Utopia of understanding : between Babel and Auschwitz / Donatella Ester Di Cesare ; translated by Niall Keane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Di Cesare, Donatella.

Series:

SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy

Standardized Title:

Utopia del comprendere. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Hermeneutics.

Language and languages--Philosophy.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

xiii, 245 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2012]

Summary:

Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language-even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrick's confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Dr Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come.

Donatella Ester Di Cesare is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and of Jewish Philosophy at the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano. She is the author of many books, including Grammatica dei tempi messianici; Gadamer, and Ermeneutica della finitezza. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Being and Language in Philosophical Hermeneutics 1

1 Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Linguistic Turn 1

2 Which "Turn"? 2

3 From Heidegger to Gadamer: Language as Dwelling, Refuge, Shelter, Exile 3

4 "The History of a Comma" 4

5 Gadamer's Self-Interpretation 6

6 Understanding as Middle Term and Mediation 6

7 Language and Linguisticality 7

8 Searching for the "Right" Word 8

9 "Being" Twice: The Speculative Passage from Being to Being-Language 9

10 The Universal "There" of the Word 10

11 Self-Overcoming: The Movement of Hermeneutics 11

12 The Understanding of Being: Hermeneutics Facing Ontology 12

13 The A-Metaphysical Dimension of Philosophical Hermeneutics 12

14 A Philosophy of Infinite Finitude 13

Chapter 2 The Hermeneutic Understanding of Language 17

1 Heidegger and the Derivativeness of Assertion 17

2 Aristotle's Lesson 18

3 Hermeneutics Between Semantic Lógos and Apophantic Lógos 20

4 The Logic of Linguistic Praxis 20

5 As if "assertions fall from the sky ..." The Analytic Artifice 21

6 Assertion, Method, and the Power of Technology 22

7 The Tribunal of Assertions 23

8 Hermeneía: From the Said to the Unsaid 24

9 Speculum: The Speculative Movement of Language 25

10 Beyond Hegel: The Dialectic of Finite and Infinite 27

11 The Truth of the Word 28

12 The Hermeneutic Listening to Language 29

Chapter 3 Translation and Redemption 35

1 "... one shall no longer understand the lip of the other." Babel 35

2 Languages in the Diaspora 40

3 "Love without Demands": Translation in the Age of Romanticism 41

4 From the Original to the Originary: On Heidegger 49

5 Giving Voice to the Foreign Voice: The Translation of the Torah 62

6 The Dialogue of Languages: On Benjamin 70

7 "Pure Language" and Messianic Silence 80

Chapter 4 Exiled in Language 95

1 "Exile" in the Jewish Tradition 95

2 "How Much Home Does One Man Need?" 96

3 Exile from the Land, Exile from the Language 98

4 On the Mother Tongue 100

5 In the Firmament of Rosenzweig: The Holy Language and the Language of the Guest 103

6 If German is the Language of Origin 106

7 "What Remains? The Mother Tongue Remains": On Hannah Arendt 108

8 My Language Which is of the Other: Derrida and Monolingualism 111

9 Language Forbids Ownership 114

10 The Exile of Language 115

Chapter 5 The Dialogue of Poetry 125

1 Paul Celan as a Witness to Hermeneutic Dialogue 125

2 The Everyday Word and the Poetic Word 126

3 Poetizing and Interpreting 127

4 "Your irrefutable witness" 128

5 Your I and My Thou: The Universality of Poetry 129

6 The Flow of Dialogue and the Crystal of Poetry 130

7 The "Soul's Refrain" 131

Chapter 6 Understanding: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction 137

1 Paris 1981: An "Improbable Debate" 137

2 Hermeneutics and Deconstruction: Which Difference? 139

3 Derrida and Hermeneutics: Plaidoyer for Interruption 141

4 Gadamer and Deconstruction: "... at the beginning of a dialogue" 144

5 On the Language of Metaphysics and on Language in General 146

6 The Being-for-the-Other of Language 149

7 Wanting to Say and Wanting to Understand 150

8 "Comprendre c'est ègaler"! On Nietzsche 154

9 Understanding is Understanding Differently 157

10 On Accord and Discord 161

11 Heidelberg 2003: Starting from that Interruption 164

12 "The world is gone ...": Dialogue after Death 164

13 Thinking, Carrying, Translating 166

14 The Blessing of the Hand, the Blessing of the Poem 168

15 Stars and Constellations 170

Chapter 7 Utopia of Understanding 185

1 U-topia, Topia, Utopia: On Gustav Landauer 185

2 Celan, Poetry and the "Revolution of the Breath" 188

3 Breaking the Silence: Voice and the Absolute Vocative 189

4 January 20: The Date and the Circumcised Word 191

5 Speaking Ever Yet? 193

6 The Language-Grille 195

7 Straitening, Anguish, Anxiety: On the Limit-Situation 198

8 The Other of the Limit, the Limit of the Other: The You is the Lever of the I 199

9 Understanding to live, Living to Understand: Auschwitz 201

10 Átopos: The Stranger Out of Place 208

11 The Tent of Encounter 212

12 "... The Language That Wandered With Us" 216

13 The Time of the Promise 218

14 North of the Future 221

15 The Word of Conspiracy 227.

Notes:

Translated from the Italian.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781438442532

143844253X

OCLC:

743432453