[lit-ideas] Re: view of names, or in ginocchio da te

  • From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 15:39:58 +0900

A typo, "way" (wrong) for "say" (right).

John (my bust)


On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Richard Henninge <
RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> **
> John McCreery wrote:
>
>
>
> Just now I find myself in a mood where I agree with Borges,
>
>  "I talked at the beginning about definitions. To end up, I would like to
> say that we make a very common mistake when we think that we're ignorant of
> something because we are unable to define it. If we are in a Chestertonian
> mood (one of the very best moods to be in I think), we might ???way??? that
> we can define something only when we know nothing about it."
>
> Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse.
>
>
>
> No "way," I would assume, or is this some kind of back-translation from a
> Japanese translation of Borges? Or did the English translator mean "weigh"
> with all its senses of assess, estimate, calculate, assume, figure, juggle
> the possibilities in one's head, imagine? In fact, it's a good way to
> proceed, in such a case, very Wittgensteinian, to leave the space to be
> translated blank, a hole in the _Satz_, the prop, the sentence, and
> free-associate what would best fit the context, i.e. "...we might [       ]
> that we can define something only when we know nothing about it," and I
> don't mean "mutter," "scream," "state categorically" (well, maybe),
> "conclude," "grumpily concede," sidestep the fact, etc. Gee, this
> translating thing is fun, and it's just this kind of fun that Google's
> algorithms don't have and why that's not thinking. Of course, we're just
> trying to "way in" on the subject of "thinking," which, like so many
> metaphysicalities, can only be circumscribed as that black hole in the
> center of our discourse that is thoughtworthy enough to be presented with
> the waving of a Wittgensteinian Poker in the face of its possibility--or
> not--of definition, but still worthy, in the process of discerning how we
> "know nothing about it," of being an object of thought, a rung on the
> ladder, an _Errungenschaft_, an achievement, that is, an acquisition, that
> we have wrestled away (from German, "ringen," to wrestle) from the black
> hole's pull, and which we can take to or can take us to the next level of
> understanding by our letting, by the way we let it, fall back into its hole.
>
>
>
> Richard Henninge
>
> University of Mainz
>
>
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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