Abstract
Language is the reciprocal disclosure of man and world. But language does not exist outside a plurality of historical languages. In this hiatus between the unity of language and the plurality of languages, translation becomes a philosophical question. My hypothesis is that reflecting on translation, with Ricœur and Patočka, is fertile for a deeper understanding of the meaning of phenomenology. I consider the following three fundamental theses: (1) Meaning is the most comprehensive category of phenomenological description; (2) the subject is the bearer of meaning; (3) reduction is the philosophical act that permits the birth of a being for meaning. All three of these theses can be clarified by testing against the diversity of languages and against translation, in such a way as to come, perhaps, to a better understanding of the meaning of asubjective phenomenology. If every language is like a world, then to reduce or stand apart from a language, methodologically neutralizing it, is exactly what happens when we have to do with a foreign language, and with any language expression which we consider as a language of otherness. Viewed in this way, reduction no longer appears as a fantastic and impossible operation of exiting the world. On the contrary, it becomes possible and necessary in order to reach the level of transcendental humanity, endowing us with the faculty of understanding and being understood thanks to the mother tongue which opens us to the world, but also in the reciprocity that translation establishes between those who speak different tongues. This approach has a clear influence on the conception of the subject (always embodied in the world through the mediation of language), and on the conception of meaning as the space opened by translation in order to compare and let our perspectives on the world be communicated.
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Notes
- 1.
Translated from the French by Gabriele Poole. The initial French version of this essay has been published in L. Cercel (ed.), Übersetzung und Hermeneutik – Traduction et herméneutique (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2008), pp. 147–165.
In a communication at the first International Phenomenology Colloquium, organized by Father Van Breda in 1951, Merleau-Ponty wrote: “In the philosophical tradition, the problem of language does not pertain to ‘first philosophy,’ and that is just why Husserl approaches it more freely than the problems of perception or knowledge. He moves it into a central position, and what he says about it is both original and enigmatic. Consequently, this problem provides us with our best basis for questioning phenomenology and recommencing Husserl’s efforts instead of simply repeating what he said. It allows us to resume, instead of his theses, the very movement of his thought.” (Signs, transl. R. C. McCleary [Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964], p. 84). Citing this passage, Ricœur adds: “our relation to the greatest of French phenomenologists has perhaps already become what is was to Husserl: not a repetition but a renewal of the very movement of his reflection.” (Paul Ricœur, The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. D. Ihde [Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1974], p. 247; various transl., for this part K. McLaughlin).
- 2.
Jan Patočka, “Husserls Anschauungsbegriff und das Urphänomen der Sprache,” in Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz. Phänomenologische Schriften II, ed. K. Nellen, J. Němec and I. Srubar (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991), pp. 535–544.
- 3.
Jan Patočka, “Fragment sur le langage” [1942], in L’écrivain, son “objet,” ed. and transl. E. Abrams (Paris: P.O.L, 1990), p. 15.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 16.
- 6.
Cf. Jean-René Ladmiral, Traduire: théorèmes pour la traduction, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1994).
- 7.
Cf. Antoine Berman, L’épreuve de l’étranger. Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); The Experience of the Foreign: Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany, transl. S. Heyvaert (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
- 8.
Cf. Marcel Hénaff, “‘La condition brisée des langues’: diversité humaine, altérité et traduction,” in Esprit, no. 323, mars–avril 2006, pp. 68–83.
- 9.
Domenico Jervolino, Per una filosofia della traduzione (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008).
- 10.
François Marty, La bénédiction de Babel: vérité et communication (Paris: Cerf, 1990), p. 198.
- 11.
Cf. Paul Ricœur, op. cit., p. 241.
- 12.
See Domenico Jervolino, “Ricœur lecteur de Patočka,” in Studia phaenomenologica, Vol. VII, 2007, pp. 201–217, and “Langage et phénoménologie chez Patočka,” in Études phénoménologiques, Vol. XV, no. 29–30, 1999, pp. 59–78.
- 13.
