen – for-give (par-don, lat. pro [veniam] dare)<\/p>\n ver-f\u00fchren – seduce, f\u00fchren – lead<\/p>\n ver-sagen – fail, sagen – say<\/p>\n Most interesting of those is<\/p>\n ver-sprechen –<\/p>\n It means to promise\u00a0and to make a slip of the tongue or to make a mistake, sprechen – speak<\/p>\n So by understanding something by the pure meaning of the word verstehen in german you misunderstand while understanding.<\/p>\n \n So far to the subtelities of language and philosophical meanings. Fortunately Heidegger is making these differences most of the time quite clear.<\/p>\n Still, I read once for training Pablo Neruda in German and Spanish side by side. In german it sounded awful. In spanish it made me get tears in the eyes.<\/p>\n \n \n Now to something completely different:<\/p>\n At the end I want to share one of my favorites regarding understanding philosophical texts. But in 2 Translations. Note that the last subsentence is missing in the first.<\/p>\n Hegel’s night of the world.<\/p>\n \n First in German “von hier<\/a>“:<\/p>\n Der Mensch ist diese Nacht,<\/p>\n dies leere Nichts, das alles in ihrer Einfachheit enth\u00e4lt In\u00a0dieser Nacht ist das Seiende zur\u00fcckgegangen.”<\/p>\n \n
\n– ein Reichtum unendlich vieler Vorstellungen, Bilder, deren keines ihm gerade einf\u00e4llt – ,
\noder die nicht als gegenw\u00e4rtige sind.
\nDies die Nacht, das Innere der Natur, das hier existiert reines selbst,
\n– in phantasmagorischen\u00a0 Vorstellungen ist es rings um Nacht, hier schie\u00dft dann ein blutig Kopf,
\n– dort eine andere wei\u00dfe Gestalt pl\u00f6tzlich hervor, und verschwinden ebenso
\n– Diese Nacht erblickt man,
\nwenn man dem Menschen ins Auge blickt
\n– in eine Nacht hinein, die furchtbar wird,
\n– es h\u00e4ngt die Nacht der Welt hier einem entgegen<\/strong>.<\/p>\n