[lit-ideas] Re: The nothing noths
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 07:48:29 -0500
In a message dated 2/17/2015 9:14:21 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
how much is really lost in translation between the German and the English
here?
i.e.
i. The nothing noths.
ii. Das Nichts nichtet
or
iii. The Nought noughts.
(cfr. Sartre -- "le néant néantisant")
That infamous paradox has been compared to "The Absolute is lazy", and this
may relate to translation. It is alleged that there is some 'semantic'
rule, if not syntactic rule (but Carnap prefers, I think, to speak of
'logical' syntax of the world) which is broken.
But it might be that in German, "Das Nichts" has colloquial uses that "the
Nought" or "the Nothing" lacks. Note that 'the' is hardly used as applied
to 'the' in English ("Much ado about nothing", not "Much ado about the
nothing".
Morphologically, there is this -s in "Nichts" that may have something to
do with it. The equivalent older English, "Nought" does not add the -s, but a
final -s is added in colloquial English expressions meant in the singular,
"Hullo Ducks".
Chomsky speaks of a native speaker competence and provided Heidegger was a
native speaker of German, the fact that he is breaking this syntactic or
semantic rule is perhaps something that a Carnapian should address.
On the other hand, if Heidegger's utterances are compared to Jabberwocky --
the first four lines cited by Geary -- who decided yesterday, Goedelianly,
not no decide on stuff -- , one might wonder not so much if something is
lost in translation, but whether alleged nonsense CAN be translated in the
same way as 'sense' can? (I think Strawson did say, "What is nonsense in one
language is nonsense -- in any other language to which the expression can
be translated" -- cited in Mundle, "Critique of linguistic philosophy",
Clarendon).
It may DO to compare the above with
iv. Negation negates.
Surely nothingness is _not_ negation (and they may not even be related),
but 'nichtet' is not German for 'negate'. But there is something analytic a
priori (or 'trifle' as Locke would have it) or tautological
(etymologically, 'saying the same thing', as "Kings reign") about Heidegger's
utterance
that may have done with Carnap's overreacting over it.
Carnap and Ayer focused on this, rather than in the 'Dasein'. The forms for
'to be' in German are innumerable, and 'Sein' I don't think has an English
cognate. But 'da' does. It's "there". "Being there". So the "Dasein" is
there.
Now "is there" contrasts with "there is" ("Is there any sugar?", "There is
a policeman in the corner").
The point was made in one of the quotes by C. B. that Heidegger got into
'fashion' (or vogue as Anna Wintour prefers) going back to odd etymologies.
He infamously said that
philo-sophia
rather than love of wisdom is best regarded as a 'sophia', i.e. a wisdom,
of what? 'love', of course. I think he was thinking of Plato's Symposium,
which dwells, almost wisely, about love.
It may do to revise Heidegger's further etymologies.
If philo-sophia is the wisdom of love, then philo-logia would not be the
love of words, but a discourse on it.
It seems that while the German language invites for such an interpretation
of compounds like 'philo-sophia' and 'philo-logia' (or 'philo-sophos', and
'philo-logos'), such compounds were felt different by native ancient Greek
speakers. But it may not be rejected as silly the idea that both
interpretations resonated with ancient native Greek speakers, and that whoever
coined 'philo-sophia' or 'philo-logia' or many other compounds Heidegger
considered in his work and tried to provide a German equivalent for, was
EXPLOITING such ambiguities.
Cheers,
Speranza
ps. The agenda of the explication project is set by a German pre-war
debate between Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger about allegedly meaningless
metaphysical statements such as "The Nothing noths" ("Das Nichts
nichtet"). Within the mainstream of 20th century analytical philosophy this
statement, "The Nothing noths" [O. K. is right and we SHOULD 'capitalise' --
note
that it's MANDATORY in German, and merely stylistic in modern English -- it
was mandatory in older English] has come to be regarded as obvious
metaphysical nonsense. As we all know, this led to an unfortunate
confrontation between analytical and continental philosophy. Despite the fact
that
this former judgement had been corrected in a short remark by the
Mancunian philosopher Desmond Paul Henry in the 1960s, which he repeated more
explicitly in the 1980s, this unnecessary conflict still seems to exist.
Unfortunately Henry's remark didn't find its way to a greater audience,
perhaps
because Henry didn't prove his claim in a canonical way, perhaps because
it contains an ambiguity, which may give rise to criticism. However, the
required disambiguation together with the missing proofs can and will be given
here within Lesniewski's ontology. Following Ludger Honnefelder we can
call the Lesniewski systems, which were developed roughly at the same time
(1913-1939), the third beginning of metaphysics. They will provide the still
missing bridge between Carnap and Heidegger, which can be regarded as an
ontological supplement to and a partial correction of Michael Friedman's
brilliant background study on Heidegger, Carnap and Cassirer. The
hermeneutical conclusion to be drawn is that reconciliation between the two
types of
philosophy is not only possible along Cassirer's ideas, but also along the
lines of broadly logical form. In other words: there IS a more fundamental
way for reconciliation. The hermeneutical outcome is as follows: one can
make use of precise logic tools in a more general way than Carnap himself
without declaring at least some central statements of Heidegger's
Fundamentalontologie to be pure nonsense."
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