Jan Patočka, Le monde naturel comme problème philosophique, transl. J. Daněk and H. Declève (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 122–162. [The translation of the passages quoted below from this work has been revised by Erika Abrams. See also the German translation: Jan Patočka, Die natürliche Welt als philosophisches Problem. Phänomenologische Schriften I, ed. K. Nellen and J. Němec, transl. E. and R. Melville (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), pp. 138–175].
- 14.
Ludwig Landgrebe, Nennfunktion und Wortbedeutung. Eine Studie über Martys Sprachphilosophie (Halle: Akademischer Verlag, 1934).
- 15.
Jan Patočka, Le monde naturel…, op. cit., p. 125; [Die natürliche Welt…, op. cit., pp. 140–141].
- 16.
Ibid., p. 131/147 (French/German).
- 17.
Ibid., p. 132/148 (French/German).
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 133/148–149 (French/German).
- 20.
Ibid., p. 134/149 (French/German).
- 21.
Ibid., p. 134, note/304–305 (French/German).
- 22.
Ibid., p. 161/174 (French/German).
- 23.
Cf. Karel Novotný, “L’esprit et la subjectivité transcendantale. Sur le statut de l’épochè dans les premiers écrits de Patočka,” in Études phénoménologiques, Vol. XV, no. 29–30, 1999, pp. 29–57.
- 24.
Jan Patočka, Le monde naturel…, op. cit., pp. 160–161; [Die natürliche Welt…, op. cit., p. 174].
- 25.
Ibid., pp. 161–162/175 (French/German).
- 26.
Cf. Jan Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, ed. J. Dodd, transl. E. Kohák (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1998).
- 27.
See also Marc Richir, “La communauté asubjective,” in Les Cahiers de Philosophie, no. 11–12, 1990–1991, pp. 163–191.
- 28.
Jan Šebestík, “La philosophe du langage de Jan Patočka,” in Les Cahiers de Philosophie, no. 11–12, 1990–1991, pp. 193–207; Jan Patočka, “Husserlův pojem názoru a prafenomén jazyka,” in Slovo a slovesnost, no. 1, 1968, pp. 17–22.
- 29.
Jan Šebestík, op. cit., p. 206.
- 30.
Jan Patočka, “Husserlův pojem…,” op. cit., p. 21.
- 31.
Jan Patočka, “Épochè et réduction,” in Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie?, ed. and transl. E. Abrams (Grenoble: Millon, 1988), p. 258.
- 32.
Paul Ricœur, op. cit., p. 261.
- 33.
Jan Patočka, “Postface,” in Le monde naturel…, op. cit., p. 178–179; [“Nachwort des Autors zur französischen Ausgabe,” in Die natürliche Welt…, op. cit., p. 280].
- 34.
Jan Patočka, “Postface de l’auteur à la traduction française du Monde naturel comme problème philosophique – notes et fragments,” in Papiers phénoménologiques, ed. and transl. E. Abrams (Grenoble: Millon, 1995), pp. 140–141.
- 35.
Jan Patočka, “Qu’est-ce que l’apparition?” in ibid., p. 257.
- 36.
Jan Patočka, “Postface,” op. cit., p. 180; [“Nachwort…,” op. cit., p. 281].
- 37.
Postscript: I wish to thank Erika Abrams who, after I had written this essay, brought to my attention an important text by Patočka, “On the Problems of Philosophical Translations,” written in 1968 for the Czech journal Dialog (the bulletin of the translators’ section of the Czech Writers’ Union), initially circulated as samizdat in 1977, and later published by Daniel Vojtěch and Ivan Chvatík in volume 5 of the Collected Works (Sebrané spisy. Umění a čas II [Praha: Oikoymenh, 2004], pp. 35–44). This article shows Patočka’s penetrating ability to describe the work accomplished by thought in translating philosophy. The problem of philosophical translations consists first of all in reconstructing the original ideas in the native language of the philosopher, with all its richness and possibilities, before proceeding to the language of the translator: “One does not translate words, but thoughts.” This article further convinces me of the possibility of developing, with Patočka, a philosophy of translation.
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Jervolino, D. (2011). Reading Patočka, in Search for a Philosophy of Translation. In: Abrams, E., Chvatík, I. (eds) Jan Patočka and the Heritage of Phenomenology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 61. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9124-6_10
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